Translanguaging as commodified semiotic resource among traders and customers of Soweto market in Lusaka Zambia

Abstract

Motivated by the practical and theoretical need to interrogate the place of urgency, actorhood and convergence of semiotic assemblages and resources in places of trade and business, this paper investigated the use of translanguaging as a commodified semiotic resource among traders and customers at Soweto market in Zambia’s Capital City. For in-depth appreciation of the phenomenon, data were obtained by the semi-structured interview, audio recording and general observation within the broader context of qualitative ethnography. A careful analysis of translanguaging practices among traders and customers during a transaction revealed that speakers in a market setting of Lusaka place high premium on stylizing their multiple languages as commodified semiotics, which invariably results in dissolved traditional linguistic boundaries through the use of the extended linguistic repertoire from their language system. Consequently, the speakers combined English lexemes with bound morphemes from their local languages, the standard and non-standard language forms, as well as fragmented pieces of languages as semiotically motivated act. Revealingly, therefore, it is contested that translanguaging, as a commodified semiotic resource, is deployed to engender a clearer conveyance of messages that strive for inclusivity, and multiple deployment of identities as marketization strategy. Of course, one cannot deny the fact that these marketers have the ability to use language in whatever way they feel for meaning making. This entails that, for speakers, the type or form of language to be used in informal contexts does not matter as along as the cause for which the language is being used is met. Which means all bits and pieces of language are treated as meaning making resources in their own right.