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Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State
- 1. Researching Multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state AHRC “Translating Cultures”Programme Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow) (PI)
- 2. Researching Multilingually Two overarching aims: 1)to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practices in challenging contexts, and, 2)while doing so, to evaluate appropriate research methods (traditional and arts based) and develop theoretical approaches for this type of academic exploration. An international team of researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds, research experiences and language skills will conduct international comparative research on translation and interpretation at different kinds of border in order to develop of theory, ethical research practices and research methodologies in relation to multilingual research.
- 3. Research Context: Innovation • Concepts of borders and embodiment, superdiversity, security/insecurity, raise important practical and ethical questions as to how research might be conducted. • Focus on Methods: Part of the innovative nature of the project lies not in using new methods per se, but rather (i) in comparing across discipline-specific methods, (ii) interrogating arts and humanities methods where the body and body politic are under threat, and (iii) in developing theoretical and methodological insights as a result. • There are some pockets of work in disciplines but no overarching framework across multiple disciplines.
- 4. A framework for researching multilingually An overarching theme – Develop researcher intentionality of possibilities and complexities of researching multilingually at all stages of a research process across wide range of fields. Relationships - researchers, participants, mediators, interpreters, translations, team members Spaces – research (phenomena); researched (context); researcher (language resources); re/presentation (reporting/dissemination) A 3-step process in developing researcher intentionality - researcher realisation - navigation and mapping - making informed choices
- 5. 5 Case Studies 1) Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender Based Trauma (Scotland/Sierra Leone) 2) Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal process (UK/Netherlands) 3) State: Working and Researching Multilingually at State and EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania) 4) Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American Southwest borderlands 5) Language Education: Arabic as a Foreign Language for International Learners (Gaza)
- 6. The Synthesis Multimodal Complementary Methods CATC hub RMTC hub Performance, artistic Academic investigative creative methods comparative methods Processes (iterative, reflexive, ethical) Researchers (as teams, across 3 levels, the two hubs, the case study sites, the PhDs) Multimodal Outputs which create impact and communicate beyond the theme for a new generation of researchers and stakeholders who have tools, theories and methods for researching multilingually across wide range of disciplines.
- 7. New theoretical, conceptual and empirical understandings • Unique contribution in opening up existing disciplinary pockets to critical, comparative attention. • Using arts based methods to open up settled meanings whilst documenting and analysing commonalities and differences in concepts, methods, processes and practices across a range of fields, countries, disciplines and policy areas. • Creating a context where multilingual realities are not feared or masked, but engaged across societies, in direct response to the needs of multiple partners. A transformational project growing out of findings and groundwork of Translating Cultures projects, uniquely brought together to produce synergies which can enliven the Translating Cultures theme and momentum.
- 8. practice
Editor's Notes
- Refugee as referent is where the issues are manifest most acutely and urgently for policy and ngo contexts we have consulted. Excellent work in Applied and sociolinguistics or in literary study of conflict which touches on languages but not as a overarching framework across multiple disciplines. Translation: literal, metaphorical, symbolic, political/economic
- What is our object? Framework for ALL disciplines in future, growing out of small networking grant which has tested this in educational settings. Now we want to test this in challenging contexts (Refugee and migrant is referent where these aspects are most in evidence and least masked) Latour.
- Introduction: Our large grants project is made of five case study sites, all of which will generate material/examples the the RMTC and CATC hubs can draw on to research multilingually and translate cultures. This case is but one example of the multiple case studies we will collect, but our translation of the case/experience is an amalgam of analysis and performance (as the example will illustrate). Scenario: A single mother war victim from Cote d’Ivoire with two disabled daughters seek asylum in Scotland. She speaks her native Nzema and Fante (also spoken in Ghana) and French but needed to process the trauma in English and with the music of home. She believes her children are a curse, at church, she is told by her African ‘pastor’ that the curse is from family members in Cote d’Ivoire In Glasgow, She faces multiple problems regarding her spoken and written English, her children’s education, housing, work, child care, marriage and her own ambitions to became a designer. How do we Research such a case and document, analyse and compare How will the the emotional impact of this lady’s trauma be translated? How did we collect the research data (the story)? Documenting/translation: in a poem/song, a short story,
- Jane’s slide Multimodal complementary methods This case study illustrates that not all the data emergent from the five case study sites can be collected and disseminated/represented using traditional methods. We (i.e., the two hubs) will interrogate the emergent data (cases) from different perspectives, drawing on multimodel, complementary methods. There are different levels/processes of translation. Some experiences, e.g., emotional, cannot be translated into words, so different modes/media are important. CATC hub researchers will use performance, artistic, creative methods. Experiencing the research (data) by living the experience with the participants, as this case has illustrated, is important here. RMTC hub researchers will draw on academic investigative methods, e.g., narrative/discourse/thematic analysis, observations of ppts and researchers, interviews and focus groups. Processes Research methods from RMTC hub and translation/performance methods from CATC hub will feed into the “Researching Multilingually” framework – using iterative, reflexive, ethical processes. Researchers All these methods and processes are linked to the research going on in the case study sites, and to the work of the 3 PhD students. The processes are iterative ones – of ongoing analyses and ongoing performances throughout the life cycle of the project. Just as the academic researchers (led by the RMTC hub) will produce academic/praxis-oriented outputs, so will the CATC hub synthesise the various ongoing performances into one culminating play text/performance the encapsulates the translation of the “Researching Multilingually” experience. These methodological processes are linked to the disciplines embedded in the case studies (e.g., anthropology, applied linguistics, education, ELT, health, law, languages, psychology, sociology) T
- The RM project is more than the sum of its parts! The approach in our project allows the whole team to develop new theoretical, methodological, ethical ways of researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law, and the state. This is complex and needs multimodal representation so here is an illustration.
- This is a complex project, of necessity, to enable true comparison. This slide – some will be diagram people - , included in the proposal, allows us to clarify the project relationships, syntheses and processes and we leave it here to allow for discussion and welcome your questions.