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Beyond Native and Nonnative: Translingual Dispositions for More Inclusive

Teacher Identity in Language and Literacy Education

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DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2019.1674148

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Beyond Native and Nonnative: Translingual

Dispositions for More Inclusive Teacher Identity in
Language and Literacy Education

Eunjeong Lee & A. Suresh Canagarajah

To cite this article: Eunjeong Lee & A. Suresh Canagarajah (2019) Beyond Native and Nonnative:
Translingual Dispositions for More Inclusive Teacher Identity in Language and Literacy Education,
Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 18:6, 352-363, DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2019.1674148

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JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION
2019, VOL. 18, NO. 6, 352–363
https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2019.1674148

Beyond Native and Nonnative: Translingual Dispositions for More

Inclusive Teacher Identity in Language and Literacy Education
a
Eunjeong Lee and A. Suresh Canagarajahb
a
Queens College, City University of New York; bPennsylvania State University

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article proposes translingual dispositions as a way to move beyond the Identity; translingual
NES/NNES dichotomy in understanding language teacher identity. Recent dispositions; translingual
scholarship in TESOL and Applied Linguistics has problematized the NES/ practice
NNES binary from a poststructuralist perspective, highlighting how NES/
NNES subjectivities are discursively and performatively (co-)constructed and
negotiated. Despite the efforts to empower NNESs, the very binary reifies
monolingual ideologies. This article argues that translingual dispositions
can help move beyond the binary and complicate theorization of teachers’
identities and practice. To illustrate, we report an ethnographic case study
of a “NES” teacher, Daphne, and examine how Daphne’s translingual dis-
positions shape her teaching and facilitate her students’ creative negotia-
tion of monolingual norms in a writing course. We conclude by discussing
future research directions and the implications for language teacher educa-
tion in fostering translingual dispositions.

Introduction
For the past two decades, research on non-native English speakers (NNESs)/non-native English-
speaking teachers (NNESTs) has revealed the inequalities experienced by NNESs and NNESTs
(Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Ruecker & Ives, 2015). From overt discrimination in job applications
and pejorative discourses in the profession to lower teaching evaluation, the NNEST movement has
contributed to our understanding of the inequitable social relations and resulting socioeconomic and
political conditions that further sustain such inequality. However, the movement has also been
criticized for its essentialized perspective on identities, which simplify the complexity and fluidity of
teachers’ identity-related teaching practices (see Yazan & Rudolph, 2018 for a comprehensive
discussion). Though intended to overturn the hierarchy, the continued use of the binary reifies
the underlying ideologies promoting language nativity and ownership. To move beyond the binary,
this article calls for attention to teachers’ translingual dispositions (E. Lee & Canagarajah, 2019; J. Lee
& Jenks, 2016; You, 2016)—an orientation towards language diversity and difference from a non-
deficit perspective—in theorizing language and literacy teacher identity.1 In doing so, we approach
the term dispositions focusing on its social and affective nature rather than the deterministic and
cognitive view with which the term has been understood, the discussion of which we come back to
later. As language teacher identity is understood as discursively and performatively (co-)constructed
and negotiated (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005), it is important to attend to
dispositions that guide the very process. In the rest of the article, we first review previous literature
on language teacher identity to better situate our research, and then we present a case study of
a writing instructor, Daphne (pseudonym), to illustrate how the notion of translingual dispositions
can help discuss language teacher identity.

