IN CLOSING

I end this article with the same spirit that I started this article with the open letter to Amy Tan, keenly aware that this move is already trapped in the dominant rhetorical form of the academic essay in which the conclusion is supposed to be tied back to the beginning.  I do not conclude this article in the way the dominant discourse about an academic essay expects one to do, such as summarizing all points made and restating the thesis, etc.   I do not follow this protocol because this is one way to demonstrate my resistance against being totally absorbed into the linguistic ideology of monolingualism especially when I attempt to dismantle the myth of monolingualism.  I wish to close this article to open up a space where “misunderstandings, unfamiliarity, and unpredictability are the norm” (Sohan, 2014, p. 204). 

Do I “buy” this “relocalized listening”?  

Yes and no.  Depending on how this listening is presented for students, this “strategy” could deprive them of agency over their written products.   Sohan (2014) deems this relocalized listening as “dialogic pedagogy,” from which I have a critical distance. The idea of “relocalized listening” itself is not a pedagogy.  And it should not be.  It is a way to read and respond to translingually produced texts.  It will become pedagogy when we think about how what we produce from the listening could possibly promote students’ reflection and reenvisioning of their products.  However, I feel the notion of “dialogic pedagogy” is important to explore especially when it comes down to translingually produced texts because “dialogic” reminds us of Bakhtin’s other notions of polyphony and heteroglossia.   

Speaking of “pedagogy,” the discussion of translingual orientation and translanguaging in this article is about translingually produced texts, but not about translingual pedagogy, and much less translingualism -- I don’t subscribe myself to any “ism” so much.  “Ism” is so confining, except for feminisms.  Anyways, as Schreiber and Watson (2018) point out, translingual pedagogy is not fully developed.  I want to make it clear that this article is not about translingual pedagogy.

Did I speak for ELLs? 

I have been trained as a qualitative researcher to believe that we do not speak for anyone.  But that is just bogus.  I think some researchers especially in the humanities think about and write for a certain group of people.  What has to be done about this is to recognize that and state where we/they speak from as a researcher/writer and as a person as well in order to avoid generalizing certain groups of people.  So I think I spoke for ELLs in this article, knowing that my relations to languages do not apply to all ELLs.  But simultaneously, I aspired to attain Morrison’s position about her goal of writing that “I didn’t want to speak for black people.  I wanted to speak to and to be among.  It’s us (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019).”  I am not quite sure what she meant by “us.”  But I think this article is also “us” - all the language users in this context.  However, I don’t think I spoke to ELLs.  I feel that there is still a mile to go in order for me to “speak to.”  Well, I might have spoken to them in this piece of writing.  Did I? 

Do I advocate dismantling the monolingual ideology?

Hell Yes!   If I were given a chance to read this article somewhere, I would definitely choose the section about “relation to language.”  I want you to “hear” the section. 

What would I suggest to my cohorts who teach composition courses (not to ELLs) in terms of dismantling the monolingual ideology?

One way I would boldly suggest is to reimagine the role of teachers of composition.  Language is not a pre-given entity and so constantly changing.  How could something constantly changing possibly be taught?  Students already have their “own” language through which they make sense of the world around them.  What entitles us to deprive them of that?  We do not teach language: we teach composition (Nefer 2020).  

Acknowledgement:

I thank Professor Alison Ruch for reading my drafts and giving eye-opening responses as a partner/editor by “relocalized listening” :)  I give a shout-out to Professor Jeff Ellenbird for helping me to grapple with the dilemma between keeping the nature of translingual writing in this article and keeping consistency with writing conventions across other articles in this edition.  I thank my colleagues/friends, Professor Deborah Shwartz and Professor Tua Nefer, for conversations and discussions about curriculum, pedagogy, etc. in the midst of the pandemic, which nourished this article.  I also thank my son, Lloyd-Sho Akai-Dennis, for putting up with my crabbiness while I write: you know my love-hate relationship with writing in English very well.  

About the author

Naoko Akai-Dennis is Professor of English and Facilitator of the One Book Program at Bunker Hill Community College.  She holds an M.A. in American Literature from Kobe College in Japan, an Ed.M. in Teaching of English from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English and Education from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Science.  Her research interests are translanguaging, intersubjectivity in classroom, and teaching reading and writing.  In her spare time, she enjoys watching anime and reading manga.  She has wanted to learn Tango and she is determined to do so sometime soon.   

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