The resistance to translanguaging, spontaneous translanguagers and native speaker saviorism

ABSTRACT

Translanguaging has been theoretically argued and empirically proven to have transformative and constructive potential because it provides language users with potential access to and opportunities for rich and equal educational and linguistic resources. However, we remind in this article that many ‘spontaneous translanguagers’ – language users who are understood to have a translanguaging instinct and predisposition for natural translingual use – tend to resist translanguaging in certain institutional contexts in order to fit into the dominant Anglophone society. This resistance to translanguaging is deeply provoked by the impact of pervasive language ideology – native speaker saviorism– the longstanding assumption that people of color around the world need to speak like a native speaker of English in order to fully enjoy the social, cultural, linguistic, and financial status of Whiteness. While we stand in solidarity with applied linguists who advocate for the transformative potential of translanguaging, we also caution that many actual translanguagers in certain social scenarios still carry enduring skepticism about the benefits of translanguaging. If we continue to advocate for translanguaging, it is essential to deal with core issues that hinder its application in various social settings from the perspectives of various spontaneous translanguagers.

Introduction

Translanguaging refers to fluid and creative communicative practices in and through which language users engage in meaning-making and meaning-designing multimodally and semiotically (Li, 2018; Sah & Li, 2022). Numerous studies have acknowledged that language users, especially English as a second language (L2) speakers and learners, use all available linguistic resources freely and flexibly to transition and shuttle between, among, and beyond languages through multiple semiotic modes, codes, genres, and other (non)linguistic resources for advertent or sometimes inadvertent (non)academic engagement and communication in formal and informal settings (Dovchin, 2020; Nazari & Karimpour, 2023). Translanguaging makes L2 speakers agentive and creative users of all semiotic repertoires, the public space, their bodies, and the localized ideology ensembles or constructed and molded multilayered, temporary, and complex translingual zones where all actors communicate to make meaning (Blackledge & Creese, 2017), legitimizing various ways of registers, repertoires, styles, and contrasts (Makalela, 2015).

Overall, translanguaging has been theoretically argued and empirically proven to have overall positive identity and agency development (Dutton & Rushton, 2021; Kayi‐Aydar & Green‐Eneix, 2019), socio-emotional well-being (Back, 2020; Lau, 2016), and educational and linguistic justice (Bhasin et al., 2023; Pontier & Tian, 2022; Syed, 2022; Zhang-Wu & Tian, 2023). It has transformative and constructive potential because it recognizes, counteracts, and transforms power relations (Elizabeth et al., 2018; Poza, 2019). Translanguaging provides language users, especially those minoritized ones, with potential access to and opportunities for rich and equal educational and linguistic resources, helpful and hopeful affordances, and engaged social participation, which otherwise would not have been possible (Bhasin et al., 2023; García & Leiva, 2014; García-Mateus & Palmer, 2017).

Meanwhile, our study cautions that this transformative potentiality of translanguaging could be resisted from the perspectives of some actual translanguagers in certain social contexts when it particularly comes to institutional settings (Charalambous et al., 2016; Jaspers, 2017). For example, many ‘spontaneous translanguagers’ – L2 users who are understood to have a translanguaging instinct and predisposition for natural translingual use (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022; Galante, 2020; Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020) – have noted in our study that they have resisted translanguaging in specific institutional contexts, such as schools and workplaces in order to fit into the dominant Anglophone society. This resistance to translanguaging is deeply provoked by the impact of pervasive language ideology – ‘native speaker saviorism’ (Jenks & Lee, 2020) – the longstanding assumption that people of color around the world need to speak like a native speaker of English in order to fully enjoy the social, cultural, linguistic, and financial status of Whiteness (Jenks & Lee, 2020). Many spontaneous translanguagers are unable to break free from this pervasive ideology of native speakerism, misled into believing that being like a native speaker of English is the only acceptable form of linguistic and communicative practices to survive in the Anglophone society (Dovchin, 2022).

From this view, while we stand in solidarity with fellow applied linguists who advocate for translanguaging, we also remind our colleagues that many actual translanguagers in certain social scenarios still carry enduring skepticism about the benefits of translanguaging (Jaspers, 2017). If we continue to advocate for translanguaging, it is essential to deal with core issues that hinder its application in various social settings from the perspectives of various spontaneous translanguagers. As Jaspers (2017) and other colleagues (May, 2022) remind us, we need to understand the transformative force of translanguaging from different critical approaches to prevent it from becoming a dominating rather than a liberating force.

