Intersectional engagements with translanguaging under Asianization: a teacher candidate’s multimodal (counter-)narrative

Although translanguaging has been widely theorised as a resource for meaning-making and pedagogical transformation, relatively little attention has been paid to how its engagements are shaped by, and shape, the intersectional dynamics of Asianization in the lives of language teacher candidates. This study examines how translanguaging is lived, inscribed, and (re)configured along intersectional lines in the case of Grace, a 1.5-generation im/migrant Asian American woman teacher candidate during language teacher preparation. Drawing on multimodal (counter-)narratives, the analysis traces her shift from stratified, conflicted translanguaging engagements toward more integrated and agentive orientations. Her multimodal inscriptions and counter-stories reveal how Asianization can discipline translanguaging practices through assimilationist demands for standardised English alongside familial and cultural imperatives to maintain linguistic and cultural heritage, while also illustrating how she reasserts translanguaging as a resource for wholeness and pedagogical reorientation. Methodologically, this study demonstrates how multimodal (counter-)narratives can surface embodied inscriptions, silences, and resistances as acts of translanguaged negotiation. The findings underscore the need for language teacher education to critically examine and address structural conditions that regulate whose translanguaging practices are legitimised, backgrounded, or silenced along intersectional lines.