CLASS Seminar: When Chinese characters/汉字 meets globalisasian: Language play and the translanguaging moment

CLASS SEMINAR:

When Chinese characters/汉字meets globalisasian: Language play and the translanguaging moment
 

李嵬 (Li Wei), UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, University College London, UK. li.wei@ucl.ac.uk

In this talk, I revisit some of the key approaches to linguistic innovation and change in contact situations. I set the discussion within the broader context of global-scale migration and the explosion of new communication media. My focus is on the multilingual language user and their motivations to innovate through multilingual and multisemiotic resources. I draw examples from Chinese social media users and discuss how they use linguistic innovation as a creative tool to challenge the ideologies regarding the Chinese language, especially the writing system, culture and society. Despite the deep-rooted linguistic ideologies about the superiority of Chinese writing system汉字系统, standardised and officially sanctioned forms of written Chinese clearly cannot cope with communicative demands of the Post-Multilingualism era (后多语时代). Chinese netizens especially have shown great creativity in adapting the writing system to their everyday needs. This in turn presents new challenges to language policy and language education. With the drive to promote Chinese as a ‘global’/’world’ language, we need to take these challenges seriously. I present a Translanguaging (超语实践) perspective on linguistic innovation and change in language contact. This perspective emphasizes the transformative capacity of dynamic Translanguaging practices of the language user.

李嵬(Li Wei) is Chair of Applied Linguistics and Director of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, University College London (UCL), UK.  He is Editor of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (SSCI, Taylor Francis) and Applied Linguistics Review (SSCI, De Gruyter), and Editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics series. He is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS), UK and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), UK.