“Coming clean” about researching multilingually – learning from different disciplines.

Researching Multilingually at the Borders of
Language, the Body, Law and the State
“Coming clean” about research multilingually –
learning from different discipline
RMTC Hub
Durham Symposium October 2014

Outline
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) through the Translating Cultures Programme
[grant reference AH/L006936/1]
1. Orientation
2. Our puzzles
3. Mapping a range of disciplines in relation to RM
4. Honing in on one study – Robert Boder
5. Guidance for newcomers to the territory – research methods textbooks
6. Researching Multilingually in languages other than English
7. Concluding thoughts

Orientation
Searching for ‘traces’ of RM
Revisiting works to clarify how RM negotiated
Noticing metaphors / writers’ orientations towards RM
Researching multilingually and researching multilingualism
Reviewing research methods and methodologies texts

Puzzles
Which disciplines? Why not engineering or biology?
Historical perspectives or contemporary ones? How far back?
Research papers or books?
Search terms?
Accessing relevant sources beyond English language texts?

Mapping disciplines and
research processes
1) A concern for validity in studies with RM
Nursing and business studies
Squires (2009) – need for criteria for evaluating research validity and
transparency, (10 offered, see hand out)
Croot et al (2011) Critique of Squires – emergent nature of interactions in RM
studies
Chidlow et al (2014) – critique of translation practices within business studies
research

Globalisation – impacts on
academic practices (1)
• http://reggiochildrenfoundation.org/?page_id=54
• Dangers of ‘one way linguistic traffic’
from English
• Concept of social pedagogy and the
pedagogue little known in UK but
very familiar concepts in other
European contexts
• Social pedagogy conflated with
‘education’ or ‘teaching’ thus missing
the holistic approach to young
children’s early experience
Peter Moss (2010)
“English as a problem language”
Early childhood studies
Lack of problematisation
in translation of terms and concepts
Children learn in
‘un atelier’ with ‘un atelierista’

La piazza
"Spazi comuni nella scuola per l'infanzia" by Vincenzo Mainardi - Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-
Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spazi_comuni_nella_scuola_per_l%27infanzia.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Spazi_comuni_nella
_scuola_per_l%27infanzia.jpg

Globalisation – impacts on
academic practices (2)
Robinson-Pant (2011)
• Reflecting on the experiences of international students in UK higher education,
doctoral students of education
• Challenges and tensions of gaining an award in one country / cultural context
based on fieldwork gathered in another
• need for “decolonisation” of research methodologies
• Students need to be supported not to “unlearn” their understanding of ethics /
research processes associated with specific contexts

RM and ethics (1)
Perry (2011) ethics from the perspective of research governance
Review of practices of Institutional Review Boards
Diversity of practices between institutions regarding research with refugees
‘imposition’ of ethical assumptions and practices – anonymity as a desirable
feature of research practice
Assumption that lack of English language skills puts a research participant in
a category of being “vulnerable”

RM and ethics (2)
When I go into a horrendous camp situation as a white researcher, the
people are so desperate for any form of assistance they would agree to
anything just on the off chance that I might be able to able to assist. It
makes asking for permission to interview them or take photographs a
farce… What does ‘informed consent’ mean in an isolated refugee camp
with security problems and no proper interpreters?
[Personal communication, Linda Bartolomei, 2004] p.234
Significance of context in defining ethics and ethical practice
Pittaway, E., Bartolomei, L., Hugman, R. (2010) ‘Stop stealing our stories’:
The ethics of research with vulnerable groups in Journal of Human Rights
Practice 2/2, 229-251

Researcher reflexivity –
power dynamics
Tahir Abbas, Gill Crozier
educational sociologists - studies of Asian young people’s experiences of
education in England and Black parents’ experiences of their children’s
education
Concerns with power imbalances between researchers and participants and
research relationships
Abbas – a “same-ethnicity” researcher
Crozier – background sharing to develop rapport
Both researchers – participants had a choice of language with which to engage
in research encounters

RM research processes –
working with data
Abreu 2011
Study of young people and ‘work’ – babysitting, paper rounds, language
brokering
Educational psychology
Attention given to ways of working with data – language choices offered, uses of
source language texts and translations in data analysis and presentation
Language choice offered to participants but not dwelt upon

Theorising RM processes
Wolf
Globalisation demands new approaches to conceptualizing translation and
interpretation
Sociological, intercultural theories may help
Bourdieu - Habitus
Bernstein - Classification and framing
Bhabha – third space

Interpreters’ roles
Research team relationships
Temple – social care
Sanderson – nursing
Kamler & Threadgold – intercultural communication
Interpreters’ roles and contributions need researchers’ attention
recognition of interpreters as participants in research interactions not merely
service providers – implications for briefing, collaboration, costs

