Making visible invisibilized repertoires: Children translanguaging towards reconfiguring the linguistic landscape of a neighbourhood museum

Abstract

Minoritized languages linked to migration are usually underrepresented in the linguistic landscapes of museums. This invisibilization has been shown to limit multilingual children’s access, participation, and representation. Translanguaging is an approach that may promote greater inclusion in museums, through its focus on valorising children’s entire linguistic repertoires in formal and non-formal education. However, the potential of translanguaging in museums is currently under-researched. This linguistic ethnographic study conducted in a Dutch neighbourhood science museum investigates how multilingual children engaged in translanguaging to create multilingual labels for exhibition objects as part of an institutional attempt to reconfigure the linguistic landscape. Drawing on data from three focal participants, we employ an inductive/deductive hybrid approach to reflexive thematic analysis, complemented by data source triangulation of: fieldnotes; interviews with children and parents; artefacts; and pictures. The findings show that the children engaged in three key translanguaging processes: combining linguistic features associated with different named languages; translating; and employing semiotic features multimodality. Further, children’s language choices on the labels are connected to their linguistic repertoires shaped by everyday encounters with the home, the complementary school, the neighbourhood, transnational realms, and digital environments. This study shows that the potential of adopting a translanguaging approach in the museum is that children can be positioned as agents who can play a significant role in reconfiguring the linguistic landscape.