Touch and translanguaging in a multilingual early childhood education setting

Introduction

Today, many urban settings are notably diverse, as globalisation and the migration of people create settings where a range of languages and semiotic practices are intertwined. These linguistically heterogeneous settings are sometimes referred to as being ‘superdiverse’ (Blommaert, 2013), showcasing a blending of languages and various cultural symbols that come together in acts of meaning-making in a diverse set of cultural practices. Meanwhile, pedagogical practices have been slow to adapt to match the increasingly multicultural and multilingual realities children grow up with (Kirsch, 2020).

Studies of bi- and multilingualism have needed new theoretical frameworks to make sense of these types of communicational settings. Here, translanguaging has gained attention as a perspective grounded in the often observed fluid crossing of languages in contemporary multilingual communities (García and Wei, 2014). It has also become clear that not only languages are increasingly intertwined but also other modes of communication, a development which has led scholars such as Li (2018) to include multimodality with translanguaging, proposing the concept of the translanguaging space, in which multiple modes of communication come together in meaning-making.

This paper joins the recent trend in translanguaging studies of including multimodality and embodied means (Blackledge and Creese, 2017; Li, 2018) in multilingual communication. Blackledge and Creese (2017: 67) note how ‘various semiotic repertories (not just linguistic, but multisensory and multimodal) are integrated into coordinated and meaningful performance and social action.’ This notion highlights the importance of embodied means of communication in the translanguaging space. Simultaneously with the embodied movement in studies of translanguaging, the multimodal study of touch has been growing. Once neglected as a field of academic investigation (Classen, 2005), it is now significantly gaining ground as an interdisciplinary area of study (Jewitt et al., 2020). However, while translanguaging has increasingly been taken to be an inherently multimodal phenomenon (Zhu et al., 2020), Kusters et al. (2017:221) note that research has yet to expand on what a multimodal conception of translanguaging entail. The combination of touch and translanguaging can potentially provide fertile new empirical and theoretical ground relevant for early childhood education.

The study aims to examine the role of touch in the translanguaging space of a preschool in a multilingual community. The focus of this study on 2-year-old preschoolers is particularly fitting for this examination, as 2-year-olds’ interaction is heavily reliant on embodied and sensory means of meaning-making (cf. Garrity et al., 2015). Being located in a highly diversified area, where no child at the preschool speaks the majority language of Swedish in their homes, the setting is also of interest as a translanguaging space. The study aims to make a theoretical and empirical contribution to the role of touch in translanguaging spaces and showcase what role touch plays when children connect using multicultural linguistic and semiotic communicative practices. Being set at the intersection of multimodal translanguaging and the emergent interdisciplinary field of touch communication (Jewitt, 2017; Jewitt et al., 2020), the study extends the understanding of communication in the translanguaging space.

Translanguaging and touch in early childhood

While translanguaging has been influential in recent scholarly educational discussions, Kirsch (2020) notes the relatively small influence on research and practice in early childhood education. Educational settings in multilingual communities can often display what Zhao and Flewitt, (2020: 267–268) call a ‘disjuncture between their multilingual out-of-school and often monolingual in-school language and literacy practices’. To counteract this, bringing translanguaging theory to early childhood education holds great potential for educational practices set in multilingual communities. A range of studies has now pointed to the potentials of bi- and multilingualism on children’s cognition (see Bialystok, 2017; King and Mackey, 2007), which has led Hornberger (2005) to conclude that education can be ‘maximised’ when children can use all of their linguistic resources. A translanguaging perspective also aligns with the ongoing discussion of the artificiality of a ‘monolingual bias’ in education (Block, 2003) and the potential for pedagogies with a pluralistic perspective on languages and learning (Gort and Sembiante, 2015). Not only is the translanguaging perspective changing the foci from monolingual practices of learning, but moreover, García and Kleifgen (2020: 566) argue that a complete understanding of multiliteracies today has to include a bi- or multilingual perspective, allowing children to ‘[deploy] their entire semiotic repertoire’. Here the focus shifts toward ‘intersections and the interaction processes between different cultures and their texts’ (Kumpulainen et al., 2018). This study continues the study of implications of the translanguaging perspective on early childhood education from the lens of touch communication.

