LEGITIMIZING BILINGUAL PEDAGOGIES: A CONVERSATION ANALYTIC STUDY OF ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN PAKISTANI TERTIARY CLASSROOMS

Abstract

This conversation analytic study investigates how bilingual practices facilitate engineering knowledge construction in Pakistani university classrooms, where English Medium Instruction (EMI) policy encounters the linguistic realities of Urdu-English bilingualism. Drawing on 42 hours of video-recorded lectures from three HEC-recognized public engineering universities, we examine the sequential organization of translanguaging in conceptual scaffolding. Findings reveal that instructors systematically deploy bilingual practices in three interactional loci: (1) other-initiated repair sequences where Urdu clarifications re-establish intersubjectivity after student confusion displays; (2) knowledge-display elicitations where English technical questions are prefaced with Urdu affective framings; and (3) epistemic stance negotiations where code-switching marks transitions between procedural and conceptual registers. Contrary to EMI policy assumptions, participants treat translanguaging not as compensatory deficit but as an accountable pedagogical resource strategically calibrated to epistemic gradients. The study offers micro-empirical evidence for legitimatizing planned translanguaging in Pakistan's Global South higher education context, challenging monoglossic ideologies that obscure the interactional work of knowledge co-construction.