Translanguaging

An Expanded Notion Involving Affect and Vitality

Abstract

During recent years, the concept of translanguaging has increasingly been discussed in the context of multilingualism. According to García and Li this concept includes other modalities, such as body language and facial expressions (2014). In this article we explore whether it is possible to expand the concept of translanguaging further to include “affect” and “vitality” as conceptualized by Daniel N. Stern (2010). To explore this issue, we used two short episodes in which we captured the interactional processes of one-year-olds on film. In line with Stern, we propose the interactions between the children show a kind of non-conscious meaning-making and implicit relational knowing, involving a felt quality of affect and vitality that promotes the children’s abilities to participate, and their attunement to the affective states and rhythms of others (Lyons-Ruth, Bruschweiler-Stern, Harrison, Morgan, Nahum, Sander, Stern, & Tronick, 1998, Lyons-Ruth, 2000; Stern, 2010). This concept of affect and vitality expands the notion of translanguaging, as well as paving the way for what Erin Manning (2013, 2016) and Isabelle Stengers have called an “ecology of practices” (2005).