Adjacent to translanguaging, ‘code-switching’, the phenomenon when people switch between languages in interaction, has been studied in preschool settings. For example, children code-switch as a resource during play (Björk-Willén, 2007; Cromdal, 2001). In addition, Ledin and Samuelsson (2017) have observed how newly arrived children can interpret embodied signs such as movement, gestures and touches when playing without a shared language. Still, it is relatively novel for childhood educational practices to utilise what (García et al., 2017) call the ‘pedagogical stance’ where educators actively use translanguaging in the educational practice. This is confirmed in the national context of the Swedish preschool, where the School Inspectorate (2017) recently pointed out a widespread monolingual bias and sometimes even hindrance of multilingual children and teachers in using their minority language in the preschool.

The translanguaging perspective is about breaking illusions of rigid language structures and the autonomy of languages. Instead, translanguaging favours a view highlighting fluid ways languages are used in the superdiverse linguistic settings seen in globalised communities (Canagarajah, 2018). Lately, the multimodal turn of translanguaging has also included the body (Block, 2013; Blackledge and Creese, 2017). Embodiment is a promising area for studies of translanguaging in early childhood education, where Samuelsson (2021) shows how everyday routines at the preschool provide a ground for ‘embodied participation’ as children can interact following the repeated patterns of daily practices such as mealtimes. This favours a broadened view of communicative repertoires, illustrated by Block’s (2013) proposal that bi- and multilingual children acquire multiple languages as they grow up and a multimodal repertoire associated with the development of the languages, in a view that also can include the multimodal and multisensory modes of engagement essential to young children.

The role of embodiment in translanguaging spaces has recently been a matter of focus (Zhu et al., 2020), particularly discussions of the role of multimodal resources for interaction and learning (Tai and Li, 2021). Other studies have pointed to the role of gesture as a resource used by preschool children for communication in the translanguaging space (Kirsch, 2017), and this study directs the multimodal focus toward touch. In the preschool context of the 2-year-olds in this study, touch is an integral part of the children’s everyday encounters. In nursery settings, touch has several functions that are related to the care of children, such as soothing (Cekaite and Holm Kvist, 2017), showing affection toward children and, at times, using it to show children how to move and socialising purposes (Cekaite and Bergnehr, 2018). However, little attention has been given to the role that touch plays in learning processes during early childhood, and according to Jewitt (2017), touch as a scholarly subject and analytical focus has been ‘largely neglected in pedagogy’. The above point argues for the role of touch as an analytical focus of this paper. This can expand the study of translanguaging practices that has been missing in the early childhood area (Kirsch, 2020), as it provides an empirical investigation that begins to uncover touch and translanguaging in terms of multilingual early childhood pedagogy.

Embodiment, translanguaging and touch

The role of embodiment has been making headway in understanding human action and development. A consequence of an embodied perspective on learning is that our use of language cannot be thought of as a stationary act decoupled from other types of bodily action and sensory experience. Here, the role of touch is pivotal, not least for the 2-year-old children featured in this study, that are often actively participating in their environment through touches. Touch, as both a sensory and communicative mode, is a means for children to simultaneously communicate and do things (Jewitt, 2017), thus providing an important resource for children to act and know the world around them (Perry, 2015).

The study is placed within the broadened conceptions of bi- and multilingualism tied to the notion of translanguaging. Translanguaging in this perspective entails a fluid view of how two or more languages are used in interaction and includes multimodal and multisensory views of communication (Hua et al., 2017). The study takes the view of Kusters et al. (2017), in that communicative repertoires are multifaceted and include languages, modalities, and sensory experiences, promoting a move away from ‘language-centric’ notions of human communication (Finnegan, 2015), encompassing what García and Otheguy (2020) refer to as children’s full communicative repertoires. This is a key notion for the studied early childhood setting, where multiple languages are present, and a multicultural set of experiences is available for children to explore.

