Connecting With What We Actually Have Rather Than What We’re Supposed to Have

Australian cities make translingual spaces easy to find, though we don’t always recognise them as pedagogically significant. Melbourne’s inner west operates as a multilingual contact zone where Vietnamese bakeries sit next to Greek grocers, where Somali and Macedonian blend on public transport. Sydney’s inner-city suburbs work similarly, where institutions like the Japan Foundation host events in spaces thick with linguistic diversity. This isn’t multiculturalism as policy celebration but the lived reality of urban Australia, where people routinely negotiate meaning across language boundaries. But as Canagarajah reminds us, these translingual spaces don’t simply exist by virtue of linguistic diversity. They have to be achieved through active negotiation and practice. These negotiated spaces matter for thinking about pedagogy because they show us what translingual practice actually looks like when people work to create conditions for communication across difference.

Two events last weekend reminded me why the question of translingual pedagogy matters and how multilingual spaces allow for thinking about identity and belonging. Saturday I presented with Hana, the illustrator of Kimchi is for Everyone, at the Japan Foundation in Sydney. Sunday I attended Clément Baloup’s book launch for Vietnamese Memories in Footscray. Both spaces became what I think of as third places, where the symbolic dimensions of language exceeded their communicative functions and where identity could be negotiated rather than declared.

Using What We Actually Have: Symbolic Resources in Action

At the Japan Foundation, Hana and I presented to Japanese language teachers using minimal text and telling our story in English. Participants asked questions in Japanese and we answered in English. Over dinner, conversations moved fluidly through Japanese, English, Korean food references, gestures and shared laughter. People used their linguistic resources as Otheguy and colleagues would put it “without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages” (2015, p. 281). No one apologised for their language choices. What emerged was not simply code-switching but something more generative. The room became a space where we assembled symbolic resources to create meaning together, where languages functioned not as separate systems but as part of what Pennycook calls a broader semiotic assemblage.

The Japanese teachers enthusiastically took up Kimchi is for Everyone even though it has nothing to do with Japan. They found connections to use as a model for their teaching of Japanese both here in Australia and in Japan across the many different contexts in which they’re teaching. This ability to make connections, to see possibilities across and within imagined cross-cultural and linguistic boundaries, is what makes language teachers with multilingual training so special. They don’t need direct cultural correspondence to recognise pedagogical value. They see how a Korean food story can open spaces for Japanese language learning because they think translingually about what symbolic resources do rather than what languages contain.

The next day in Footscray, Clément’s launch moved between Vietnamese and English. Women sitting near me translated spontaneously, adding their own interpretations. Clément doesn’t speak Vietnamese fluently, yet he’s writing and drawing Vietnamese refugee histories, and everyone connected with his work profoundly. When he showed his illustration process, explaining his choices about drawing and colour, he demonstrated how meaning gets constructed through visual grammar, historical knowledge and narrative structure. The Vietnamese experience in his work doesn’t depend on Vietnamese words. It emerges from an assemblage of symbolic practices that exceed linguistic boundaries.

This is where Pennycook’s concept of semiotic resources becomes useful. We need to move past thinking about languages as bounded systems people possess and focus instead on how linguistic and other symbolic resources get mobilised in specific contexts. For arts-rich translanguaging pedagogy, this matters directly. When students make visual essays or multilingual podcasts, they’re already working translingually by deploying multiple meaning-making resources simultaneously. The question isn’t whether to permit this but whether we recognise it as legitimate symbolic work through which students construct knowledge and subjectivity.

Both spaces worked because people created the conditions together through practice, not policy. This differs from how translanguaging often gets framed in education as permission for students to use all their languages. That framing positions it as something we grant rather than something we actively produce through spatial and pedagogical practice. At both events, people used whatever features we call Japanese, English, Korean or Vietnamese as part of creating meaning together. What mattered was the assemblage itself, not competence in any single named language.

For arts-rich translanguaging pedagogy, this means designing assignments and assessment around symbolic repertoires rather than bounded linguistic competencies. Visual essays that mix languages and images should count as legitimate academic work. Multilingual performances should be expected rather than exceptional. Most university assessment still operates through discrete linguistic competencies, but when we insist on English-only classrooms, we’re not maintaining standards. We’re restricting which symbolic resources count as legitimate for knowledge construction. Students bring visual literacies, cultural knowledges, embodied practices and multilingual resources that exceed what typically gets recognised as academic work.

