This article explores how a linguistically diverse, subject English
class can become a multilingual contact zone in which naturalised linguistic
identities are made visible and interrogated. The research is situated in a
highly diverse, educational context — Wits School of Education in
Johannesburg, South Africa. This is framed by a society in which English
occupies a hegemonic position despite there being eleven official languages.
Our students come from a variety of linguistic, cultural and social contexts
and are currently compelled to do a compulsory year of subject English as
part of an undergraduate degree in an institution where the medium of
instruction is English. Within these constraints, we attempt to construct a
pedagogic environment in which students' various language histories and
practices are invited into the discursive space — not as medium of
communication but as valued subject matter. Drawing on Blommaert, Collins
and Slembrouck's spatial theorisation of multilingualism (2005), we argue
that the pedagogy of the course in question constitutes the classroom as a
discursive space which enables students to negotiate their linguistic identities
in various ways. While presented as an English course, it seeks to construct
multilingualism as a resource and prioritises students' own language
experiences by having them write personal language biographies in which
they reflect on their linguistic identities. We use a selection of the students'
language biographies to explore how these speak to the ways in which
students position themselves in relation to the regimes of language constituted
by the course.