Mapping multilingualism in research practice: the view from two research networks

Mapping multilingualism in research practice: the view from two research networks

Colloquium at BAAL 2012Co-organisers: Prue Holmes, Durham University and Deirdre Martin, University of Birmingham

Project based at the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism, University of Birmingham

Researching multilingualism, multilingualism in research practiceFunded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 2010-2013, as part of its Researcher Development Initiative (Round 4)www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/education/mosaic/index.aspx

Project team: Deirdre Martin (PI), Marilyn Martin-Jones, Adrian Blackledge & Angela Creese

Project based at Universities of the West of England (UWE), Durham and Manchester

Researching multilinguallyFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), as part of its Translating Cultures programme, 2011 – 2012.http://researchingmultilingually.com

Project team: Prue Holmes (PI) and Mariam Attia (Durham); Richard Fay (Manchester) and Jane Andrews (UWE)

Developing multilingual research practice for new times:

a challenge to the status quo

Jane Andrews, UWEand

Marilyn Martin-Jones, MOSAIC, University of Birmingham

Outline

• An established, field-specific tradition of multilingual practice

• Epistemological & methodological advantages accruing from reflexive multilingual practice

• New times, new mobilities, new multilingualisms• Globalisation of research worlds: different groups of

researchers• Multilingual research practice & the lone doctoral

researcher: opportunities & constraints

An established, field-specific tradition of multilingual research practice

• Located within the field of multilingualism• Developed through sociolinguistic and

ethnographic research over two decades (early 1990s to the present)

• Characterised by considerable reflexivity

Some examplesReflection on:• The challenges and pitfalls of research with interpreters

(Martin et al., 2004; Andrews, 2012)• The nature and scope of ethnography in multilingual settings

(Heller, 2006; 2008)• Researcher positioning in the field (Giampapa, 2012; Jonsson

2012; Muhonnen, 2012)• The development of dialogic approaches to multilingual

literacy research (Jones, Martin-Jones and Bhatt, 2000)• Research in multilingual teams (Creese et al. 2008; Blackledge

and Creese, 2010)

Epistemological & methodological advantages accruing from reflexive multilingual practice

A deepening of our understanding of the ways in which spoken & written language mediates:• The negotiation of insider-outsider identities

and researcher positioning• The representation of research participants

(their practices, beliefs & values) in research narratives

• Processes of knowledge exchange

Epistemological & methodological advantages accruing from reflexive multilingual practice

A growing awareness of:• How attention to the detail of multilingual practice

can make knowledge construction more transparent (e.g. analysis of language alternation in interviews)

• How the interpretive processes involved in transcription, transliteration and/or analysis of multilingual data can be made more visible

• How different voices can be incorporated into research narratives (e.g. those of participants or different members of a multilingual team)

Research collaboration and multilingual research teams

Greater acknowledgement of:1. The ways in which bilingual researchers are

positioned within the academy and within research projects and how this positioning can be challenged

2. The need to take account of how researchers’ communicative repertoires & language and literacy resources are shaped by their own histories and educational trajectories

3. The need to be aware of the implications of 1 and 2 at different stages of the research process

New times, new mobilities, new multilingualisms

• Globalisation and new mobilities – movement of people, circulation of goods, texts, images, ideas, discourses etc.

• Increased visibility of multilingualism e.g. in linguistic landscapes of cities, on the internet, in new media

• Increased exploration of new multilingual ways of engaging in research & development of new conceptual compasses (e.g ‘Trajectories’ Heller, 2011; ‘Mobile resources’ Blommaert, 2010)

Globalisation of research worlds

• Internationalisation policies of universities• Increased transnational flow of students and

greater mobility for doctoral researchers• Increased border-crossing among post

doctoral researchers, seeking employment• Internationalisation of research - transnational

research collaborations• Internationalisation policies of funding bodies:

EU, HERA, ESF, UNESCO, ESRC

Multilingual researchers in a global age: different groups, resources, opportunities and

constraints• Lone doctoral researchers • Early years post-doctoral researchers

-Appointed to funded research projects-Independent researchers

• Members of research teams that have been constituted transnationally

(See handout for discussion)

New dimensions of multilingual research practice (opportunities & constraints)

See handout for examples

Institutional constraints

• The monolingual regime established in most universities, funding bodies and companies producing software for academic research

• The current practices and regulations of universities and the growing audit culture (e.g. research ethics procedures, supervision records)

• University library resources and documentation practices

• The demands of the globalised publishing industry

Concluding remarks: a varied picture• Constraints on multilingual research practice vary

across institutions, across fields of research, disciplines and paradigms

• The symbolic & regulatory power of institutions is not fixed or monolithic: it is always possible to create spaces for alternative ways of working and for different voices to be heard.

• Creating these spaces depends on the agency of individual researchers, thesis supervisors, principal investigators on research projects, university librarians and publishers.