Bilingualism is not simply the coexistence of two "named languages" within one person... It's the flexible and deeply human ability to draw from a single, interconnected repertoire of linguistic and semiotic resources to make meaning. As Garcia, Otheguy and Reid explain, named languages like "English" or "Spanish" are political inventions, "not mental or psychological ones," born from histories of colonization and governance. What bilinguals actually do, in everyday life, is translanguage. They deploy their full repertoire "without regard for the socially and politically defined boundaries" of those names.
To ask "who is bilingual" is thus to challenge the myth of linguistic purity. Anyone who moves fluidly across communicative worlds (e.g., shifting tone, rhythm, register or even body language) is performing bilingualism. A child mixing English and Tagalog at home, a Haitian student translating thought between Kreyol and French or an African American teen blending AAVE with academic English are all doing the same thing: adapting, resisting, surviving. Translanguaging makes visible what Garcia calls "the multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage to make sense of their bilingual worlds," a process that is not about deficiency but about brilliance and agency.
Theories of bilingualism have evolved from static to dynamic models. Early frameworks, like Lambert's "additive" and "subtractive" bilingualism, viewed languages as separate systems to be either gained or lost. But newer conceptions, such as dynamic bilingualism, recognize that language practices are fluid, recursive and context-dependent, like an "all-terrain vehicle" rather than two balanced wheels. This shift redefines bilingualism as a process of adaptation and creativity rather than accumulation. In the classroom, that means education should build from students' home languages as intellectual foundations.
Schools, however, often reinforce what Cummins called "the two solitudes," isolating languages into separate spaces and measuring success by how well students conform to "standard" English. The harm here is not only linguistic but epistemic; it tells students that parts of their identity are unwelcome in academic life. In contrast, a translanguaging pedagogy encourages students to use all their linguistic resources to think, question, and express understanding. Garcia, Johnson, and Seltzer (2017) describe this as a stance and shift: a belief that every feature of a student's language repertoire is valuable, a plan that weaves those resources into instruction and a flexibility that allows teachers to flow with students' linguistic currents.
When schooling embraces translanguaging, it reframes bilingualism as intellectual richness rather than a problem to fix. It allows students to be, as Li Wei writes, "transformative," creating a space that joins "their personal history, experience, and ideology into one meaningful performance." Ultimately, bilingualism is the capacity to exist between and beyond them, to refuse linguistic borders that were never ours to begin with.
Here are some questions that came up for me when I was reading:
- How could one personally define what it means to "know" a language in a world where linguistic boundaries are becoming more and more blurred?
- How can teachers honor students' diverse language practices without being penalized by rigid curricula or testing systems?