Spontaneous translanguaging

Recent scholarship in translanguaging has started highlighting the importance of clarifying the difference between spontaneous and pedagogical translanguaging practices (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022; Chen et al., 2021; Galante, 2020). Pedagogical translanguaging is planned, systematic and intentional, which can be simulated by the language teachers. It is a set of design-based principles for scaffolding bi-/multilingual development (Chen et al., 2021). Spontaneous translanguaging, on the other hand, is a rather unplanned, unintentional and sporadic communicative practice which is not necessarily simulated by teachers (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022; Galante, 2020). It is a natural human communicative phenomenon in which language users are thought to have a translanguaging instinct (Li, 2018) for ‘the natural and spontaneous social use of languages’ (Galante, 2020, p. 2). Spontaneous translanguagers are, thus, understood to have a translanguaging predisposition for the natural translingual use of the combined linguistic and semiotic repertoires to make meanings (Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020). They rely on their prior knowledge, sociolinguistic backgrounds and exposures to whatever linguistic repertoires, resources and features they have at their disposal to achieve their communicative aims as best they can, regardless of how well they know the involved languages (Jørgensen et al., 2011; Tankosić & Dovchin, 2022). As a result, spontaneous translanguaging eases representative and communicative pressure, allows for full participation, encourages playful interactions, and creates safe spaces for emotionality (Back, 2020; Burton & Rajendram, 2019; Lau, 2016). As a communicative scaffold, spontaneous translanguagers make meanings by creatively, immediately, and complicatedly negotiating and employing linguistic, paralinguistic, and semiotic resources. For meaning and identity construction, spontaneous translanguaging is considered a way of being, acting, and languaging in social, cultural, and political contexts (García & Leiva, 2014), where spontaneous translanguagers deploy a variety of resources while engaging in everyday practices and communications. In so doing, they entail agentic meaning construction and negotiation by employing the fullest linguistic and multimodal repertoires (Li & Zhu, 2013).

Spontaneous translanguaging, for example, seems to be a regular part of daily interaction in the school-based ethnographic contexts with Māori and Samoan communities in the Wellington region of New Zealand (Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020). The language users in these schools utilize translanguaging for self-repetitions and continuous segmental translanguaging, moving fluidly across grammatical segments of speech that is common for natural practices for multilingual users when speaking freely without sociolinguistic monitoring (Seals & Olsen-Reeder, 2020). Similarly, Mongolian and Bangla background students use sporadic and unplanned translanguaging instances in both classrooms and out-of-classroom practices, where they use various multimodal and semiotic genres, resources, repertoires, voices, accents, and speech styles to achieve their communicative aims, claiming themselves to be the natural translanguagers (Dovchin et al., 2017).

Yet, our current study presents that many of these actual spontaneous translanguagers seem to metalinguistically and intentionally resist translanguaging when it particularly comes to institutional settings. This resistance toward translanguaging is also apparent in other sociolinguistic studies (Charalambous et al., 2016; Collins, 2005), in which translanguaging was met with resistance and silence by the translanguagers in the classroom (Charalambous et al., 2016); during the recruitment processes (Dovchin, 2022); or by more educated speakers (Collins, 2005). This resistance seems to primarily be associated with the longstanding pervasive ideology of ‘native speaker saviorism’ (Jenks & Lee, 2020), in which translanguagers seek to ‘purify their language’ (Collins, 2005, p. 257) to survive in the English-speaking world since speaking like a non-native English speaker could be taken as being ‘low intelligent’ (Dovchin, 2022, p. 40) indicating a problematic identity in the dominant society (Charalambous et al., 2016).

Native speaker saviorism and the resistance to translanguaging

Native speakerism, a term coined by (Holliday, 2006), is a prevalent ideology in applied linguistics, which generally sustains the idea that so-called ‘native speakers of English’ may typically acquire an intuitive proficiency in English language’s grammar, phonetics, and vocabulary, as they have a birthright to use English. These native speakers of English are valued to have the highest level of proficiency and fluency in English (Choi, 2016). Native speakerism is particularly prevalent in many aspects of institutional contexts, from education, teaching and learning materials to employment, recruitment processes and wages. For example, English language teachers who use English as a native language are widespread and idealized in both inside and outside the English-speaking West (Choi, 2016), resting on notions such as linguistic purity, cultural authenticity, and language standardization (Lowe & Pinner, 2016).

