Researching multilingually: New theoretical and methodological directions

Abstract

This paper reports findings from an AHRC-funded project into the use of more than one language in research projects. Using 35 seminar presentations and 25 researcher profiles, we investigated how researchers from differing disciplines became aware of the possibilities, complexities, and emerging practices of researching where more than one language is used: for example, in initial research design, literature reviews, consent procedures, data generation and analysis, and reporting. Our analysis also revealed some of the challenges that researchers face regarding institutional policies, language choices, interpretation and translation practices, and the language politics of representation and dissemination. Based on this analysis, we argue that researchers need to account for the research spaces and the relationships these spaces engender, and recognise developing researcher awareness when researching multilingually.

Breaking the silence (again): on language learning and levels of fluency in ethnographic research

“…Drawing on material from our own previous research, as well as from published accounts by other ethnographers, we then argue, more specifically, for the importance of documenting and analysing not only the process of language learning in ethnographic research but also the ways in which levels of fluency in a second or additional language can affect the research process, including the writing of ethnographic fieldnotes and forms of self and other identification. We suggest that a heightened awareness of these aspects of 'researching multilingually' (Holmes et al, 2013) can help researchers make more informed choices when carrying out and writing up ethnographic research using different languages.…”

‘Please Do not Stand over the Buddha’s Head (Pay Respect)’: Mediations of Tourist and Researcher Experience in Thailand

“…In this team, we were sometimes insiders and sometimes outsiders with regards to the discourses and practices identified at the venues visited. Our own identities and trajectories thus contributed different kinds of insights, knowledge and practices to the overall research process (Creese and Blackledge 2012;Holmes et al 2013). Reflecting back upon the make-up of this research, we believe that the possibility to 'co-generate knowledge' (Siry 2011) contributed to questioning the very boundaries we were identifying and to open new, more polysemic, spaces among ourselves.…”

How to Research Multilingually: Possibilities and Complexities

“…All of these possibilities are invoked by our terms "researching multilingually" (RM-ly) and "RM-ly practice" (Holmes, Fay, Andrews & Attia, 2013). Further, as we speak of the "possibilities for" and the "complexities of" RM-ly, we are suggesting that there is more than one way of researching multilingually.…”

“…Insights are also emerging on power negotiations in research, and the acknowledgement of the roles of differing perspectives, histories and contexts among interviewers, interpreters, and translators, for example, on their linguistic choices in research projects (Chen, 2011;Kitchen, 2013;Pant-Robinson & Wolf, 2014;Pavlenko, 2005;Temple, 2008;Temple & Edwards, 2002). This chapter is informed by insights arising from a recent RM-ly networking project http://researchingmultilingually.com (see Holmes, Fay, Andrews & Attia, 2013) in which researchers from a range of disciplines reported how they became aware of the RM-ly possibilities and reflected on the issues arising their RM-ly practice. We conceptualise their processes of developing researcher competence vis-à-vis RM-ly practice in three parts (realisation, consideration, informed and purposeful decision-making).…”