CONTACT Eunjeong Lee eunjeong.lee@qc.cuny.edu

© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION 353

Literature review
Language teacher identities: NES and NNES2 and beyond
Ever since the native speaker model was problematized as an assumed goal in language learning and
teaching (Cook, 1999; Phillipson, 1992), the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has continued
to question “Native Speakerism” (Holliday, 2006). This agenda helped illuminate how the native
speaker myth (Phillipson, 1992) affects NNESTs’ self-efficacy as well as their professional identity.
Scholars have challenged the categories that favor one’s biological or ethnolinguistic membership of
the language, while pointing out such categories essentialize identities as an entity (Rampton, 1990).
Particularly, a poststructuralist approach to NES/NNES identity has highlighted the discursive and
performative (co-)construction and negotiation of NES/NNES subjectivities (Aneja, 2016; Bonfiglio,
2013; Norton, 2000; Pennycook, 2004; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). Echoing Rampton’s point, Bonfiglio
(2013) historicizes the NES/NNES binary and contends that the NES category only reinforces the
kinship metaphors in language and contributes to ethnolinguistic prejudice—an Othering discourse
that perceives how “‘our native’ language, which is ‘our birthright,’ is seen as endangered by the
presence of an other who is perceived as a biological contaminant and thus a threat to the matrix of
nation, ethnicity, and language” (p. 30). Beyond the problems of the nationalistic ideology, the
ground for such othering practices becomes particularly problematic in the current era of globaliza-
tion where concepts grounded in the traditional nation-state are challenged with accelerated migra-
tion and transnational communities individuals affiliate with. To move beyond essentialism, Aneja
(2016) suggests a term, (non)native speakering, that highlights the performative and discursive nature
of the categories. Aneja explains that these categories do not exist as a priori but are “historically
grounded as well as constructed over time through the discursive practices of individuals and
institutions” (p. 575) in the Foucaultian sense of subject formation and identity negotiation.
Focusing on such identity labels, Aneja warns, can inadvertently reify the categories, overlooking
the practices or subjectivities created through such practices.
Other research has encouraged us to perceive all teacher identities as resource (Morgan, 2004)
and look beyond the identity “labels.” This line of inquiry emphasized the need to understand
teachers’ lived experiences as a pedagogical resource that shape teacher identity beyond their
knowledge in and about language teaching. Particularly, scholars have called for more research on
language teachers’ translingual, intercultural, and transnational identities (Menard-Warwick, 2008;
Rudolph, Selvi, & Yazan, 2015). Motha, Jain, and Tecle (2012) take up this call and reflect on how
their own “translinguistic identities” informed their pedagogy, helping expand students’ under-
standing of English(es) and question their language ideology towards “correctness” in their class-
rooms. The authors argue that teachers should be encouraged to see how their lived experiences
always intersect with their teaching—either purposefully or inadvertently. Also importantly, they
emphasize that teachers should understand how the knowledge gained from their life history is also
a local construction, including their understanding of fundamental concepts such as language
proficiency, accent, and language identity. Ellis (2016) emphasizes that not only NNESTs but also
NESTs bring complex language experiences that they can draw on in their pedagogy. Ellis argues that
research on teachers’ “languaged lives” (p. 599), in their entire linguistic repertoire, not just in
English, can help to transcend the unproductive divide between NEST and NNEST and the
assumption towards “monolingual” NESTs. This questioning, she emphasizes, can help the field to
recognize the “plurilingual multicompetencies of all TESOL teachers” (p. 597).

Translingual dispositions and language teacher identity

Research on language teacher identity shows the importance of attending to teachers’ lived experi-
ences beyond their ethnolinguistic identity. Yet, it is also important to acknowledge that it is
dispositions that guide how teachers draw on those experiences in their pedagogy as well as how
354 LEE AND CANAGARAJAH

they orient to discussing, negotiating, practicing, and performing language and literacy, regardless of
their ethnolinguistic identity. Nonnative status does not save one from monolingual ideologies as
shown by studies that report less tolerance of NNES teachers towards “nonnative” language use
compared to NES teachers (see Hyland & Anan, 2006); simply bearing “multilingual” identity does
not guarantee that teachers will surely bring or enact translingual dispositions either (Zheng, 2017).
Rather, both NES and NNES teachers can develop translingual competence in superdiverse and
plurilingual communities. Menard-Warwick (2008), for instance, has demonstrated how two tea-
chers develop rich transcultural dispositions throughout their transnational life trajectories. This
may not be surprising considering highly individualized experiences of language that are influenced
by both the strong language ideology and other ecological forces that shape one’s relationship with
language.
From this perspective, a focus on dispositions to language does not privilege or marginalize
individuals based on their nativity in a language or competence in multiple languages. In the context
of globalization and transnational mobility, both “NES” and “NNES” teachers can develop translin-
gual competence that shapes their identities as shown above. If what is essential for language teachers
is to recognize students’ language practice in their own right and leverage their entire semiotic
repertoire (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017), we need to reflect such disposition and practices in
theorizing language teacher identity. In this article, therefore, we focus on teachers’ translingual
dispositions and practices in the theorization of language teacher identity beyond categorical terms
grounded in teachers’ ethnolinguistic membership.
Before we proceed, it is important to define the term “disposition” carefully, as the term has been
adopted in different fields. Often understood as teachers’ internal qualities, “a filter” that affects their
way of thinking and action, or even an indicator for teacher aptitudes for teacher education
programs, “dispositions” has conjured up a maturationist, deterministic connotation. Recently,
however, the term has been used with an emphasis on its social dimension, as something that can
be reflected upon, and therefore, cultivated and developed, and contested to consider the intersection
with issues related to power, privilege, and diversity (e.g., Bialka, 2015; Mills & Ballantyne, 2010;
Schussler, Bercaw, & Stooksberry, 2008)3. In line with such views, we approach dispositions as with
Bourdieu (1982/1991), as socially acquired through individuals’ embodied practices and experiences,
thus as being not only cognitive but also affective. Dispositions are also generative and emergent.
That is, one’s dispositions change in light of ongoing socialization experiences and facilitate further
changes in one’s practices, contrary to a deterministic view towards one’s habitus—the deeply
ingrained and embodied system of dispositions that shapes one’s action. Language teachers’ disposi-
tions, particularly their orientation to language diversity, undergird their performance, shaping their
students’, as well as their own, experiences in classrooms. We call such disposition to engage with
language difference and social diversity, a translingual disposition.
As crucial for successful translingual practices, translingual dispositions have been understood in
terms of critical language awareness (García, 2016), translanguaging stance (García et al., 2017),
“general openness and inquiry … toward language difference” (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur,
2011), and humility and willingness to negotiate language difference on an equal footing
(Canagarajah, 2013). Canagarajah (2013) has classified these dispositions into three macro-
categories: language awareness (i.e., types of language ideology that treats norms as negotiable to
suit one’s voice and interests); social values (i.e., those open to diversity and co-existing with others);
and learning strategies (i.e., which facilitate proficiency as lifelong learning based on ongoing
socialization). To this end, research on translingual dispositions so far has highlighted pedagogical
innovations designed to foster students’ translingual dispositions (J. Lee & Jenks, 2016; You, 2016)
and helped us understand affordances of particular pedagogical activities. Yet, the role of the teacher
in fostering students’ translingual dispositions has been less examined despite their significance in
facilitating students’ learning.
To summarize, translingual dispositions can help us question the reification of NES/NNES by
focusing on what undergirds language teachers’ identity performance, away from categorical
 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION 355

