Translanguaging, co-learning, and participatory investment in multilingual workplaces

Abstract

Abstract To date, scholarship on the multilingual workplace has largely focused on professional and corporate settings, ignoring the small scale, often self-employed, immigrant businesses in many British towns and cities. This paper explores what goes unnoticed in such spaces of extended service encounters and focuses on two themes: translanguaging and cooperative disposition, and co-learning practices and identity practices; also introducing the term participatory investment to explain these phenomena. The participants made strategic decisions involving ample use of extensive signs in their semiotic repertoires, going beyond the linguistic resources in order to negotiate, co-construct and aid the meaning. Based on the findings, this paper argues that multilingualism is not a necessary tenet of cooperative disposition, but rather, exposure to contact zones with regular translanguaging activities is what hones it. Many instances also point towards an environment of co-learning, which opened up a space for the parties involved to construct and negotiate various identities and worldviews. Although examined often in pedagogical contexts, this paper argues that co-learning taking place outside of the classroom plays a considerable role in multilingual communication and should be examined thoroughly to create a better understanding of communication and identity practices at contact zones.