Native speakerism is, however, a divisive ideology (Holliday, 2006), which instigates a strong desire amongst L2 users and learners to achieve the idealized monoglot standard for English. It propagates White superiority, generates misinformation, trivializes the heritage language and idealizes the standard English while marginalizing other deviations and subordinating the linguistic and communicative practices of L2 English users such as migrants in the Anglophone society (Dryden & Dovchin, 2021; Lippi-Green, 2011). As such, it occurs when standardized English practices interiorize other less dominant linguistic varieties in a context characterized by preferable linguistic actions – ‘The variant I prefer is superior on historical, aesthetic, or logical grounds’ (Lippi-Green, 2011, p. 70). Such pervasive ideology may intensify the homogeny of hegemonic native speakerism of English, as L2 English users’ overall linguistic abilities are diminished or rejected, causing an overall negative impact on the social, personal, academic, and professional performance of L2 users in multiple different settings (Wang & Dovchin, 2023), such as hindering effective interpersonal communication, decreasing group solidarity and team-building (Tenzer et al., 2014), denying identity repertoires and strengthening power hierarchies (Harzing & Feely, 2008).

This ideology of native speakerism is further expanded by Jenks and Lee (2020, p. 186) through the idea of ‘native speaker saviorism,’ which refers to the longstanding assumption that the White communities have a birthright to English and only the kind of English they use or speak can ‘save’ the lives of peoples of color. Put another way, ‘native speaker saviorism’ upholds the enduring belief that people of color around the world need native English in order to survive or fully enjoy the social, cultural, linguistic and financial status of Whiteness. ‘native speaker saviorism’ is, therefore, in parallel with the forms of White normativity and White saviorism, which constructs and justifies the need and urgency for native speakers of English (Jenks & Lee, 2020).

There have been various enunciations of native-speaker saviorism around the world. From the sense of linguistic and cultural superiority of the native English teachers in South Korea about Koreans (Choi, 2016; Jenks & Lee, 2020) to White native English teachers rated as the most desirable among White, Asian, and Black English teachers in Japan (Rivers & Ross, 2013) and from online websites recruiting for specific language schools located in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, overwhelmingly search for the ideal candidate as a young, White, enthusiastic native speaker of English (Ruecker & Ives, 2015) to a list of native English requirements and White privileges and White sounding names in the various recruitment processes in Australia (Dovchin, 2022). Overall, these studies show enough evidence that the realities of native-speaker saviorism are deeply seated across the mind-sets of English language users around the world.

In line with this constellation of discourses regarding native-speaker saviorism, our study shows that many spontaneous translanguagers are also deeply constrained by and unable to break free from the ideology of native-speaker saviorism, particularly when it comes to institutional settings such as schools and workplaces (Dovchin & Dryden, 2022). They have been misled into believing that their spontaneous translanguaging practices are undesirable because being like a native speaker of English is the only survivable form of language in society, while all other linguistic forms and cues should be frowned upon. Many of our research participants, who are spontaneous translanguagers, have indeed revealed their longstanding beliefs associated with ‘native speaker saviorism,’ believing that they will be able to survive if they can speak like a native speaker of English in their professional and academic life. As a result, they have developed ‘linguistic inferiority complexes’ - a set of psychological and emotional damages, such as feelings of self-shame and loss of self-esteem about their spontaneous translanguaging practices (Tankosić et al., 2021). Vulnerability and anxiety to verbalize one’s opinions in translanguaging and the feeling of being inferior to native English speakers (Lang, 2019) and of being misunderstood by native speakers of English have caused linguistic inferiority complexes (Tankosić et al., 2021).

Drawing on data examples from the spontaneous translanguagers with Mongolian backgrounds who are living in an Anglophone context, such as Australia, this article, therefore, seeks to present how the pervasive language ideology of the native speaker saviorism may cause these spontaneous translanguagers to resist translanguaging, preventing them from fully engaging in their everyday social interactions.

