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Abstract

Abstract In Sweden, tutoring in the mother tongue is a form of special educational support to enable pupils with non-Swedish language backgrounds to follow Swedish medium instruction and succeed at school. For pupils who risk failing to meet minimal curricular requirements, it is an educational right. This study investigates tutor-mediated interaction with Somali newly arrived pupils and subject teachers in oral examinations at the ninth year and asks how translanguaging may be relevant to speech performances in this multilingual setting. Both tutors and pupils translanguage advantageously to accomplish pedagogical objectives. Translanguaging proves subject to the personal aspirations of speakers, the organization of interaction as well as wider pedagogical goals. Following Bakhtin, discrepancy between tutor translingual interpretation and the other participants’ interpreted utterances is accounted for as the responsive engagement of a second consciousness that supplements other voices creatively. Central aspects of translanguaging are challenged through a dialogic lens. The implications of treating translanguaging in mother tongue tutoring as dialogic action include positioning translanguaging in an interactionist framework, the importance of a discourse of constraint as well as affordance, a dynamic epistemology and the need for teachers and tutors to be aware of the inherent meaning-making processes in translingual interpretation for pupil assessment.

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