understanding of their identity. As a general attitude and orientation towards language difference,
these dispositions may not necessarily be linked to one’s ethnic or national status; a “NNES” teacher
might be influenced by monolingual ideologies, while a “NES” teacher may demonstrate
a translingual disposition. In this sense, focusing on the teachers’ orientations to language helps us
to transcend the NES/NNES or monolingual/multilingual dichotomy. Therefore, teachers’ openness
to and understanding of difference and diversity across and within language and literacy deserve
attention in research on language teacher identity.

Methodology
Data collection
Data for this study originated from a larger classroom-based ethnographic case study (Heath &
Street, 2008) that Eunjeong conducted. Data were collected in a writing course at an intensive
English program at a Northeast U.S. research university in Fall, 2015, and additional interviews were
conducted again in 2017 and 2018. The goal of the course was to familiarize multilingual writers with
source-based writing as well as academic literacies in the students’ future academic discipline and
included 14 students from the Middle East, Uruguay, and the Czech Republic. The study adopted
ethnographic methods as a guiding principle for data collection and analysis; the data included
classroom observations for every class session, observation notes, recordings of classroom interac-
tions, semi-structured and stimulated recall interviews (Gass & Mackey, 2000), any textual artifacts
that the students and the instructor engaged with, informal conversation, and a researcher journal.
As this article focuses on teachers’ dispositions, we focus on data that speaks to Daphne’s translin-
gual dispositions and pedagogical enactments to demonstrate the value of going beyond the NES/
NNES binary.

Data analysis
We adopted both inductive and deductive data analysis (Maxwell, 2013) to fully explain the relation-
ships emerging in the data. As we posit dispositions undergird teachers’ identities, we first coded the
data for Daphne’s identity-as-pedagogy (Morgan, 2004). We then adopted Varghese et al. (2005)’s
framework on teacher identity to further code our data: dispositions-in-discourse (i.e., what and how
teachers talk about their dispositions) and dispositions-in-practice (i.e., how these dispositions are
reflected in their practice). In coding these data, we adopted key terms used to define dispositions to
language and literacy from the literature as discussed above, such as language awareness and social
value towards language diversity and difference (i.e., openness and willingness). After organizing the
data, we coded interviews and observational data inductively, focusing on emerging themes while
trying to determine the relationship among different themes through connecting strategies (Maxwell,
2013), which were further compared with interactional data through constant comparison (Bogdan
& Biklen, 2007). Classroom interactional data were analyzed to understand how the instructor’s
dispositions influence the (co-)construction and negotiation of literacy values and practices in
a given interaction. As a result of the inductive coding, two categories emerged for discussion: the
teacher’s translingual dispositions and pedagogical enactments of such dispositions.