Research methodology

This article presents two specific case studies drawn from larger qualitative research projects from May 2018 until July 2023, which investigate the daily language practises of English as a second language (L2) migrants aged between 18 and 55 living in Australia. Out of the broader research participants who discussed their experiences as English L2 migrants, we specifically present two case studies from two Mongolian migrants currently living in Australia. These case studies were particularly chosen for this article as Author 1 shares a similar Mongolian heritage with these participants, providing in-depth insider perspectives.

The qualitative method of open ethnographic observation (OEO) was used to observe the language practices of our participants in informal settings as they went on with their daily lives (Tankosić et al., 2021). Most of the time, the researcher spent 2–3 hours with the participants on a weekly basis at grocery shops, supermarkets, public transports, café, swimming pools and libraries, seeking in-depth insight into participants’ daily linguistic behaviors and actions. As an ethnographer, the researcher played the role of an observer, interlocutor, and friend. Since Author 1 shared a similar ethnolinguistic background with these participants (Mongolian), some of these roles were mutually exclusive. Author 1 entailed documentation through field notes of multiple observations and on-the-spot interactions at the investigation site. OEO further set up possibilities for the constant and extended company between the researcher and the key participants through an informal type of semi-structured interview. These interview data were also used as an interactional and conversational approach for analysis. It means that the data excerpts from interviews were not only analyzed from the perspective of what research participants told us in interviews (content) but also how they told us in interviews (linguistic analysis of translanguaging including the tones, paralinguistic features, emotions etc.), offering us some firsthand insights on how translanguaging might occur both in terms of its structure and content (Dovchin, 2022). Through these interviews, we could also reveal the fine-detailed accounts of our participants’ attitudes and resistance influenced by and within their own sociocultural, ethnolinguistic, and social environments. We also investigated issues surrounding the hierarchical powers and ideological myths our participants sustain in various formal or informal settings. The main interview questions were crafted around two main research questions (RQ):

1. How is spontaneous translanguaging linguistically formed in the daily lives of English L2 users in Australia?

2. To what extent and in what circumstances do the translanguagers particularly resist spontaneous translanguaging?

The interviews were conducted primarily in Mongolian. Audio recordings in Mongolian were manually translated and transcribed by Author 1. After the completion of the audio transcribing and translation, data extracts from interviews were categorized under broad themes such as ‘the formation of spontaneous translanguaging’ and ‘native speaker saviorism,’ which were doubly assessed by researchers for patterns and then further refined into the topic of ‘the resistance to translanguaging.’ These coded data themes were cross-examined and categorized for their content and topic similarities and differences to ensure precise and accurate analysis. Data were then assessed using thematic analysis, enabling the systematic ‘identifying, organizing, and offering insight into patterns of meaning (themes) across a data set,’ which allowed us to make sense of the participants’ shared lived experiences, with each theme working together to create a larger narrative about the data (Braun & Clarke, 2012, p. 57). The study was conducted with regulations for ethical research approved by the Human Research Ethics Office at Curtin University. All participants received a participant information sheet describing details of aims, objectives, ethical concerns, the researcher’s contact information, the consent form, and the project flyers in a physical or digital form. Involvement in the research was voluntary, allowing participants to withdraw at any stage of the study. All participants have been given pseudonyms to ensure anonymity, and their identities have been listed as general areas to ensure they are not straightforwardly identified (see Table 1 for information about the two participants featured in this article).

Table 1. Demographic information of participants.

Name	Ethnicity	Age	Occupation
Hulan	Mongolian	43	Postgraduate student/casual tutor
Saruul	Mongolian	38	Housewife
Zorig	Mongolian	7	Primary school student

The resistance to translanguaging as an English Language Teacher (ELT)

Hulan is an English language teacher (ELT) professionally. She worked as an English lecturer at a university in Mongolia for 15 years before she moved to Australia. At the time of the interview, Hulan had lived in Western Australia for 18 months as a higher degree research (PhD) student. She also works as a casual tutor for an applied linguistics unit at an Australian university. During our OEO and interview sessions, it was clear that she used a repetitive pattern of spontaneous translanguaging rather unplanned without even being aware that she was translanguaging at times. See the example below:

Extract 1

Table

Interview	English translation
(1) Bi medeej Mongolian and Englishiig udur tutamdaa tsaanaasaa hereglene.	Of course, I naturally use both English and Mongolian in my daily life.
(2) Uuruu medehguieer ihenhdee.	Without even realizing it most of the time.
(3) Tegeheer minii daily communication, medeej, English and Mongolianii hoorond gesen ug.	So, my daily communication is, of course, defined across both English and Mongolian.
(4) Both chuhal.	Both [languages] are important.