According to Zhu et al. (2020), embodied forms of interaction also alter the view of learning that takes place. Likewise, this study’s translingual learning also includes embodied experiences known through touch and other senses, e.g. the feel of cultural objects such as textiles, the scent and tastes of foods, etc. This places the study at the intersection of translanguaging and the interdisciplinary area of multimodal touch communication (Jewitt et al., 2020). The study frames learning in the translanguaging early childhood space as an inherently multimodal and embodied practice. In this embodied sense, as Otsuji and Pennycook, (2010) note, learning is tied to the specific place and the semiotic repertories that children encounter. In this highly diversified community, children encounter various cultural experiences and languages in their daily lives. This ethnographic case study thus offers an examination of the role of touch in this multicultural and multilingual space.

Methods

Context and participants

The study’s methodological approach is a 7-week, short term ethnography of a multilingual preschool in a suburb of Stockholm. The preschool is located in an area that that be classified as ‘superdiverse’ (Blommaert, 2013) through a large number of languages and cultural backgrounds represented in the community. This linguistic diversity is reflected at the preschool, where the children use 32 different languages. Reportedly, no child at the preschool predominantly uses the majority Swedish language in their homes.

The specific preschool department followed during the project included nine children, few of whom shared the primary language spoken in their homes – once again, exemplifying the linguistic heterogeneity of the area. The five participating children featured in the paper’s examples and the languages used in their homes, listed as preferences reported by parents, are shown in Table 1¹.

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Table 1.

Table of participants and their home languages.

Participants
Name	Language(s)
Dilwa (Teacher)	Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic
Fatemah (Teacher)	Tigrinya, Arabic
Akeem	Arabic
Amy	Bengali, Punjabi, English
Hanah	Kurdish Sorani
Noah	Somali, Swedish, Arabic
Zala	Somali

Results

Two important themes emerged from an analysis of the functions of touch in the observed preschool context. First, one key theme that was persistent in the ethnography was how touch provides a common experiential ground, as it allows children to do things together with each other and their teachers.

The other key theme that emerged was how touch allows children to engage with new cultural experiences in the translanguaging space, creating a way to explore the diversity of cultural experiences that arises from the community’s specific multilingual and multicultural features.

The findings of the two themes are presented in the following main sections and are supported by relevant multimodal and sensory examples from the ethnographic data.

Creating common ground by doing things together

The first key function of touch is a medium for doing things together and creating common experiences. This occurs when children are bodily engaged in shared activity – e.g. feeling the same objects, or creating things with their hands. Moreover, it can also be linked with communicational possibilities of a translanguaging space from the shared sensorial experiences in this multicultural setting. This was observed, for example, when children are outdoors, during play with teachers present, playing in the sandbox, during creative activities such as making things with clay, and in shared activities which are part of the themed projects at the preschool.

An illustrative example of the role of touch in creating this common ground is when children are engaged in explorative activity with water. The teachers fill a ‘water table’ and added plastic fruits for children can play with – children during the water activities are exploring through touch when trying things out by pouring water, dropping fruits, testing their buoyancy etc. In the session pictured below, the children played for an extended time with teachers continuously asking children questions – “what colour is it?”, “which one is bigger?”, “how many bananas are in the tub now?” and so on. The children are sensorially, and linguistically exploring the shapes and colours of fruits.

This activity is a way for children to explore different properties of the objects through touch and other sensory information – shapes and colours of different fruit here become a node for common experience between children and teachers, as they can use touch to feel the object of shared attention during this activity. In Figure 1, the teacher asks Noah about the lemon as they jointly feel it and later playfully drop it into the water – its shape, colour, and whether it will sink or float (see Figure 2).OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 2.