Daphne’s background
Daphne is a white, “NES” teacher in her early 30s with about 10 years of teaching experience. Born
in a Southeast state of the U.S., Daphne grew up in “poor and white neighborhoods” (Interview #5,
12/11/2017). But as she started attending school, Daphne commented, she became more aware of
difference and diversity in various aspects of her life. Daphne recalled a moment when she first
learned different racial identities from an interaction with one of her favorite kindergarten teachers.
356 LEE AND CANAGARAJAH

She recalled her as “a Black woman with green eyes … [who] fascinated me as a child–also, she
scolded me for coloring in all my people with the peach crayon” (Interview #5, 12/11/2017). Daphne
also attributed sensitivity to difference and diversity to her experience of growing up with a sister
who has been “gender bending” as well as having friends from a variety of socioeconomic and racial
backgrounds, ranging from “poor white” female friends to Latino/a and Black friends throughout her
teenage years at her high school in an affluent neighborhood. Reflecting on her life history, Daphne
commented, “it seems that my openness to diversity stems from all the things: race, socio-economics,
gender, sexuality, and not staying tied to one specific community” (Informal conversation, 12/11/
2017).
Daphne majored in elementary education at a southeastern state university and ultimately started
her career in South Korea teaching at hakwon, a private institute for different subjects, working with
kindergarteners. She relocated back to the U.S. after a year abroad, teaching multilingual students at
an intensive English program in a Southern state university, starting to work with students in their
late teens and their 20s. At the time of the study, Daphne had been teaching at the IEP at the
research university for three years, concurrently enrolled in a doctoral program in Curriculum and
Instruction after finishing her M.A. in the same institution. With her interest in English language
education and teachers’ professional development, she also frequently mentored pre-service language
teachers—both “NES” and “NNES”—for their practicum and regularly presented at the regional and
national conferences on TESOL or Second Language Teacher Education.
Daphne’s case provides an important reminder in thinking about developing translingual dis-
positions. While Menard-Warwick’s (2008) teachers develop their dispositions through transnational
mobility, Daphne’s dispositions developed not only through her transnational experiences but were
also grounded in her ability to discern more fine-grained differences she encountered throughout
her life. Daphne commented that one’s dispositions develop through “what you have done with your
experiences you had in your life, and how you have reflected on those,” (Informal conversation, 03/
11/2018). As such, people can develop dispositions to negotiate diversity if they recognize and attend
to the ubiquitous diversity they encounter on a daily basis. In addition, we must note that disposi-
tions continue to develop even as one teaches multilingual students, interacts with other faculty, or
participates in research, given how these activities can facilitate reflection on one’s dispositions
(Johnson, 2008). In fact, it is the knowledge of and shared experiences and relationship with Daphne
as a friend, not just as a colleague, that drew Eunjeong to Daphne’s dispositions as a reader, a writer,
and a teacher that ultimately became the focus of this manuscript.

Results
Daphne’s dispositions to language and literacy
Daphne’s upbringing and her open dispositions towards diversity seemed to have influenced her
writing practice, helping her to question monolithic norms. Daphne grew up as an avid reader and
writer who “lov[ed] writing” as it was a space to engage in a deep thought, purely for herself, without
having to worry about her audience. However, Daphne found academic writing not as meaningful
and “purely for the reader, not for the author” (Interview #1, 09/17/2015). For Daphne, the
transactional value of writing benefited the reader more than the writer, in the sense that the reader
always learns something from a piece of writing while the writer might not when they write for
a grade, annual review, and a line for a CV. While her personal belief about academic writing was
charged with negative emotions, Daphne wished her course could provide “the very space [she] had
with the writing … and hopefully help the students to overcome the divide” she had experienced. At
the same time, Daphne was critical that the change in the way academic writing is accomplished and
valued could not happen without the entire academic community’s willingness to change. She stated,
“those things can be bridged … but I don’t know if it can be bridged in one class in 15 weeks. I think
it takes an entire community of writers and readers and people in academia” (Interview #1).
 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION 357

As Ellis (2006) noted, teachers’ pedagogical beliefs are influenced by their own experiences as
writers. With her desire to provide an open space for students, Daphne demonstrated an openness to
language difference and diversity in her discourse about and performance as a writing teacher.
Particularly, such dispositions were visible in her teaching philosophy. Calling it her “hidden teacher
agenda,” Daphne was quite explicit about her focus on processes and practices behind a writer’s
textual choice rather than language form (Interview #1, 09/17/2015). More specifically, Daphne
emphasized two dispositional qualities, critical thinking and reflection, as crucial in students’ growth
as writers. She commented, with a focus on developing those practices, “everything else will come
after that … I could teach them every single day about the organization of an essay, that’s not going
to make them a good writer” (Interview #1). Partially, such an attitude seems to originate from her
own experience of learning to write. Daphne recalled her learning of five-paragraph essays in middle
school and commented, “by the end of high school, we learned that there’s more than one way to
write … and I don’t want my students leaving the program only knowing how to write five-
paragraph essay” (Interview #1, 09/17/2015). When asked further on this point, Daphne answered:
Teaching writing is difficult for me to define only because I don’t think you can teach one specific skill.
Teaching to me is about guiding and supporting students to be the best possible versions of themselves … and
more critical thinkers and reflective students. … My job when teaching writing isn’t just to correct students or
give them a prescribed list of do’s/don’ts for them to follow without question. It’s to make sure they can see
a variety of choices and make the one that is best for them. … This also meant that my class had ambiguity and
no “one right answer.” (Interview #4, 12/15/2015)

