![]() But their diversity is papered over by their shared status as students of a small liberal-arts college. They are, in fact, a relatively diverse group of students, and many have encountered Spanish in one form or another, especially in school language programs, although they claim they "didn't learn anything" there. ![]() They are not trained as language tutors, nor are they required to have any knowledge of Spanish-my course is offered by the English department. The college students' chief capital to offer, then, is their status as English speakers and their interest in helping. My (Liz's) students are undergraduates from a range of majors, and they have signed up for my course knowing that they will spend one evening per week at the community center in the nearby county seat, working with Latinx immigrants who want to learn English. To illustrate the move we are making, we begin with a familiar setting, the sanctioned community partnership of a college course with a community-based learning component. A community approach to translation offers a way to step aside from both of these, by examining the place of translation in the rhetoricity of the entire event rather than the expressions of one or a few individuals. As you’ll see in the case below, the college students who transcended their monolingual inclinations did so by treating these matters (how to be together and what to do together) more as provisional constructions ventured in relation to what others had to say on these matters, and less as foregone conclusions based on their expertise in the English language.Īs we described above, as useful as translingual conceptions have been for rethinking the constructedness of language boundaries and beginning to undo systems of monolingualism, much of the work that has described translingual encounters has focused on rhetors extraordinaire-continuing to elevate individual performance despite the consensus around sociocultural approaches to language as constituted among, not within, individuals-as well as on classroom scenarios in established institutional settings. They are also charged because of the ways differences may be implied and invoked in the very reason for coming together in the first place. However, in community contexts, especially those where concerns are under construction and yet to be shared, matters of how to be together and what to do together are more live. In many classrooms, responses to such questions are predetermined, say, through civility statements in the syllabus, the nature of the assignments, grading, and routinized teacher-student power dynamics. Recall Liz’s experience in chapter 1-specifically, the inquiry she raised: “I wonder, who will transcend their monolingual inclinations who will embrace the uncertainty?” Prefigured composition classrooms offer any of us few opportunities to negotiate responses to these questions with others. In studying these cases in relation to one another, we noted that in community contexts, when people are called together to take up a shared concern-something that needs to be addressed, a set of circumstances that needs to be changed-they often find themselves navigating the dimensions of these exigencies in relation to two questions of engagement across difference: (1) How are we going to be together? and (2) What are we going to be doing?. Along the way, a college student gives voice to the experiential power of being grasped by a singular rhythm in the embodied language practice of immigration storytelling. communities finding their way to contribute at a literacy center for recent immigrants by learning ways of being other than delivering content as English-speaking experts. The case features "monolingual" college students in Spanish-speaking U.S. Illustrating the concept of being grasped by a singular rhythm, we begin with a familiar setting: the sanctioned community partnership of a college course with a community-based learning component. Communities: Being Grasped by a Singular Rhythm in a Space of Not-Knowing ![]() Case 1: "Monolingual" College Students in Spanish-Speaking U.S. ![]()
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