Jointly feeling plastic lemons using touch.

Touch here plays a part in creating a common experiential ground and provides a good ground for learning basics in the majority language Swedish. Moreover, as shown in the following example, this situation can also become a translanguaging space where multiple languages and modes of expression can be shared.

Touch and cultural learning in the transcultural space

The other key function touch plays in this translanguaging space is that it allows children to explore the diversity of cultural expressions and languages represented in the community. Being a wholly multilingual preschool, there are many ethnic expressions that the children encounter during their days at the preschool and everyday lives. Notably, the pedagogy at the preschool does not fit with the School Inspectorate’s (2017) observation of preschools where children’s minority languages and cultures are not pedagogically represented. Here, the children’s languages and cultures are rather taken into the preschool pedagogy and represented in books and the pedagogues' active use of diverse languages. This multicultural stance is clearly demonstrated during the monthly project involving the whole preschool, in which the children focus on learning about a specific country. The project importantly involves a range of sensory experiences, as the preschool presents children with music and dance from the chosen country and prepares a national dish that children eat for lunch.

This month, the theme country is Eritrea. While none of the children has a family connection to Eritrea, this is a fortunate selection as the assistant teacher Fatemah knows Tigrinyan and has part Eritrean ethnic origin, which leads her to bring not only knowledge of culture and language but even items for the preschool group to use.

Example 3 – preparing for the Eritrean dance

Today, the children learn a traditional Eritrean dance. Fatemah has brought traditional Eritrean children’s clothes for the children to choose from when assembling for the dance. The children are not only learning a new dance and Tigrinyan words on this day, but also through sensory experiences that go with the themed project, for example feeling and trying out the traditional clothing and sampling the popular Eritrean dish Kulwa (a stew to be eaten with Injera bread and/or rice).

Several children are highly engaged in the new set of clothing brought to the preschool. In Figure 6, Fatemah shows the child Amy how to tie a type of shawl around the neck on top of the traditional dress. Another child, Zala, who has already picked a dress for the dance attentively observes as her friend is being dressed up.

Fatemah (assistant teacher): “Do you want that one?”

Amy: “yes”

Fatemah: *ties the shawl*

Fatemah: “oh it’s so nice”

Amy and Zala: *Smile*

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Figure 6.

Fatemah aiding the children with traditional clothing, here tying a knot on a shawl for Amy.

After picking various dresses, the children go to the assembly hall for the dance. The Tigrinyan language is present throughout the day in both songs and words. For example, when walking down the stairs to the assembly hall, Fatemah counts the steps in Tigrinyan, while the children repeats after her.

Discussion

This paper has examined the role of touch in the translanguaging space of a multilingual preschool. The study has pointed out two major roles that touch provides in this space – for creating common ground and a diversity of cultural experience that is coherent with the multilingual and multicultural reality of the studied community.

The finding that touch provides a mode for doing things together and creating common experiences, is important for understanding pedagogy in the multilingual early childhood setting. As touch has been relatively unexplored in pedagogical terms (Jewitt, 2017; Kirsch, 2020), this paper provides a key result as it centres pedagogy around embodied actions and sensory experience as enacted through touch. In Example 1 & 2, children are exploring fruits through touch, and this experience creates a translanguaging space, where languages can be exchanged over the ground established through joint sensorial experience. Block (2013) notes how chances of using multimodal methods in studies of bi- and multilingualism are often missed. From this result, it is possible to argue that embodied experience generally, and touch specifically, provide a key theoretical frame and analytical units for studying translanguaging featuring young children. In the particular context of the study – where no child shares the language spoken in their homes – the preschool’s role to establish common sensory experience becomes central. This creates an interpersonal ground where languages can be exchanged and learned – providing a crucial pedagogical insight.