Daphne focuses on cultivating a particular set of dispositions that guide students’ behaviors, rather
than teaching “do’s/don’ts” in writing. Also, Daphne does not see writing as just skills or using the
correct language either; for her, the most important element in writing is being rhetorical, which
involves “see[ing] a variety of choices and mak[ing] the one that is best for them.” Accordingly,
Daphne does not see her work ending in teaching discrete, separate skills either, but goes beyond and
helps students to develop an identity and necessary practices and processes they would engage in as
“critical thinkers and reflective students” who can bear the ambiguity in making rhetorical decisions.
Such orientation to writing and literacy echoes Canagarajah’s (2013) call for moving beyond the
language form but focusing on the practices and processes that multilingual writers engage in to
better examine and honor what multilinguals are able to do with language. As she developed to
negotiate diversity in her social and communicative life, Daphne focuses on similar dispositions
among her students rather than imposing normative skills, rules, or texts on them.
Daphne’s dispositions to language difference were particularly well reflected in the way she
approaches students’ language choice. During a revision process, a student asked for Daphne’s
feedback on his language choice–not the most common choice based on the corpus search.
Reflecting on that moment, Daphne explained her general approach to teaching language:
there are things that … I can see that’s correct. I’ve never heard anyone say it, but there’s nothing wrong with
the way you say it. … Cause sometimes … I also struggle with my words at times. I can read and write well, but
if you ask me to talk about something [new] … I can’t use big fancy words … so I think that it’s something that
they have to think about and figure out and there’s no right answer. At all. (Interview #2, 10/27/2015)

Between the most common language choice recognized by the corpus tool and the students’ own
choice, Daphne responds on an equal footing to the student as a fellow language user who also
“struggle[s] with [her] words at times.” While she may have not sufficiently qualified the complexity
in the struggle with language for her multilingual students, Daphne’s remark reflects her view
towards language, namely that negotiation across language difference—be it across named languages
or more fine-grained difference that Lu and Horner (2013) point out—is an inevitable part of
language practices from a translingual perspective. Her evaluation on the student’s language use does
not originate from a position as the sole “owner” of the language, but rather, a user of the language
with a willingness to “think about it in different way.” Her willingness to see students’ language use
on its own terms, rather than against the monolingual standard, constitutes her translingual
358 LEE AND CANAGARAJAH

dispositions. As will be shown below, her translingual dispositions influenced various aspects of her
pedagogy, including her negotiation of the conventions in English academic writing as well as her
students’ beliefs and practices of them.

Pedagogical enactment of translingual dispositions

Recognizing fluidity and plurality in meaning-making practices is central in translingualism
(Canagarajah, 2013; Lu & Horner, 2013). Yet, in classrooms, different language practices can be
easily reduced and become a set of discrete skills and norms to facilitate students’ “mastery” of
language and literacy. To that end, Daphne enacted her translingual dispositions in her pedagogy
while balancing teaching the “norms” of academic writing and having students think critically of
such norms as well as performing her own translingual reading practices of student writing.

Emphasizing rhetorical effects over language difference

Daphne’s openness to the difference in academic writing was well observed in her willingness to
negotiate with her multilingual students’ writing. In a writing conference, Daphne and her student
Joseph were looking over Daphne’s written feedback on his paper on the role of the U.S. politics in
the occurrence of hurricanes and climate change. Joseph’s last body paragraph ends with a question
(“Moreover, the United States is the leading power of the world in many factors, why not in fighting
climate change?”), to which Daphne commented: “Typically, ‘academic writing’ avoids asking
questions. I think they can serve a purpose, but they need to be very important if they are used”
(Teacher feedback, 10/17/2015). Joseph was pondering whether he should remove this question.
(The capitalized words in the transcript represent louder volume.)

