Transglossic language practices

This paper contributes to a recent development in Applied Linguistics that encourages research from trans- approaches. Drawing on the results of an ethnographic research project carried out in a university of Bangladesh. It is illustrated how young adults actively and reflexively use a mixture of codes, modes, genres, and popular cultural texts in their language practices within the historical and spatial realities of their lives. The paper shows that the interpretive capacity of heteroglossia increases when complemented by an understanding derived from transgressive approaches to language. The paper proposes a reconceptualised version of heteroglossia, namely transglossia, which explores the fixity and fluidity of language in the 21th Century. On the one hand, transglossia is a theoretical framework that addresses the transcendence and transformation of meaning in heteroglossic voices. On the other hand, a transglossic framework untangles the social, historical, political, ideological, and spatial realities within which voices emerge. Overall, it is suggested that transglossia and a transglossic framework can provide us with an understanding of language that notions such as code-mixing or code-switching or any language-centric analysis fail to unveil.