Note: English- bold; Mongolian – regular font.

Hulan is actively engaged with spontaneous translanguaging in this extract, in which the layers of English resources smoothly transition into her predominant Mongolian repertoire. For example, the English phrase ‘Mongolian and English’ is absorbed into the Mongolian sentence (Dovchin, 2017), ‘Bi medeej [Mongolian and English] iig udur tutamdaa hereglene’ (line 1). She then explains that her daily communication is largely formulated by the mixture of both English and Mongolian resources, integrating English repertoires within the Mongolian syntax again, ‘Tegeheer minii [daily communication], medeej, [English and Mongolian]ii hoorond gesen ug’ (line 3); and ‘both chuhal’ (line 4). Overall, it can be concluded that when Hulan is most relaxed, she tends to employ her full linguistic resources (primarily English and Mongolian in her case), based on her prior exposure to these certain linguistic resources, to achieve her communicative aims (Dovchin, 2017). As someone who was born and raised in Mongolia, it is, therefore, natural for Hulan to use Mongolian linguistic resources due to her early exposure. However, because Hulan was trained to be an English teacher in her early adult life, the linguistic resources of English are also easily accessible to her. As a result, Hulan identifies herself as a spontaneous translanguager, which comes to her as a natural linguistic behavior, as she notes, ‘without even realizing’ (line 2). Note also that the examples of Mongolian background translanguagers living in Australia have shown very similar linguistic patterns to Hulan, which are presented in our various previous studies (Dovchin, 2016; Dovchin, 2022; Dovchin & Dryden, 2022).

Nonetheless, when it comes to her professional life, that is, teaching English in the classroom, Hulan intentionally uses the strategy to resist and eventually avoid translanguaging. Hulan becomes more linguistically restrictive due to her firm belief that being like a native ELT would somehow save her as an ELT:

When I was a teacher of English in Mongolia, we were expected to teach perfect English in the classroom. I felt so much pressure to teach native-like English to my students. As a result, I avoided using any Mongolian. I had this unspoken rule of using only English in the classroom. I felt like my students would judge me or something like that if I used Mongolian. I wanted to speak like a native-like English teacher. I wanted to be a perfect English teacher. However, when I had no choice but to use Mongolian for emergency cases or, when I mispronounced some English words, or when my students didn’t understand what I said in English. I felt like a terrible teacher. I felt my English was not enough to teach English at a higher level. There were some students who lived in the USA, and their command of English would be better than mine. I felt so ashamed of these kinds of students. I also felt less confident when my students would correct me sometimes. Being an English teacher caused me to decrease my self-esteem over the years.

(Interview, August 15, 2023, Perth, Australia)

Here, as an ELT, where she is required to use English as her main professional repertoire, Hulan insists on using native-like English. Hulan describes that being a native-like ELT would protect her English teaching skills because she would not be challenged by her students. She would be evaluated by the mastery of her ‘native-like English teacher.’ Hulan has internalized the ideology of native speaker saviorism just like the majority of our other participants, who are preoccupied with ‘purifying their English’ to sound like White Australians (Dovchin, 2022). This obsession with the ideology of ‘native speaker saviorism’ has caused Hulan to develop the trait of linguistic inferiority complex – low self-esteem.

In order to sound like a native English teacher, Hulan further describes that she seeks to resist translanguaging in her professional life: that is, to avoid incorporating Mongolian repertoires in her English teaching practices and be cautious about how she talks unless it is an absolute emergency case, such as ‘when I mispronounced some English words,’ ‘when my students didn’t understand what I said in English.’ Ironically, from this view, translanguaging still seems to be a useful skill to negotiate her communication barrier in the classroom. Unfortunately, Hulan does not seem to give much value to the benefit of translanguaging as she seeks to avoid using Mongolian as much as possible to survive as an ELT or, according to her, to act like ‘a perfect English teacher’ in the classroom. As often, previous studies note that introducing translanguaging in the English L2 classroom would ease misunderstanding and create a more relaxed atmosphere between students and teachers (Lau, 2016; Nazari & Karimpour, 2023). By contrast, Hulan believes that if she introduces translanguaging in the classroom, she will risk drawing negative attention from her students for not being like a native English teacher, which she believes can be an intimidating experience.