Both Clément and I occupy what might be called liminal positions regarding linguistic identity. He’s Vietnamese through his father but doesn’t speak Vietnamese fluently. I’m Korean but my Japanese is stronger than my Korean. In traditional frameworks, this reads as deficit or inauthenticity. But what both events showed me is that linguistic competence doesn’t authenticate identity or legitimate cultural work. Clément’s graphic novels communicate Vietnamese refugee experience powerfully through visual, historical and affective resources. At his book signing, his generous listening created connection that fluent Vietnamese couldn’t have guaranteed. When an elderly audience member told him “Clément, you are always welcome here mate,” it became clear that his artistic practice had created belonging that transcended linguistic boundaries. That moment reminded me why I keep making work across cultural boundaries – not to prove fluency but to honour experience and create connection.

Third Spaces for Negotiating Identity

I don’t have ancestral ties to Japan or Vietnam. Yet being in these third spaces, I felt most comfortable as a Korean-American-Australian. Something about moving between the Japan Foundation in Sydney and the Vietnamese community in Footscray allowed me to think about who I am and why I experience belonging in ways that more linguistically and culturally bounded spaces don’t permit. I loved the listening regardless of whether I could understand the language being spoken. These translingual spaces didn’t ask me to choose one identity or prove linguistic competence. They let me assemble whatever symbolic resources I had and participate in meaning-making across difference.

I’m not a fluent speaker in Japanese, and I don’t speak Vietnamese at all. Yet I was invited into both spaces because of something I have – my creative work with Kimchi is for Everyone, my knowledge about translingual pedagogy, my interest in how artists make meaning across cultural boundaries. It takes courage to enter spaces where you’re not linguistically fluent, to not feel intimidated when you can’t understand everything being said. We build confidence and find ways to enter those spaces through the creative work we do. It’s our knowledges, unique voices, insights and visions that get us in the door, not our linguistic credentials. The linguistic work gets taken care of collectively – fluent speakers translate, clarify and make space for participation.

This is what third place means for multilingual subjectivity. It’s not about having multiple complete language systems or authentic cultural memberships. It’s about occupying spaces where identity can be negotiated through symbolic practice rather than authenticated through linguistic competence. Students need these spaces too. They need assignments that invite them to deploy their full symbolic repertoires. If a student can better construct knowledge about ecological concepts through Vietnamese and visual diagrams than through English prose alone, that should be legitimate academic work. The goal isn’t abandoning rigour but recognising that meaning-making always involves choices about which symbolic resources to deploy and how.

What stayed with me from both events was how participants demonstrated deep knowledge without apologising for linguistic limitations. This suggests something about how we might rethink pedagogy. Academic work involves learning to make thoughtful choices about symbolic resources in relation to context, audience and purpose. Restricting students to English-only production doesn’t teach clearer thinking. It constrains which aspects of their subjectivity and knowledge can be made visible in academic spaces.

This requires rethinking course design, assignment structure and assessment. It requires challenging assumptions about what counts as rigorous academic work. When we legitimise translingual practices, we’re not lowering standards but expanding whose ways of knowing count as legitimate. We’re challenging monolingual norms that privilege certain students over others. Both events showed me that translingual spaces emerge from collective negotiation. The rooms worked because everyone contributed to making them work. People connect more meaningfully and thinking becomes more genuinely engaged when we stop policing linguistic borders and start building spaces where students can deploy their full symbolic resources for making meaning and constructing knowledge.

Clément drew my portrait while signing his book for me. That generous gesture, using his visual practice to create connection in the moment, stays with me as much as anything else from that weekend. It captures what translingual artistry looks like in practice – not explaining or translating across difference but making meaning through whatever resources you have at hand. His attention to each person, expressed through drawing rather than extended conversation, created connection that feels real because it draws on what we actually have rather than what we’re supposed to have. This is what translingual spaces make possible when we stop policing linguistic borders and practice our craft generously. What generosity, kindness and food for thought I have experienced this weekend – thank you to everyone who made it possible!