Translanguaging: an integrated and culturally valid approach for speech and language therapy practice
Reviewed by Anna Volkmer

This study advocates the need for speech and language therapists to understand and advocate for translanguaging practices within their day-to-day clinical work with children with communication difficulties. Translanguaging derives from the Welsh term ‘trawsiethu’, which was first introduced in 1994 by Welsh scholar Cen Williams and is defined as “the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages”. Translanguaging is not the same as code switching – code switching is the practice of alternating between languages, often employed by bilingual speakers. Translanguaging describes the language practice of bilinguals as one integrated system in contrast to two separate operating systems. In the early 1800s and 1900s, researchers in the Western world believed that multilingualism caused cognitive and linguistic deficits. Despite research demonstrating the opposite – that bilingualism has many cognitive benefits – this false belief continues to influence some policies and practices. There are many ongoing myths in practice, such as the idea that children with communication disorders cannot learn more than one language and that code-switching is evidence of language impairment. The authors of this paper focus on Creole languages and describe how the impact of not promoting translanguaging has led to huge biases against multilingual learners including cultural, linguistic, normative, scoring and construct biases. The authors also highlight the lack of research on the use of translanguaging in intervention and assessment in the field of speech and language therapy. They advocate for the Translanguaging Speech-Language Intervention Framework (TSI Framework) as a tool to support the delivery of speech and language therapy. The framework has at its core the practice of cultural humility and focuses on co-developing services that value cultural and linguistic contexts, provide opportunities for multilingual learning and assessment, and advocate for a translanguaging ecosystem. Given that the International Association of Language Pathologists advocates that children with language impairments should receive intervention in all their languages, this framework is a useful tool. In fact, this social approach to valuing cultural and linguistic humility could be considered within most clinical contexts across the lifespan in the UK, where multilingualism is frequently the norm.

Using Translanguaging as an Intervention for Caribbean Creole Children. 
Jocelyn J, Rose ST.
SEMIN SPEECH LANG 
2025;46(2):117–44.