Hulan’s preoccupation with native speaker saviorism worsened when she started teaching in Australia, as she completely lost her self-esteem.

When I started teaching in Australia, my self-esteem became at a zero level. I completely lost it. I had this fear that if I couldn’t use Mongolian, what shall I do? What if I have to explain something and my students would not understand me like I used to do in Mongolia? Then, I would have to use English only. No other survival strategies. Also, I always felt I’m not a native English speaker. So, these international students came to Australia to learn their subjects in English in Australia. I don’t want to disappoint them. I don’t want my students to think that I’m someone who can’t speak English, let alone teach in English in a country like Australia. I don’t look Australian. My English is not Australian. I feel like my students prefer talking to my unit’s coordinator, who is Anglo-Australian and avoids talking to me and ignores me.

(Interview, August 15, 2023, Perth, Australia)

Here, Hulan describes how her already fragile low self-esteem as an ELT in Mongolia was completely lost when she started teaching in Australia. One of the reasons for the loss of self-esteem is that she is unable to have a backup plan, like using translanguaging in an Australian classroom, as she used to do in Mongolia. Paradoxically, while Hulan was eager to resist translanguaging in L2 classrooms in Mongolia, now we can see how she has started missing translanguaging as a survival strategy. Because it is not possible to integrate any Mongolian into her Australian classroom, Hulan starts feeling inferior to her students in Australia.

Another reason for Hulan to lose her self-esteem is associated with internalizing herself as a ‘non-native English speaker’ who is directly exposed to translanguaging as her main communicative repertoire. Hulan negatively internalizes her spontaneous translanguaging ability as a non-native English speaker identity with a Mongolian accent and Asian look, which worsens her self-esteem. The loss of self-esteem has further increased when she had to teach together with a native English-speaking Anglo-Australian unit coordinator, whom she believes is rarely challenged by the students because he is a White native English speaker.

Hulan’s case is not a stand-out single case, as many research participants in our studies have internalized their English as L2 identities as someone inferior to White native English speakers (Dovchin, 2022; Dovchin & Dryden, 2022). These participants go through the psychological issues of vulnerability, shame, anxiety, discomfort, self-doubt, and pressure because of the ideological assumptions about nativism and internalized L2 insufficiency (Song, 2018). As a result of these linguistic inferiority complexes, these L2 migrants’ translanguaging participation in society is inhibited, and their reluctance to fully engage in social interactions is strongly developed.

The resistance to translanguaging as a parent and student

Saruul is a migrant from Mongolia who has been living in Australia with her family for three years at the time of recording. She has two children who were born in Mongolia. Her children started speaking Mongolian when they were raised in Mongolia. However, when they moved to Australia, they transformed into spontaneous translanguagers, enabled by their direct exposure to English. See the example below where one of her children, Zorig (7), is interacting with Saruul during one of our OEO sessions:

Extract 2

Table

#	OEO session	English translation
1.	Zorig: Mommy, I want this mashin, please! Mashin, mashin, please! [Yelling]	Mommy, I want this car, please! Car, car, please! [Yelling]
2.	Saruul: No! Chamd aimar olon mashin baigaashd. No, sorry!	No! You have so many cars. No, sorry!
3.	Zorig: Mommy, avaad uguuch, please! [yelling and crying]	Mommy, please get me! [yelling and crying]

Note: English- bold; Mongolian – regular font; Russian – italicized.

When we went to the supermarket together with Saruul and her child (Zorig), he started demanding Saruul to buy him a car. The child starts using predominant English repertoires while integrating the Russianized Mongolian term ‘mashin’ (line 1), rooted in the Russian word ‘мaшинa’ [‘car’]. This is associated with the sociolinguistic history of Mongolia, which was a satellite of the former USSR for 70 years (1920–1990) until it transformed from a communist to a democratic society. During the Soviet era, the Russian language was the most important foreign language in Mongolia, as the classic Mongolian script, inherited by the Mongolians from the 13^th century of the Great Mongol Empire, was replaced with the Russian Cyrillic script, which is still the standard orthographic system of current Mongolia. Consequently, it is also common for Mongolian speakers to integrate Russian linguistic resources, as many Russian root terms have been recontextualized into the Mongolian language, creating multiple forms of Russianized Mongolian expressions (Tankosić & Dovchin, 2022).

