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5 - Multilingualisms, Masking and Multitasking

Spaces of Hopefulness

from Part I - Beyond Translingual Playfulness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2024

By
Mei French ,
Necia Stanford-Billinghurst  and
Janet Armitage
Edited by
Sender Dovchin ,
Rhonda Oliver  and
Li Wei
Sender Dovchin
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Perth
Rhonda Oliver
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Perth
Li Wei
Affiliation:
Institute of Education, University of London
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Summary

Women from circumstances of displacement and precarity are often considered from perspectives of postcolonial subalternity and suffering. Their linguistic versatility is understood as emerging from conditions of hopelessness, poverty and vulnerability. In this chapter, the authors bring vignettes of conversations with southern multilingual women living now in Australia, who at different stages of their lives and despite circumstances of precarity, exhibit ingenuity in survival through dextrous translingual and transknowledging practices. More than this, they demonstrate how their multilinguality is integral to their potential to thrive in hope. In the three small stories offered in this chapter diverse women of Australia – Anangu women from remote central Australia, young displaced women of extraordinary resilience, and women who escaped violent conflict in East Africa – reveal their strategies of self-efficacy in conversations of complicity and trust, and in processes of telling and retelling with the researchers. Mindful of ‘decolonising methodologies’, ‘southern epistemologies’ and ‘epistemic reflexivity’ , the authors recognise their limitations and privileges as researchers in the south, hopeful that in stepping lightly towards spaces that are at times private and at others, public, they can turn the lens towards playful and purposeful southern multilingualisms.

Keywords

precaritytranslingualtransknowledgingsouthern epistemologiessouthern multilingualisms
Type
Chapter
Information
Translingual Practices
Playfulness and Precariousness
 , pp. 79 - 102
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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