Acceso usuarios
Cristián Iturriaga
This theoretical article articulates the multiple yet disjointed conceptualisation of the ‘semiotic repertoire’ in translanguaging, which amounts to communicative practices in which meaning making draws from multiple resources not necessarily bounded by named languages. It is proposed that the notion of mediation from sociocultural and activity theories (e.g. Engeström [1987]. Learning by Expanding: An Activity Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research. Orienta-Konsultit) offers the key to proposing a dialectical model in which individual, interactional, and social aspects of the semiotic repertoire transform into one another throughout human development. A data fragment from an ethnographic study depicting the communication between a deaf British Sign Language signing college student and his communication support worker is analysed to illustrate how this framework can be mobilised to make sense of multilingual, multimodal communication in a teaching-learning activity. The analysis situates these local translanguaging in greater frameworks of activity to understand how semiotic repertoires are shaped by wider social influences, and to what extent individuals benefit from this or not. Finally, the consequences of this proposal for research and pedagogies are explored. It is argued that interactional, situated semiotic repertoires are the juncture at which individuals find communally available semiotic resources and internalise/externalise their individual semiotic repertoires if the conditions for intersubjective attunement are met.