In response to her child’s demand, Saruul also spontaneously translanguages (lines 2, 3) through the combination of English [‘Noo! No, sorry!’] and the Mongolian resources [‘Chamd aimar olon mashin baigaashd’], being fully aware that her child would be able to comprehend her response in translanguaging. The child correspondingly throws a tantrum using spontaneous translanguaging, ‘Mommy, mashin, please!’ – the combination of English, Mongolian resources, and emotional outbursts, such as yelling and crying. This instinctive yet spontaneous type of translanguaging seems natural and normal for both speakers.

In terms of this repetitive pattern of spontaneous translanguaging, Saruul further explains,

My kids were born in Mongolia, but we moved to Australia when they were around 5 and 7. When we moved to Australia, they started mixing both English and Mongolian. I was OK with it at first as I believed my kids were learning both Mongolian and English. I thought it was natural. I didn’t give much thought to it. We were all happy.

(Interview, September 7, 2022, Perth, Australia)

Saruul and her children’s main source of daily communication transitioned into spontaneous translanguaging when they moved to Australia, as her children started employing all available linguistic resources based on their Mongolian background and newly accessible linguistic resource – English, from their host country, Australia. Saruul also points out that her children, including herself, were initially ‘happy’ with the translanguaging situations. For Saruul’s children, translanguaging was helpful and hopeful affordance to manage and negotiate their newly found linguistic and social life in Australia. As the studies suggest, translanguaging eases communicative pressure, allows full linguistic participation, and encourages positive interactions and safe spaces (Back, 2020; Dovchin, 2022).

Nevertheless, as a parent, Saruul started developing a linguistic inferiority complex for her children – when they started showing communication and behavioral issues at school.

My children started having problems communicating at school. Their teachers would tell us they did not really understand what they were saying in Mongolian in the classroom and that we would encourage our children to use only English. Some teachers suggested we consider sending one of our children to a speech therapist. They thought our children had problems with their speech when they used Mongolian. Otherwise, our children would fail academically. The kids also started getting bullied by their classmates at school because their English was broken. They were bullied for speaking Mongolian. One of my kids got angry and had physical altercations with one of his classmates. So, the principal told us to send our kid to see a school psychologist. My kids started developing feelings of strong self-shaming. They wanted to be Australian like everyone else. As a result, I started pushing my kids to use only English at all times as a prevention mechanism in the future.

(Interview, September 7, 2022, Perth, Australia)

Being spontaneous translanguagers at school, therefore, according to Saruul, is rejected by the teachers, as they have even suggested ‘speech therapy’ to one of her children because of the communication barriers. Clearly, the teachers are not ready to accept the normality of the translanguaging for these children and that the usage of translanguaging is not related to speech deficiency but rather to the sociolinguistic realities of the translanguagers (the example of suggesting children should see a speech therapist also recalls similar examples given by Cummins (1979) forty or more years ago in Canada).

In addition, the children were bullied at school for speaking ‘broken English.’ In one extreme case, one of the boys got involved in physical altercations with his classmate as he was bullied for translanguaging – that is, combining English and Mongolian resources simultaneously. Instead of supporting the boy’s translanguaging skill, the school authorities have suggested sending the boy to a ‘school psychologist.’ The accumulation of these events caused these children to develop a strong sense of self-shaming and fear of not being able to speak English properly. This series of events presents us with the traits of systematic native speaker saviorism – the standard native Australian English policies could save these children from bullying and communication barriers. As studies suggest, many Australian institutions still maintain the mind-set of native speakerism, which fosters a hegemonic native English environment (Dobinson et al., 2023). This attitude is evident in Saruul and her children’s case, as they feel inferior to and anxious around their classmates as non-native English speakers, negatively affecting their academic and social credibility at school.

