This conceptual study applies Giorgio Agamben's theory on the state of exception to understand the relationship between named language and fluid language as a critique of the recent translanguaging trend in sociolinguistics.
The fluidity of language attracts scholars' attention in sociolinguistics as a group of concepts were established to illustrate this phenomenon, such as translanguaging (García & Li, 2014), which criticizes viewing language as separated entities and emphasizes speaker's whole linguistic repertoire. Translanguaging trends thus attempt to develop translanguaging pedagogies (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022) and frame translanguaging as a political stance with reconstitutivenature that goes beyond language (Li, 2022).
However, the proponents of translanguaging, using 'language' interchangeably with 'named language', fail to identify the original form of language. In addition, the attempt to develop translanguaging pedagogy fails to question the roles played by the language learning institutions and ignores the dynamics between named language and fluid language as if it is an either-or question. This study applies Agamben's theory to argue that fluid language is not beyond the language but is the original form of language. Thus, the existence of named language presupposes fluid language and institutions can be understood as relying on fluid language where fluid language is captured by while fleeing from institutions and the native norms produced within.
Agamben (2005) developed Foucault's concept of biopolitics with the focus on the Holocaust as the state of exception, which he argues is the original juridico-political structure in the sense that the applicability of law in normal situation is based on its suspension in the state of exception. Compared the law to language, Agamben (2005) then points out that the existence of language presupposes the suspension of denotation. In other words, the unfixed relation between signifier and signified – the state of fluid language - is the fundamental condition of the language rather than anything beyond. Likewise, it can also be argued that language learning institutions, which constantly produces norms of named language, depends on the presupposed existence of fluid language since they would not exist if there were no fluid language to be corrected. The translanguaging trend ignores these dynamics and the paradoxical function of institutions as an apparatus to require while capture fluid language under their norms. While fluid language is captured while fleeing from institutions, the translanguaging pedagogy inclines to capture fluid language they celebrate back to institutions with a particular end rather than focuses on the fleeing aspect of fluid language without predetermined ends.
Applying Agamben's theory in reflecting the translanguaging trend in sociolinguistics, this study aims at raising awareness of the essence of fluid language and its dynamics with named languages in institutions at the aspect of how fluid language deactivating and inactivating named languages.
Agamben, G. (2005). State of Exception. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2022). Pedagogical Translanguaging and its Application to Language Classes. RELC Journal,0, 1-13.
García, O., & Li Wei. (2014). Translanguaging. Palgrave Macmillan.
Li, W. (2022). Translanguaging as a political stance. ELT Journal, 76(2), 172-182.