1 J: Should I do that?
2 D: I think it’s up to you, it’s your call. so typically, if you look at a book that says this is
3 how you do academic writing, they say avoid asking questions
4 J: Mm hmm
5 D: Cause you can just write it as a statement, BUT if YOU think that it can serve the
6 purpose, and if you think that it’s important, it’s perfectly okay to put it in there, it’s
7 not that you CAN’T do it. but it generally doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean you
8 don’t have to do it. Plus it’s an essay, it’s not some giant super fancy academic
9 research paper where it’s gonna get published and read by million people. It’s a
10 place for you to just put your ideas on the paper, so if you like it, keep it, but know
11 of it it’s not common. Does that make sense?
12 J: Yea
13 D: So do you think it’s important? Let’s read it. “Moreover the United States is the
14 leading power of the world in many factors, WHY NOT fighting climate change.” I
15 like it, I think it’s very, like it’s very directive.
16 J: Mm hmm
17 D: It has a purpose. It’s making you think WHY NOT. I think that’s good. I’d leave it in
18 there. (Individual conference #1, 10/19/2015)

This interaction demonstrates a number of pedagogical points. Daphne both directly and indir-
ectly encourages Joseph to make a textual decision from his own standpoint, considering the
rhetorical situation, rather than blindly following the norm of academic writing. This encourage-
ment, in turn, helps Joseph to bring his own rhetorical strategy while giving the pedagogical lesson
on its effectiveness in this particular situation; Daphne emphasizes the purpose the question serves
and its rhetorical effect, turning the focus of the discussion from the “normalcy” to rhetorical
language use in Joseph’s writing. At the same time, Daphne relates the degree of possible negotiation
to the different contexts of the two writings. As a writing instructor in the language program where
the concept of language and literacy unwittingly becomes reduced and reified, Daphne not only
teaches a norm in “Standard Written English” but also discusses the ideology behind such conven-
tion as understood in the U.S. This way, Daphne teaches both the conventional language choice and
how Joseph can negotiate such convention.
 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION 359

This interaction also reflects Daphne’s willingness to engage with a less normative language
practice in student writing. Daphne willingly negotiates the norms of academic writing and acknowl-
edges the effectiveness of this somewhat “unconventional” language use according to the textbook.
Such acknowledgment shows her dispositions and rhetorical strategies to align with the meaning and
voice Joseph is trying to represent, which others, including the textbook writers, might object to. In
other words, her translingual dispositions led her to engage in translingual reading practices. What
should be also noted is the intersection of her translingual dispositions and negotiation of her
identities at this moment. While it is unclear whether Daphne draws on her “translinguistic identity”
(Motha et al., 2012), she enacts her translingual dispositions. Daphne responds both as a reader who
is open to creative and critical language use and as someone who stands on the side of gatekeepers of
academic writing—the position that Daphne can be ascribed to by her students. Yet, ultimately,
Daphne acknowledges the language used as effective and purposeful by showing her negotiation
process. By doing so, Daphne makes clear that one’s own dispositions towards language difference
will have a bearing on evaluative practices of writing despite the identity that the person may bear.
Daphne’s own negotiation with the norm also shows Joseph that he can be critical of the norm and
how such critical language awareness (García, 2016) can help him to achieve the meaning he desires.
This questioning requires her willingness to be “attuned” to the “different” writing—a kind of
translingual disposition, constituting openness to plurality of language and literacy, and curiosity
of how and what such plurality can achieve (Horner et al., 2011).

Valuing creative and agentive language use

While her interaction with Joseph showed her attitude towards diversity within a labeled language
(English), Daphne’s translingual dispositions enabled her to appreciate more “visibly different”
meshing of labeled languages and registers. Another student, Koky, composed a research paper
that in many ways was “distinguished.” First, Koky pursued the question of how to obtain a gun as
a foreigner in the U.S., rather than a stereotypical argumentative approach to the topic, such as the
gun control vs. gun right debate. Second, Koky engaged in code-meshing (Canagarajah, 2006),
drawing on Spanish, which he described as “normal” (Koky, interview #4, 11/22/2015). Koky also
adopted the genre of narrative while negotiating with conventions of research paper to make his
writing more meaningful, or in his words, “more fun” (see E. Lee & Canagarajah, 2019 for the
discussion on Koky’s translingual practice in his paper). Daphne responded to this “different
looking” paper calling it “one of the best papers [she has] ever read.” On the rhetorical effectiveness
of Koky’s writing, Daphne appreciated how Koky “drew me in … but [the writing] was so logically
put together at the same time” (Interview #3, 11/20/2015) by following a similar structure every
paragraph that starts with a legal condition for gun ownership and interprets the condition for his
own case in a humorous and investigative tone. Daphne also overlooked Koky’s grammatical
mistakes as shown in her feedback: “None of the errors caused confusion about the meaning of
your work. These kinds of errors are expected in everyone’s work. They do not reflect your writing
ability in a negative way … I think your paper is brilliant” (Teacher feedback, 11/15/2015). Daphne
further recognized Koky’s performance as showing “a different level of proficiency”:
I think that took a lot more skill for him to integrate his jokes and his personality and his character into like just
a list of information that he found in ATF website … the fact that Koky or if anyone else can take it and …
manipulate the language and change it, breaking the rules, he knows when and how to do it? … Make those
decisions on his own? To me, that shows a higher level of proficiency (Interview #3)