Honing in on one study –
The work of Robert Boder

Guidance for newcomers:
Research methods textbooks
Our approach:
Key word searches
Targetted research methods texts
‘Mainstream’ research methods texts rather than specialised texts (e.g.
linguistic ethnography texts)

Themes:
Influences of global publishing industry
Which authors are published?
In which languages?
P.137. In relation to feminist work: “More international scholars are being
published, but in English because of translation difficulties and marketing
pressures (Meagan Morris, personal communication)”.
Edited by Denzin & Lincoln The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research
(4th edition – 2011) on

Themes:
Researcher pressures from global publishing
Researcher identity
Social psychological research in Asia can be characterized by tension
between scholars living within a phenomenological layer of cultural
constructions as a visible part of their everyday life, and producing English-
language publications that are devoid of such meaningful content and
dedicated toward the pragmatics of career advancement according to top-
down standards imported from the “best” (read Western) universities
p.222
Edited by Denzin & Lincoln The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research
(4th edition – 2011) on

Themes:
RM as demanding or limiting
RM financial costs
Furthermore, when research interviews are conducted in multiple languages,
interviewing, as well as transcribing, coding and analysing the materials, is
particularly demanding. Translation to one shared language is expensive,
and may introduce new problems when some data is translated and other
not, for instance. The presence of several languages in the materials may
limit the choice of analytical strategies, particularly those focused on
language
p. 99
Ivy Bourgeault, Robert Dingwall, Ray de Vries The SAGE Handbook of
Qualitative Methods in Health Research
(2010)

Themes:
Specific methods – focus groups
RM and assumptions
RM as problematic
When conducting focus groups with members of ethnic minorities whose first
language may not be that of the researchers, it is also easy to make
unwarranted assumptions about ‘sameness’ based on shared language skills
… Translation can be a potential minefield and it is important to enlist the help
of bilingual moderators in carrying out back translation to ensure that offensive
and insensitive vocabulary is avoided (Culley et al., 2007) p.339
Bourgeault et al

Themes:
Assumptions of contexts for RM
Issues of control flagged up as a concern in studies with RM
“A lack of language skills can therefore upset the practice of observation in a
foreign terrain”.
The role of interpreters. “Interpreters can transform questions – either
consciously or unconsciously – reducing researchers’ control over their
projects. Similar problems can arise in the process of transcription and
translation”. P.629.
Bourgeault et al

Themes:
Where is RM situated?
What is deemed to be core to the ‘business’ of interviewing and what is on the
periphery?
“The need to conduct interviews in a foreign language raises numerous issues
that are beyond the scope of the present chapter”. P,78
Gubrium and Holstein Handbook of interview research: context & method
(2002)

Researching Multilingually – drawing on work produced
in languages other than English
Parallel conversations – Risager (2011) & Haberland (2013)
Risager – roles and responsibilities of interpreters in e.g. research into the
experiences of newcomers to Denmark (2005-8)
Identity issues - impact of the worldview of the interpreter on the interaction,
developing interest of researchers in the life stories of the interpreters
Personal communication from academics working in Greek and English,
Mandarin and English reported ‘no’ sources in Greek and Mandarin guiding RM
practice
In Portuguese, the issue is not discussed in undergraduate and masters’
methodology textbooks.

Researching Multilingually – drawing on work produced
in languages other than English
Haberland (2013) based in Denmark, writing in English, Danish and French
“the representation issue for multilingual interaction (which would include the
use of several languages in the research process as distinct from the study of
multilingual interaction itself)”
“how to represent multilingual interaction (e.g. research interviews) for an
audience that is not multilingual with the same languages as are represented in
your data.”
“the representation of multilingual interaction and to the use of non-Latin scripts
in transcription. I think this is a relevant issue for multilingual research, although
I have not really seen it treated anywhere else.”

Concluding thoughts
The project can contribute to ‘mainstream’ thinking on research methods and
methodologies regarding RM
Findings and challenges from studies in a wide range of disciplines can feed
into our research design, theorising, fieldwork, analyses and dissemination
Disciplinary norms and research paradigms seem to feed into ways of
engaging with and representing RM
Learning from studies conducted and presented / written in a range of
languages remains a task to pursue

Concluding thoughts
Final thoughts:
Bashiruddin 2013
the process of translation and making meaning out of the stories is a complex
and time consuming process… The researcher needs to negotiate meanings by
involving the participants. Third, situating the stories in a social context requires
in-depth knowledge and understanding by the researcher of the context in
which the stories are situated. This can only be understood if the researcher is
aware of the context and is constantly exploring it through the lens of the
research participants.”
Our challenge in working with people who are vulnerable, in pain

“Coming clean” about researching multilingually – learning from different disciplines.

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