Language Guerrillas: Signing Multilingualism into Action

Abstract

This article opens an analytical window into the creation of multilingual guerrilla translations by participants in a preservice language teacher program at a public university in the United States. As an intervention responding to the prevalence of English monolingual signage on this highly diverse university campus, the college students invited a public audience into a joint critical interrogation of implicit institutional language policies, as their signage offered a necessarily incomplete and intentionally makeshift alternative to the official English displays. Inspired by the three-phase model of critical pedagogy, this grassroots endeavor embraced Freire’s notion of transformative praxis defined by the symbiotic relation of action and reflection. A closer examination of the scaffolding, which guided the planning and implementation, lends insight into activity design with the potential to nurture an activist aptitude among students. Comments from participants suggest that the conceptual stepping stones towards students’ collective critical engagement had a positive influence on their perception of language (teacher) advocacy and activism.

Keywords

• critical pedagogy
• multilingualism
• language policies
• language activism
• linguistic landscape