This document discusses researching multilingually from the perspective of linguistic incompetence. It notes that monolingual researchers lack the frame of reference and experiences of those who research in multiple languages. The document then outlines several autoethnographic examples from the author's own experiences learning languages as a beginner through immersion in language classes, working with asylum detainees, and living in Palestine. Key themes that emerge include struggling to understand at first but gaining comprehension over time through everyday interactions, relying on shared languages for rest, and gaining valuable insights from one's own linguistic limitations. The document argues that linguistic incompetence in the field provides opportunities to observe cultural practices more closely and build relationships through non-verbal exchange.

1. Researching Multilingually:
Linguistic Incompetence
Alison Phipps
University of Glasgow

2. Knowing Multilingual
Researching
How can I know what researching
multilingually means if I am
monolingual?
No point of comparison
No story of growing access to
other linguistic worlds
No experience of leaving one set
of framings and using a different
set
No experience of the feel of
competence

3. Researching multilingual
research
Listening to and gathering
biographies / data of researching
monolingually
Narratives and novels (Helen
Sullivan)
Compare research undertaken
multilingually with research
undertaken monolingually for
accuracy and results (use of
multilingual questionnaires;
interviewing with interpretation;
participant observation

4. Autoethnography of Linguistic
Incompetence
1) Learning the Arts of
Linguistic Survival
2) Asylum Languages
3) Lifelong Learning in
Palestine
4) From language
edges (pain/joy – word
failure)

5. Learning the Arts
2 year of autoethnographic work
in adult education tourist
language classes for Italian and
Portuguese
Language holiday in Lisbon
Beginner's language classes

6. Researching without the
language
Ethnographic notes:
Difficulty and struggle to hear and
make meaning
The jouiscence of making
progress
Resource to common language
(German and English) for rest and
reflection and writing
Notes full of new words and
phrases – mulitlingual research
notes

7. Asylum Languages
Response to Call (Radio 4)
Linguistics needed
Languages useless
Language greetings learned with
detainees
Contact with Swahlii, Georgian,
Arabic, Congolese, Somali;
Language teaching as leveller
Research value in ignorance.
Access.

8. Mother Tongue
len & Tigrinya
ew script
onality
ew questions of
language and power
inguistic exhaustion and
pain - autodidacticism
aucity of resource and
opportunity. (payment
for lessons illegal;

9. Mother's Incompetence
Allowed space for processing and
recovery in English (trauma
victims often process better in a
different language – see
Holocaust survival – Grossmann)
Required patience and vigilance
Value of object, story, each word
and script
Keyman keyboard
Materials- phrase books; CD

10. Patterns
Relationships formed through
other means (food, joint worship,
coffee ceremonies, gifts)
Listening in to patterns for hand
holds – food, greetings, God,
place names, goodness and
beauty.

11. Ritual Learning
Habituated practices (Coffee,
food, greetings, prayer)
(Mary Oliver)
Sensory awareness heightened:
incense, cloth, scarf, coffee
beans, skin and hair oil; spices,
texture)
Linguistic power remains with
powerless
Tsada: expections of whiteness

12. Chichewa
Greetings
Animals
Status of people
Surprise - Mzungu

13. Lifelong Learning in Palestine
Arabic: script and
speech
Borders
Welcomes
Security
Research interviews
NGO/academic
English

14. Suspicion or Trust
Because I am a
linguist/ethnographer I quickly
learned:
- greetings
- food names
- Prayer language (Insha'allah)
Monolinguals: la,la,la:
Gesture and some
aggression/suspicion that
translation maybe in correct

15. Palestine
Material objects
Scarves
Children practising English and
teaching us
Flowers in a garden
Reliance on translation
Gifts and appreciation.
Movement of body in segregated
space
Enforced time for observation

16. Pain/Joy
laine Scarry: Pain is
language destroying
rauma fragments and
disrupts patterns of
memory.
ain/Joy are produced
from same patterns of
neurological processing.
dvocacy as the
compensation for
linguistic incompetence
(Amnesty International)

17. Words Fail Me
Researchers are presumed to be
linguistically able
Failure of words / writers block is a
serious business
Failure to engage multilingually is
seen largely as a necessary
inconvenience.
Some dimensions of life may be
highlighted (notably those traditionally
noticed by anthropologists)

18. Ingrid de Kok: Words failing

19. Researching Multilingually
Language acquisition – the form
its takes, where it occurs, how it
occurs is an important dimension
to fieldwork and to research
We are positioned through our
competence/incompetence and
our stories of acquisition and
mistake

20. Social Humility or Technological
Control
Autodidactic, technological
courses mask incompetence, hide
error and failure
Social classes make space for
'rehearsal' and allow speech to be
embodied and embedded
Humility, performed and
languaged, enables the building
of relationships of trust in the field
for an ethics of access to be
negotiated

21. The Value in Incompetence
Time to observe
Practice of researcherly patience
Experience of frustration and
powerlessness which enables
empathy
Noticing of greetings, rituals, sensory
dimensions
Valuable stage, but not status quo.
A glimpse into early ethnography and
anthropology- a stage in entering
other worlds. (Evans Pritchard)

22. Thank You

23. Solutions for Incompetence?
• Rosetta Stone gives you the flexibility to fit
language learning into your life whenever it’s
convenient. All it takes is a computer or an
Internet connection.
RossettaStone.com

24. Rosetta Stone Makes Inc. 500 List
• “We deliver the best technology-based
solutions for learning languages. Every
day our innovations help people improve
their lives and make the world a better
place”.

25. Languages as Technology
Technology is therefore a
game pertaining not to
the true, the just, or the
beautiful, etc., but to
efficiency: a technical
“move” is “good” when it
does better and /or
expends less energy than
another.
(Lyotard 1984)

26. “Making the World a Better Place”
• “Rosetta Stone®, today announces a new
contract with the United States Army. The
agreement, worth $4.2 million for one
year, makes the Rosetta Stone language
learning program available to all active
Army, National Guard, Reservist, and
Department of Army Civilian personnel
worldwide.”

27. “Make the Most of Your Time”
• “Building Community through Language
Learning!”
• Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains
everything you need to start learning a
language. It’s built around our award-winning
Rosetta Stone curriculum, which has been
adopted by Deutsch [sic] Telekom, NASA, and
over 10,000 schools worldwide—and is available
in 30 languages spoken by over 90% of the
world’s population.

28. Your Time
• 200 hours, 92
lessons, 3 month
subscription.
• Languages measured
out in technologically
controlled time.
• Liquid languages for
liquid modernity.

29. Rosetta Stone: A Counter-Story
• Discovered 1799
• 1814 – Demotic
translation
• 1822-24 Greek &
Coptic & hieroglyphic
• 1858 – Full English
Translation
• Egypt, France,
England, U.S.
• 57 years