The other key result demonstrating how touch provides new transcultural experiences for children highlights another side to touch’s role in the multicultural pedagogical setting. Following Canagarajah ‘s (2018: 51–52) proposal that ‘there is more to the paradigm shift of translingualism than accommodating more diverse verbal resources in communicative practice or in one’s proficiency’, this paper shows how touch is an integral part of this shift. The pedagogical practice observed in this study embodies the view of a pedagogy set in a diverse linguistic setting and provides empirical examples of what types of learning opportunities this carries. During the Eritrean project, children encounter a range of experiences – the scent of the traditional food, the feeling and fit of clothing, patterns and colour, new words etc. This underscores the sensorial dimension and embodied pedagogical experience highlighted in this multicultural setting. Thus including the multimodal and multisensory as part of translanguaging (Blackledge and Creese, 2017; Li, 2018), here provides a multifaceted view of learning and shows how this provides diversity in the educational practice. This has critical implications for pedagogy. During activities such as the Eritrean project, the experiences and language may be common for one child or teacher, but entirely new to others, showing the pedagogical challenges and opportunities of translanguaging pedagogy. Here touch can have an important role, providing a common ground to pedagogically build on. In the case of the Eritrean project, none of the children shares this ethnicity, and it provides an example of learning from the wealth of cultural experiences and semiotic systems available in a multicultural community. Languages are tied to the embodied practices that children are part of (Samuelsson, 2021). Multicultural settings open pedagogical challenges for teachers to create routines that include learning opportunities attuned to the multitude of cultural knowledge latent in the communities where they teach.

The role of touch explored in this paper confirms the theoretical views highlighting an embodied and multimodal view of translanguaging. Communication has, of course, always been a multimodal phenomenon (Finnegan, 2015), even if sometimes disregarded in linguistic studies (Block, 2013). This study centres on how language learning is intertwined with ways of touching, feeling, gesturing, and moving and demonstrates that this has certain functions for children’s learning and specific meanings in the multicultural space featured in this ethnography. This study further supports the widened view of communicative repertoires (cf. Kusters et al., 2017) and points to the importance of understanding communication as a multifaceted phenomenon. The study clarifies the importance of methodological tools for studying this communicational diversity, not only linguistically, but also modally and sensorially as exemplified by touch. Touch in this study provided a view that carries a critical understanding of multilingual communication and education. Following this, attention to touch and new methodological tools may have to be developed to access the details and implications of touch in other learning environments and communication with children in diverse settings.

Conclusions

This paper has examined the role of touch in the translanguaging space of a multilingual preschool and shown two important functions touch plays in this regard – creating common ground and providing a diversity of cultural experiences. The results concur with the recent uptake in translanguaging studies of multimodality, sensory modes and an embodied view of language and communication. Touch seems to play a major role in translanguaging for the young children featured in the study as it provides ways of creating a common experiential ground on which languages can be learned. Moreover, this diverse childhood setting also creates a new dimension to the cultural experience as children learn diverse communicative repertoires through the multicultural pedagogical practice of the preschool.

The results provide important insights for educational settings, where translanguaging pedagogies have not yet come to match the number of multilingual preschool settings that could benefit from this type of pedagogy. The role of touch is critically important for young children, as it provides a mode of meaning-making that is attuned to young children’s acts of expression and knowing. Notably, the focus on touch points to pedagogical potentials that appear when linguistic and modal borders are crossed. From this, a rich set of pedagogical experiences can be provided to children in inclusive ways in the multilingual community. Moreover, touch is pointed out as necessary in this regard, as it is a mode through which children can create a much needed common linguistic ground while simultaneously developing a bi- or multilingual repertoire. This provides a way forward for multilingual education that addresses the challenge of educating children in the majority language for their future participation in society, while also supporting children’s full linguistic repertoires. While challenging, this pedagogy holds great potential as it offers a form of equitable and diverse education stemming from the view of communication explored in this paper. This dual educational goal may be a way for contemporary childhood pedagogies to develop, as it embraces the multiple ways of knowing and communicating represented in today’s multilingual and multicultural world.