Code-switching is metaphor, translanguaging is metonymy: a transdisciplinary view of bilingualism and its role in education

• Autores: Steve Daniel Przymus
• Localización: International journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, ISSN 1367-0050, Vol. 27, Nº. 4, 2024, págs. 595-611
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • How we talk about bilingualism has an effect on how others think about bilingual individuals, and in turn, how active bilingual learners/users of English (ABLE) students are assessed and taught in schools. I use a transdisciplinary approach of bridging social semiotics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics to explain how code-switching is metaphor, an external perspective of bilingualism as inter-domain linguistic mapping and translanguaging is metonymy, an internal perspective of intra-domain linguistic mapping. By placing translanguaging/metonymy on the syntagmatic axis and code-switching/metaphor on the paradigmatic axis, I demonstrate through example sentences of monolingual and bilingual speech and figures, how accepting the inaccurate metaphor of bilingualism as just code-switching alone, sets in motion countless dichotomies that act to create the bilingualism-as-problem orientation for ABLE students in U.S. schools; most specifically for those at the intersection of bilingualism and disability. A transdisciplinary view of bilingualism includes both an internal perspective (translanguaging, metonymic combination of parts of the whole linguistic repertoire on the syntagmatic axis), plus an external perspective (code-switching, metaphoric alternation of linguistic features from diverse named languages on the paradigmatic axis). I conclude with implications for a more appropriate description of bilingualism and its role in education.