In Sweden, recent waves of immigration have dramatically altered the linguistic landscape of Swedish schools for the deaf and hard of hearing. Many newly arrived students come with no experience with any sign language, and/or rudimentary skills in one or more spoken languages. Educating such a linguistically diverse population poses vexing challenges. Translanguaging offers exciting potential as a framework to guide teachers in recognizing and utilizing the totality of students’ varied linguistic resources to promote learning, regardless of current proficiency in Swedish and Swedish Sign Language. However, the promises of translanguaging elicit mixed reactions among [Deaf educators]. On the one hand, it affirms that a multilingual repertoire naturally leads to language use that draws from multiple sources, a fact that should be recognized and supported by educational practices. Translanguaging offers a valuable framework for analyzing the dynamic blending of signed and spoken language that educators have long observed from all deaf children. On the other hand, Deaf signers are alarmed by translanguaging practitioners’ calls to abandon the concept of language separation and allow elements of signed and spoken language to mix freely. Such unrestricted mixing calls to mind the long struggle against “SimCom,” the simultaneous mixing of speech and degraded signing that has repeatedly proven inaccessible to deaf signers.
How can Swedish Deaf schools employ translanguaging in a way that ensures equal access for all students, not just those with greater access to spoken language? The answer depends on teachers with strong competence in both Swedish and Swedish Sign Language, specifically trained to create visual learning environments where sign language skills are actively developed and used to facilitate access to spoken language content. Our talk highlights examples of such practices and identifies specific aspects of teachers’ ability to understand and leverage the multilingualism in their classrooms.