Daphne overlooks the “deviation” from established norms in favor of the creative and agentive
language practices that Koky brought in to his paper to achieve his goal of making his paper “more
fun” while answering his research question. In valuing his writing, Daphne also normalizes the
language difference as part of “everyone’s work,” not specific to language learners. Such disposition
seems to have led her to focus on Koky’s general (i.e., inquiry and argument) and language-specific
practices (i.e., incorporating credible sources for argumentation) that he engaged in for this
360 LEE AND CANAGARAJAH

assignment (García et al., 2017). Rather than seeing Koky’s code-meshing and creative genre-
bending as deviant, Daphne tries to read his intention and the rhetorical effect of using his full
linguistic repertoire. In other words, Daphne seems to engage in the kind of questioning Horner
et al. (2011) emphasize as a tenet of translingual orientations: “What might [language] difference do?
How might it function expressively, rhetorically, communicatively? For whom, under what condi-
tions, and how? The possibility of writer error is reserved as an interpretation of last resort” (pp.
303–304). By actively negotiating with her student’s writing as well as a norm of academic writing,
Daphne’s pedagogy demonstrates how teachers’ translingual dispositions help them to recognize
language difference as a productive site of inquiry than something to avoid.

Translingual dispositions and theorization of language teacher identity

The analysis illustrates Daphne’s translingual dispositions and pedagogical enactments of her dis-
positions that question the normative discourses about what language should be legitimate and what
kinds of language practices should be valued in her ESL class. The snapshots of Daphne’s pedagogy
have shown her efforts to promote individual students’ own textual decisions, thereby encouraging
difference and valuing creativity emerging from such difference. Her disposition to diversity in
literacy also is also reflected in her translingual reading practice of student writing, emphasizing
rhetorical effects over linguistic normativity while recognizing students’ intent in their writing,
which is often not easily visible on the surface. Daphne’s classroom practices resonate with practices
of those teachers in García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s (2017) study: validating students’ linguistic
flexibility, understanding language norms are negotiable albeit to different degrees, and assessing
students’ language use from a holistic perspective based on what her student knows and is able to do
beyond their performance of the “convention” only. In emphasizing the students’ own voices and
self-evaluations of academic writing, Daphne constantly positioned them as agentive authors who
had the authority to recontextualize their meaning-making practice and make textual decision on
their own. Her negotiation not only helps the students to make more informed rhetorical choices but
also promotes the value of negotiation, namely that in the given playing field where different
ideological values co-exist, the onus to make meaning is on the reader as much as on the writer.
Daphne’s translingual dispositions, in this sense, contributed to creating learning opportunities
where the students are encouraged to pursue their own ways of “doing” the writing, and ultimately,
being and becoming a user of English on their own terms.
Our reading of Daphne’s life history and pedagogical practices complicates the relationship
between translingual dispositions and one’s linguistic identity. As shown in our analysis as well as
others’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018), the categorization, such as NESs or monolingual English speaker,
cannot capture Daphne’s enactment of translingual dispositions nor explain the value she carries in
a productive manner. As Ellis (2016) discusses, teacher identity research has implicitly normalized
assumptions towards teachers’ ethnolinguistic identity in relation to the NES/NNES label. Daphne’s
case highlights that even those who are seemingly monolingual “NES” teachers could bring and enact
translingual dispositions productively. Daphne’s own translingual reading practice that emphasizes
how language difference functions show that such practice is predicated on her orientation to
language—the one that does not attribute grammatical errors to lack of “native” proficiency but to
a normal part of language use. While Daphne initially read Joseph’s writing from a perspective that
values conventions in U.S. academic writing, she ultimately negotiated and re-evaluated his writing.
Similarly, while reading Koky’s paper, Daphne valued his writing not only in terms of its creativity
and purposeful code-meshing but also in the practices that he engaged in underneath this “different”
writing. To honor students’ own voice in their writing, Daphne willingly negotiated “normative”
discourses about academic writing, namely that academic writing values clear and straightforward
argumentation and adopts “Standard Written English” only and that there is no space for other
languages or literacy practices. This point reinforces that it is “not about the number of languages,”
but a disposition of “openness and inquiry … towards language and language difference” that is at
the center of translingual pedagogy (Horner et al., 2011, p. 311). In this sense, translingual
 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE, IDENTITY & EDUCATION 361

dispositions can provide a critical lens to inquire into teachers’ identities and practices, helping us
move away from the NES/NNES divide.

