In this presentation, the concept translanguaging space (Li, 2011; Zhu et al., 2017) is used to study classroom interaction in an Arabic Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) classroom in Sweden. MTI is an elective school subject with its own syllabus. Students in primary and secondary school have the right to MTI with some restrictions: For example, the students need to already have basic knowledge in the language in question and at least five students have to enrol in MTI in order for the municipality to be required to organize it. The case of MTI in Arabic here makes translanguaging space relevant for the study of classroom interaction in relation to the diglossic situation between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and colloquial varieties of Arabic. The aim of this paper is to study classroom interaction in MTI in Arabic as a translanguaging space. The study is part of a larger project on MTI in Sweden which is carried out in the form of action research combined with linguistic ethnography. The material used is from one Arabic MTI teacher and students in grade three and consists of fieldnotes, audio recordings from classroom observations and one teacher interview. The use of the concept translanguaging space, understood as an arena for translanguaging and a space created through translanguaging (Li, 2011), highlights the seamless shuttling between different varieties of Arabic, which is natural and necessary in Arabic MTI classrooms. The diglossic situation in Arabic means that while all students need to learn MSA, the challenges are greater for students with varieties that diverge more from the teacher’s variety. In the current case, the teacher’s Levantine variety was closer to that of some of the students, while other dialects diverged more. The critical and creative aspects inherent in translanguaging space put issues of student engagement and participation in focus. In this case, the teacher was in the centre and students were rather passive, answering questions and performing given tasks. Although the dominance of MSA and Levantine may be interpreted as a monolingual classroom policy, the fact that both Swedish and other dialects were accepted shows that the diglossic situation opened up the classroom as a translanguaging space.

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