Translanguaging Practices in Postgraduate Seminars at University of Ibadan: An Empirical Analysis

Translanguaging, the fluid deployment of multilingual resources as a unified communicative repertoire rather than as discrete language systems, has emerged as a productive theoretical and pedagogical concept, yet empirical documentation of translanguaging practices in Nigerian postgraduate academic discourse remains limited. This study empirically analyses translanguaging practices in postgraduate seminars at the University of Ibadan, examining the frequency, functions, and participant orientations of multilingual resource deployment in formal academic discussion contexts. Data were collected through audio and video recording of twenty postgraduate seminar sessions across four departments, complemented by stimulated recall interviews with thirty seminar participants and a language attitude questionnaire. Translanguaging instances were identified using a functional coding scheme distinguishing academic content elaboration, emotional amplification, identity marking, epistemic hedging, and social cohesion functions. Findings show that translanguaging is ubiquitous across all recorded seminars, with Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin the most frequently deployed non-English resources. Academic content elaboration is the most frequent translanguaging function, occurring predominantly when participants judge that a concept is more precisely or powerfully expressed in another language than in English. Stimulated recall interviews reveal that most participants experience their translanguaging as spontaneous and communicatively motivated rather than strategically planned. Importantly, higher-status seminar participants, including supervisors and visiting academics, show higher translanguaging rates than students, challenging the assumption that translanguaging primarily reflects insufficient English competence. Implications for postgraduate pedagogy and language policy at University of Ibadan are discussed. Keywords: translanguaging, postgraduate seminars, University of Ibadan, multilingual academic discourse, empirical analysis.