Conclusion and implication for teacher education

This article has focused on how translingual dispositions allow us to approach language teacher
identity while destabilizing the binaries of NEST/NNEST and mono-/multilinguals and assump-
tions that are associated with such binaries. As shown in the analysis, focusing on translingual
dispositions allowed us to account for teachers’ identity performance and negotiation beyond
separate, bounded identity labels and what opportunities such dispositions create for students’
learning and becoming. As Daphne’s case shows, she may not fit how the monolingual ideology
would define “multilinguals,” yet she is able to draw on her translingual dispositions productively.
And in this regard, the concept challenges us to reconceptualize identity and interactions of
language teachers, learners, and users, focusing on such action or practice, away from
a monolingual ideology that undergirds the construction of traditional “idealized” NES(T)/
NNES(T) (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018).
Looking forward, fostering translingual dispositions needs to be an important agenda in
language teacher education. To cultivate positive dispositions more consciously, what is needed
first are reflective practices that would help teachers critically examine and reflect on how their
dispositions were shaped on the web of competing for language ideologies. Engaging the teachers
in how the “normative” discourses about English, including their own beliefs and attitudes
towards language, is, in fact, a sociocultural, historical, and therefore, ideological construction
would be an important first step to question the “normativity” of the knowledge and our value
system (Pennycook, 2004). Especially given the difficulty of changing teachers’ beliefs and
attitudes, overcoming assumptions and perceptions entrenched in monolingualism requires sus-
tained reflection and “unlearning” for teachers who might have not questioned the dominant
societal ideologies towards language difference (García, 2016). Reflective activities such as literacy
narratives and autoethnography can provide a good space for teachers to begin this inquiry as
language learners and users (Johnson, 2008). García’s (2016) multilingual learner profile where
teachers study sociolinguistic landscapes of multilingual students can also help teachers to better
understand multilingual students’ language and literacy practices that school may not recognize.
Activities such as these can encourage teachers to see how what seem to be “normative” beliefs
and attitudes towards language and literacy education promote inequality in education, and
therefore, help understanding the importance of building dispositions that disrupt such “norma-
tive” discourses. In adopting these processes in teacher education, we should also encourage them
to develop pedagogies facilitating students’ development of translingual dispositions so that they
can question and negotiate monolingual norms and ideologies.
Translating reflection on language into concrete pedagogical practices might not be a guaranteed
outcome, however. Even those with translingual dispositions need to understand how to negotiate
with the “normative” discourses surrounding them. Daphne’s successful negotiation and enactment
of translingual dispositions might have been partially due to her position as a well-respected, full-
time instructor in the program. As translingual dispositions center on the willingness to negotiate
language difference and diversity and read beyond such difference, one needs to be also willing to
engage in the labor to further negotiate meaning. More research on teachers’ development of
translingual dispositions and individualized ways that teachers enact their translingual dispositions
could further theorization on language teacher identity. Specifically, it would be important to
examine how multiple layers of contradicting ideologies about language and language teaching
and their experience of power, privilege, marginalization or other lived experiences and identities
interplay in enacting translingual dispositions.
Finally, we need to ask what dispositions ELT as a field is promoting and how our dispositions
position individuals within and beyond the field. If Daphne had brought a more rigid and normative
362 LEE AND CANAGARAJAH

orientation to language and literacy, her students’ experiences would have been shaped very differently,
thereby, changing their relationship with English and possibly reinforcing the binary and power
differential between NESs and NNESs. Therefore, it is important to think about what dispositions
our field promotes and normalizes as these become the basis for shaping assumptions that undergird
our field. As Daphne noted, the change in the way we think about English language teaching cannot be
made only by the efforts of teachers in the classroom. To do so, both researchers and practitioners
should reflect on how teachers’ translingual dispositions and practices emerging from such dispositions
complicate our understanding of language teacher identity as well as the current state of language and
literacy pedagogy and teacher education. It is our hope that doing so will help researchers, teachers,
teacher educators, and students to move away from a deficit view towards language difference and
scrutinize institutional practices influenced by and maintaining monolingualism. The field of ELT must
continue to ask critical questions to change the dispositions sustaining the practices of our work to
develop more democratic, egalitarian, and cosmopolitan values.

Notes
1. Throughout the article, we use “language teacher” to encompass both language and literacy teachers. This
choice is rather purposeful to invite teachers who may not consider themselves as “language teachers,” but teach
literacy, to think about their practice and identity in relation to language in their teaching and beyond.
2. In this article, we use the NES/NNES label as a way to extend the previous discussion on language teacher
identity rather than to indicate our ideological alignment with the term.
3. Researchers from Education Psychology and Writing Studies have been approaching dispositions as central in
students’ learning transfer recently. See Composition Forum’s special issue in 2012.

ORCID
Eunjeong Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2310-5935

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