The notion of translingual practice has gained much currency within college composition and sociolinguistics over the last few years. Translingual practices challenge structuralist conceptualizations of language as discrete, bounded, impermeable, autonomous systems, conceptualizations that unfortunately (1) privilege linguistic codes over nonlinguistic ones, and (2) contribute to the hierarchization and separation of languages, leading some languages and their corresponding users to be valued more than others. To counter such a stance, we advocate the use of translingual pedagogy, which values the fluid communicative practices of learners who mobilize multiple semiotic resources to facilitate communication. By sharing examples from our own classrooms,we also underscore the need for teachers to recognize and expand the communicative repertoires of their students. This pedagogical shift, as we illustrate, is accompanied by an instructional commitment to develop students’ metalinguistic awareness and cultural sensitivities in order to create inclusive and equitable learning environments.

In coining new terms or proposing a new concept, it is important to survey the new territory to make sure that the land has not been previously inhabited by other peoples. (In fact, much of what passes as new ideas about language in U.S. college composition have already been discussed in applied linguistics.) (Matsuda, 2013: 135) As noted by Paul Matsuda in Chapter 12 of this volume ("It's the Wild West Out There: A New Linguistic Frontier in U.S. College Composition"), compositionists need to ensure that intellectual accountability is observed in a new composition era. Echoing a similar sentiment, Lewis, Jones, and Baker (2012: 649) point out that "a plethora of similar terms (e.g., metrolingualism, polylanguaging, languaging, heteroglossia, codemeshing, translingual practice, flexible bilingualism, multilanguaging and hybrid language practices) makes [the] extension of translanguaging appear in need of focused explication and more precise definition" (emphasis added). While these new terms warrant explication, a point to which I will return later, the above observations also underscore how writing and literacy stand to benefit from developments in applied linguistics.