congenital deafblindness is assessed as having a certain level of symbolic language but seldom spoken language or sign language skills11, these are conclusions based on comparisons of the linguistic competence of the deafblind person with age adequate standards of spoken or signed languages. In this perspective, language can be assessed as being at different stages of linguistic development and can be described as ‘pre-linguistic’ and ‘age-adequate’, ‘deficient’, ‘correct’ and ‘wrong’. In this theory of language, gestures, mimicry and body language are not considered to be language, but rather categorised as non-verbal communication.12 It is the named languages we have learned at school – that we had as foreign languages – and are used to thinking of as language that are languages; however, from a linguistic standpoint, these are artificially bounded by national orders, ethnic groups and based on social concerns.13 Named language is defined politically and socio-culturally.
Translanguaging
Translanguaging is language theory that states that named languages cannot be defined linguistically, and this breaks with the idea that language is a formal, abstract system.14 Translanguaging is radically distinct from traditional language theory. The Russian philoso-
pher of language, Bakhtin15 points out that language does not exist as something neutral and impersonal – children do not learn language by memorising the dictionary! Children learn language through communication face-to-face16, through la parole, and it is well-known that languaging and children’s engagement in languaging17, are important prerequisites for language to develop.18 Languaging as an activity implies in fact that the child has a language to language with. The findings of typical language development make probable that also the deafblind child profits from languaging. «Translanguaging is the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages «.19 Linguistic analysis of the spontaneous languaging of humans is the analysis of our inner grammar, our set of lexical and structural elements.20 From a translanguaging perspective, human languaging is natural, real and authentic. That which supports meaning creation, whether gestures, mimicry, body language, gaze or reference to an object comprise part of the linguistic repertoire. Translanguaging is liberating because it regards the whole of the linguistic repertoire of the one speaking as language.21 It
Ask Larsen, 2016 Vigliocco, Perniss & Vinson, 2014 13 Otheguy, et al., 2015 14 Kusters, et al., 2017; Otheguy, et al., 2015 15 Bakhtin, 1981 16 Vigliocco, et al., 2014 17 Laake & Bridgett, 2018 18 Bruner, 1983; Dufva, 2011; Laake & Bridgett, 2018; Tomasello, 2003; Laake & Bridgett, 2018 19 Otheguy, et al., 2015 p. 281 20 Otheguy, et al., 2015 21 Otheguy, et al., 2015 11
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