Saruul, therefore, instructs her children to resist their spontaneous translanguaging as much as possible to slip an institutional and standard native speaking form into their speech as if it were a normal part of their own repertoire (Rampton et al., 2019). What she desires for her children is exclusive use of English, tailored to the immediate needs or desires of their teachers and classmates in Australia to indexically induce ‘the right ideological package’ (Blommaert, 2009, p. 245): that is, native speakerism. This example reminds us of other sociolinguistic evidence, in which a teacher attempts to introduce Turkish, the home variety of students with Bulgarian backgrounds in a primary school in Greek Cyprus, which was met with resistance and silence by the students for whom it was proposed (Charalambous et al., 2016). The idea of translanguaging may have caused a decrease in self-confidence since students may not have found it liberating in the classroom. This resistance, according to Charalambous et al. (2016), may have emerged from the fear and anxiety of students who believed that ‘speaking Turkish’ could be taken as ‘being Turkish,’ indicating a problematic identity in Greek Cyprus.

Saruul’s account further reminds us of our other research participants’ cases, especially migrant parents living in Australia, in which they start practising ethnic evasion to an extreme level (Dovchin, 2022). That is, evading one’s heritage language and culture to pass as a valid member of the host society, often caused by a source of shame (Cho et al., 2004). In some extreme cases, some of our participants (i.e., parents) went through an intense phase of ethnic evasion when they started completely rejecting their Mongolian heritage, culture, and language because of their strong desire for their children to sound like native speakers of English and smoothly assimilate into the dominant Anglophone society (Dovchin, 2022). During this phase of ‘ethnic evasion’ (Tse, 1998, p. 21), children with migrant backgrounds may have no interest at all in their own heritage language resources. They resist their heritage language and, instead, purposely speak only English, for example, to their parents if there is a visitor, even though their household language is, for example, Chinese (Tse, 1998, p. 21). Based on Saruul’s account, ‘ethnic evasion’ seems to take prevalence, caused by the ideology of native speaker saviorism in which translanguaging is strongly resisted.

Discussion and conclusion

Drawing on data examples from the Mongolian background English L2 users living in Australia, we argue that most of these L2 users are spontaneous translanguagers in their daily lives, specifically in informal settings. Our participants presented in this article, for example, are directly exposed to spontaneous translanguaging, not only through the combination of various linguistic (e.g., Mongolian, Russian and English, etc.) resources due to their prior access and sociolinguistic histories with these languages but also other paralinguistic repertoires. It is also understandable that these participants feel at ease using translanguaging as they all note that translanguaging is something instinctive and natural to them to negotiate who they are as individuals – Mongolian background migrants living in Australia.

However, when it comes to their institutional life, such as workplace and school, many of our participants have developed resistance toward their spontaneous translanguaging practices, mainly because they felt that it was more advantageous to their lives as they adapted to a new country as migrants. They developed a strong desire to achieve the idealized monoglot standards, such as speaking like a native speaker of English or learning Standard Australian English to survive in their academic performances or professional contexts. Consequently, these participants have developed the dystopian idea that their spontaneous translanguaging is a nonstandard and unfavorable linguistic practice, which, for example, causes bullying at school and a sense of linguistic inferiority.

This development of resistance against their own translanguaging practices clearly opposes the reformative potential of translanguaging, which has been widely advocated in the recent literature of applied linguistics. We, therefore, argue that if we continue to advocate for translanguaging for its reformative potential to recognize, counteract, and transform power relations, it is essential to deal with critical issues which are hindering its appliance in various translanguaging settings. It is clear that pervasive language ideologies, such as native speaker saviorism, are deeply entrenched within the mind-set of spontaneous translanguagers. It is, therefore, crucial for applied linguists to work closely with language practitioners, policymakers, educators, language teachers, parents, and migrants to break them free from their preoccupation with the idealization of native speakerism, and, instead, consider translanguaging as a beneficial and alternative form of communication.

Often, translanguaging literature notes that translanguaging would create a safe space, ease misunderstandings, and create a more relaxed atmosphere between the interactants (Lau, 2016). From this view, if our participants chose to continue welcoming translanguaging in their lives, or if the members of the host society chose to accommodate translanguaging in English L2 user’s lives, translanguaging would have served as an effective remedy to offer a safe environment where these L2 users can manage, negotiate, and work through their communication problems. We still have a long way to go.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).