Work

Beyond translingual playfulness: Translingual precarity

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Translingual knowledge allows sociolinguists to appreciate more ‘playful’ negotiation and the assemblages of linguistic, cultural, and semiotic resources for meaning-making. Yet, this very idea of ‘translingual playfulness’ should never lose sight of the subversive purpose of this apparent playfulness: to destabilise norms and boundaries. The reason behind all of this translingual playfulness is precisely the ‘precarious’ positions of the creators of the playful. In this article, I urge sociolinguists to think more carefully about how translingual playfulness may connect to precarity and argue that it is important not to construe playfulness and precarity as dichotomous or even as opposite ends of a spectrum but rather to view them as symbiotically (re)constituting each other. The idea of ‘precarity’, thereby, deserves much more attention than the representation of ‘playfulness’; that is, explicit/implicit translingual precarity needs to be revealed in translingual scholarship. (Translingualism, playfulness, precarity)*
Institution: Curtin University
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,450
OpenAlex ID: W4403482880
FWCI: 23.01
Cites: 84
Cited by: 16
Related to: 10