The Handbook of Translanguaging

The authoritative reference work on Translanguaging, one of the most dynamic and fast-growing areas of research in modern linguistics

Translanguaging has transformed how we understand language, bilingualism, and education, challenging conventional views and reshaping theory, policy, and practice. The Handbook of Translanguaging is the most comprehensive resource available, bringing together leading scholars from diverse disciplines and global perspectives to explore the theoretical foundations, educational applications, and interdisciplinary connections of this dynamic concept.

Organized into three sections, the Handbook clarifies the conceptual and historical underpinnings of translanguaging, examines the role of translanguaging in education, and explores its intersections with digital communication, gender, media studies, and social justice. Detailed chapters consolidate existing research and set the stage for future inquiry, offering the depth and breadth needed to navigate and contribute to this rapidly evolving field. Integrating theoretical, methodological, and applied perspectives, The Handbook of Translanguaging:

• Features contributions from leading scholars and emerging voices from around the world, particularly from the Global South
• Addresses key theoretical perspectives, such as raciolinguistics, decoloniality, and bilingual cognition
• Examines the role of translanguaging bilingual education, language policy, Indigenous language education, literacy development, and assessment
• Discusses methodological challenges and ethical considerations in translanguaging research
• Highlights translanguaging's role in resistance, social justice, and transformative praxis

Edited by a team of internationally recognized experts, The Handbook of Translanguaging is an invaluable reference for researchers, educators, and policymakers engaged in bilingualism, multilingual education, and language studies. It is also an essential text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in applied linguistics, bilingual education, sociolinguistics, and language policy.

List of Contributors xix

Praise for the Editors xxv

1 Navigating Translanguaging: Decoloniality, Fluid Simultaneity and Multimodalities 1

Part I Theoretical Foundations and Conceptual Frameworks 19

2 Integrating Languaging, Translanguaging, and Trans-semiotizing as Living Process: An Organicist-processual View 21

3 Waterscape Epistemologies, Waves of Knowing and Translanguaging as Wet Ontology 43

4 Languaging as Ritual 57

5 The Politics of “Meaning” in Translingual Practice 69

6 Translanguaging and the Linguistic Capacity of Bilinguals 87

7 A Raciolinguistic Perspective on Translanguaging 103

8 Translanguaging Triad: Resistance, Decoloniality, and Transformative Praxis in the Global South 117

9 Translanguaging and Bilingual Cognition 137

10 Translanguaging, Transmodalities, and Transpositioning: Meaning-Making and Relationality in Communication 153

11 Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in Translanguaging 167

12 Ethics and Translanguaging Research: Researcher Identity, Participants’ Relationships 179

Part II Translanguaging Education 195

13 Bilingual Education and Translanguaging 197

14 Translanguaging, Biliteracy, Multiliteracies, and Critical Literacy 217

15 Translanguaging, EMI, and Language-of-Instruction Policies and Practices 235

16 Translanguaging in Foreign Language Education 251

17 Community-Based Language Education and Translanguaging 265

18 Whakahokia te reo ki ngā uri whakaheke: Translanguaging as a Means of Responding to Historically Based Language Trauma 279

19 Translanguaging and Language Revitalization: Higher Education in Africa 297

20 Deaf Education: Translanguaging Through Tied Hands 313

21 From “Disordered” Language to Expansive Languaging: Understanding Translanguaging’s Relationship with Disability and Special Education 333

22 A Critical Translanguaging Lens on Assessment 349

Part III Making Connections and Broadening Horizons 365

23 Translanguaging: Uncovering Networks for Unspeakable Significance 367

24 Translanguaging, Individualization, and Unequal Englishes 385

25 Transpositioning 397

26 Translanguaging and Visuality 409

27 Translanguaging, Creativity, and the Arts 427

28 Translanguaging and the Digital World 445

29 Translation and Translanguaging 459

30 Translanguaging, Gender, and Sexuality 477

31 Translanguaging and Interculturality: Critical Issues in Researching Language, Culture, and Communication 491

32 From Translanguaging to Transraciality: Dispelling Boundaries of Race Through Critical Raciolinguistic Awareness and Radical Listening 511

33 Hard Translanguaging: A Mutualizing Practice of Abun-Dance 529

Index 000

Li Wei is Director and Dean of the UCL Institute of Education and Chair of Applied Linguistics at University College London. His research covers bilingualism, translanguaging, and language education. He is the co-author of Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism, and Education (with Ofelia García) and editor of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and of the Wiley Blackwell Guides to Research Methods in Language and Linguistics book series.

Prem Phyak is Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. His research focuses on language policy, translanguaging, and multilingual education. He is the co-author of Engaged Language Policy and Practices (with Kathryn Davis) and co-editor of Multilingual Education in South Asia: At the Intersection of Policy and Practice (with Lina Adinolfi and Usree Bhattacharya) and has published extensively on decoloniality, Indigenous languages, language policy, and translanguaging in education.

Jerry Won Lee is Professor at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on critical applied linguistics and the sociolinguistics of globalization. He is the author of Locating Translingualism, which won the 2024 American Association for Applied Linguistics Book Award, and co-editor of Entangled Englishes (with Sofia Rüdiger).

Ofelia García is Professor Emerita at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. A leading scholar in bilingual education and translanguaging, she has authored and edited numerous influential works, including Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective (Wiley Blackwell, 2008). She served as Editor for The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society and Language Policy.

"This Handbook will be an invaluable resource for researchers and educators who want to practice radical ways of knowing that disrupt and undo the classic borders of social science and humanities disciplines, which are rooted in colonial and racializing logics. Advancing ways of securing epistemic justice, this Handbook will be of interest not only to linguists and educators but to anyone who wants to contribute to the building of a more just world"

Karen Wells

Professor of International Development & Childhood Studies,

Birkbeck, University of London

“The languages that each of us speaks today is a mesh of linguistic, semiotic and modal mixes. Translanguaging is an important topic because it is what we do. Accordingly, the studies in this new Handbook have practical applications, clearly in educational practice, but also in social, political, and institutional contexts. This collection traces the cutting edge of research and practice in this growing field and sets the agenda for the future.”

Shaun Gallagher

Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy, University of Memphis

Professorial Fellow, SOLA, University of Wollongong

“The Handbook, assembling a global interdisciplinary team of leading scholars, is an authoritative publication that presents groundbreaking research on translanguaging and illuminates complementary perspectives on language studies and education towards an ideal of inclusivity and social equity. It is a must-read for students, researchers, educators, and policymakers.”

John Chi-Kin Lee

President, Chair Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, and Director of Applied Policy Studies and Education Futures, The Education University of Hong Kong

“If translanguaging in its initial years was nothing less than decolonial avant la lettre, behold it here in full-fledged maturity. This volume eloquently articulates the need to mark the unmarked and to identify, interrogate and interrupt coloniality in language education.”

Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza

Professor of Language Education, Universidade de São Paulo

“This groundbreaking Handbook is a monumental contribution to translanguaging scholarship, offering a decolonial lens that disrupts linguistic hierarchies and challenges the colonial logics of named languages. With its focus on fluid simultaneity and multimodalities, it advances translanguaging beyond pedagogy into the realms of epistemic justice, relationality, and social transformation. Spanning foundational theories, education, and interdisciplinary intersections—including race, gender, disability, digital semiotics, and cognition—this volume redefines the study and practice of language in profound ways. An essential resource for anyone committed to reimagining linguistic diversity as a dynamic and liberatory force.

Leketi Makalela

Distinguished Professor of Languages and Literacies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa