Holmes, P. (Durham University), Fay, R. (University of Manchester), Attia, M. (Durham University) and Andrews, J. (University of the West of England), Researching multilingually and interculturally. Paper presented at the 19th CultNet, hosted by Durham University, April 21st-23rd, 2016.

1. Researching Multilingually at the Borders of
Language, the Body, Law and the State
(AH/L009636/1)
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/
Researching Multilingually
and Interculturally
21-23 April 2016
Prue Holmes, Richard Fay, Jane Andrews, Mariam Attia
Durham University

2. 1. Introducing the project
2. “researching multilingually” (RMly)
“researching interculturally” (RICly)
3. Theoretical possibilities/positionings (the affordances of an
ecological framework)
4. An example from the RMly@ borders project Conclusions
5. Conclusions/implications
- Matters of ecology
- Matters of trustworthiness
Preview

3. www.researching-multilingually-at-borders.com
(AHRC large grant under the “Translating cultures” theme, 2014-17)
http://researchingmultilingually.com/
(AHRC network grant, 2011-12)

4.  Concepts of borders and security/insecurity raise
important practical and ethical questions as to how
research might be conducted.
 Focus on Methods:
 comparing across discipline-specific methods,
 interrogating arts and humanities methods where the
body and body politic are under threat,
 developing theoretical and methodological insights as
a result.
 There are some pockets of work in disciplines but no
overarching framework across multiple disciplines.”
Context of the AHRC large-grant project:
Languages under pressure and pain
(at borders)

5. Structure of the Project
Five Case Studies

6. Structure of the Project
Two Hubs

7. Structure of the Project
Multimodal Complementary Methods
Processes
(iterative, reflexive, ethical)
Researchers & PhD students
Research spaces: 5 case studies
(interdisciplinarity)
CATC hub
Performance, artistic
creative methods
RMTC hub
Academic, investigative,
comparative methods

8. Five Case Studies
CS1: Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender
Based Trauma (Scotland/Sierra Leone)
English language education for refugees/asylum seekers
(Scotland)
CS2: Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal
process (UK/Netherlands)
CS3: State: Working and Researching Multilingually at State
and EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania)
CS4: Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American Southwest
borderlands (Arizona, USA)
CS5: Language Education: Arabic as a Foreign Language for
International Learners (Gaza);

9. • How do researchers generate, translate, interpret and write up data
(dialogic, mediated, textual, performance) from one language to another?
• What ethical issues emerge where multiple languages are present?
• What methods and techniques improve processes of researching
multilingually?
• How does multimodality (e.g. visual methods, ‘storying’, performance)
complement and facilitate multilingual research praxis?
• How can researchers develop clear multilingual research practices and yet
also be open to emergent research design?
 What does it mean to research interculturally ?
(context/spaces, relationships, power)
 Existing work (Canella & Lincoln, 2011; Christians, 2011; Najar, 2015;
Robinson-Pant & Woolf, 2011)
RMTC Hub research questions
(“researching multilingually””

10. What does it mean to research interculturally?
(context/spaces, relationships, power)
An overarching theme
Developing researcher awareness of possibilities and complexities of
researching multilingually at all stages of a research process
Purposefulness/intentionality
Making informed and intentional researcher decisions
(Stelma, Fay & Zhou, 2013)
researcher reflexivity & sensitivity, identity
Relationships
Among researchers, participants, mediators, interpreters, translators, team
members, supervisors, funders
=> ethics, trust, roles, responsibilities
Spaces
Research (phenomenon); researched (context, participants); researcher
(language resources); re/presentation (reporting/dissemination)
(From our RMly theorising [Holmes et al., 2013])
Power/Ethics ???

11. What does it mean to research interculturally?
Multilingual relationships and intercultural capabilities
RMly researchers must:
• build and nurture relationships (underpinned by power and
positioning) among all stakeholders
• recognise the values and motivations of those initiating, undertaking
and evaluating the research (project funders, managers, researchers,
policy implementers)
• negotiate the institutional parameters of the research site or
context: the institutions involved
• the in-between, and often unexplored, spaces—the silences,
interruptions, apprehensions, unexplored and unarticulated tensions
and decision making—invoked in the minds of researchers and
research participants (and perhaps other stakeholders)

12. Building on previous thinking
“Constraints on multilingual [intercultural] research practice vary across
institutions, across fields of research, disciplines and paradigms.
The symbolic & regulatory power of institutions [research contexts] 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 [and researcher identity] of
individual researchers, thesis supervisors and principal investigators on research
projects.”
(Andrews & Martin-Jones, 2012)
What takes place in these spaces concerns relationality, power and ?? (identity?
Culture?)

13. Researching RMly & RICly
Researching multilingually
• How researchers draw on their
own, and others’ multilingual
resources in the researching,
reporting, and representation
of people where multiple
languages are at play.
Researching interculturally
• How researchers draw on
their communicative
resources to negotiate the
research spaces (context,
power) where their research
is located, and the relational
and communicative aspects
in those spaces, including
their own researcher identity

14. Researching and communicating in
multilingual/intercultural worlds
Researching (RM-ly) Communicating (IC-ly)
The researched phenomenon …
 often intercultural in focus and multilingual in
modality, e.g., a PhD focusing on the Chinese-
speaking students’ academic acculturation in the
UK
The research environment
 often intercultural and multilingual, e.g., a
Chinese-speaking PhD researcher studying in an
English-medium UK university
The researcher(s)
 often able to live and study in/though several
cultures and languages, i.e., intercultural and
multilingual
The research texts/dissemination
 Anglo-centric cultures of research and
dissemination, i.e., value attached more/only to
English-medium publication/dissemination
The communication phenomenon …
 often intercultural in focus and multilingual in
modality, e.g., Chinese-speaking students
interacting with non-Chinese students in a
university classroom in the UK
The communication environment
 intercultural and multilingual, e.g., the
multilingual/intercultural classroom in an English-
medium UK university
The communicator(s)
 sojourning and home students living and
studying in/though several cultures and languages,
i.e., intercultural and multilingual
The communication texts/learning
 Anglo-centric cultures of learning, i.e., value
attached more/only to English-medium
texts/learning styles

15. Rmly researchers as IC
communicators
IC communicators . . .
Intercultural competence
 Intercultural dialogue, although a
contested notion (Hoskins &
Sallah, 2010)
 Ethical communication (Ferri,
2014)
 IC responsibility (Guilherme,
2010)
 Capabilities - from Sen and
Nussbaum (Crosbie, 2014)
 IC incompetence (Phipps, 2014)
RMly researchers . . .
Researcher competence
RMly researchers must make
decisions about …)
 ethical practices
 literatures and conceptualisations
in different languages
 fieldwork practices and
relationships
 data collection, generation,
analysis
 representation,
 writing up, dissemination

16. Drawing on an ecological framework
Linguistic ecologies:
• Individual linguistic repertoires (Gumperz, 1973)
• Individuals’ biographies & experiential knowledge (Busch, 2012)
• Linguistic environments (Blommaert, 2013)
– Structured determinants; interactional emergence
• Resources and expectations in the environment (Stelma, Fay & Zhou,
2013)
• Communication dynamics and the linguistic environment - of researchers,
of others

17. The environment
• the interconnectedness and interdependency of all things – a universality that
accommodates difference, diversity.
• the context (research spaces)
Social relations
• inter-relationships
• the need to manage intercultural communication with co-researchers,
participants, interpreters & translators & mediators, supervisors, funders
• human (inter)subjectivity , researcher reflexivity, identity
 Intercultural communicators must grapple with these matters in their
interactions
 So must RMly/RICly researchers in their research
(not surprising – but why does it matter?)
Guattari. F. (2000). The three ecologies. London: The Althone Press.

18. An example: Case Study 3
Working and Researching Multilingually at
State and EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania)
– Linguistic ecologies
– Research spaces
– Researcher relationships

19. An example: CS3 Romania/Bulgaria
Linguistic ecologies  R’s communicative resources (English, French, Bulgarian,
Romanian)
Research spaces (context, power)
The researched phenomenonethnography at Romanian border
The research environmentpolitics related to refugee/asylum/border crossing ;
The researchers)languages, disciplinary perspectives
The research texts/dissemination
 English, French, Bulgarian, Romanian; public workshops (“Connect”); field
notes in two languages, translating fieldnotes/interviews into creative arts

20. Relational aspectsresearcher(s), supervisors, participants,
translators, interpreters, transcribers, editors, and funders,
gatekeepers?
Working with co-researchers (large project, flat power structure)
 NGOs, Border guards/govt officials, border crossers; getting
access; negotiating data collection; disseminating findings
Ethics

21. Implications
• How do researchers approach their work ? (ideology)
• How do researchers and supervisors manage the research process together?
(instrumental – the researcher apprenticeship)
– Links to EUROMEC project
• Why does all of this matter?

22. Conclusion: Matters of ecology
A “researching interculturally” perspective draws attention to:
– the linguistic repertoires and resources, individuals’ biographies and
experiential knowledge, social relations, communication dynamics, the
linguistic environment (of researchers, of others)
– inter-relationships, interconnectivity in the environment (the research
spaces )
– social relations & communication dynamics- the need to manage
intercultural communication with co-researchers, participants, interpreters
& translators & mediators, supervisors, funders
– human (inter)subjectivity /researcher identity & reflexivity

23. To ensure the trustworthiness of the research, RMly/RICly researchers
might consider the following:
 Adopt an Rmly approach
 build and nurture relationships among all stakeholders
- Interrogate positions of power and positioning
 recognise the values and motivations of those initiating, undertaking and
evaluating the research
- project funders, supervisors, ethics committees, other researchers, policy
implementers
 negotiate the institutional parameters of the research site or context
- e.g., the institutions involved
 investigate the in-between, and often unexplored, spaces—the silences,
interruptions, apprehensions, unexplored and unarticulated tensions and
decision making—invoked in the minds of researchers, supervisors, and
research participants (and other stakeholders)
 (re)negotiate researcher identity (in and through these relationships and
spaces)
Conclusion: Matters of trustworthiness

24. Building a wider RMly researcher knowledge base and network:
www.researchingmultingually.com
www.researching-multilingually-at-borders.com
1) What is your experience of doing research in more than one language?
2) What is your experience of becoming aware of the complexities in this
area?
Send 300 – 500 words (same text can be offered in different languages) and
photo (JPEG) to mariam.attia@durham.ac.uk
An invitation to participate

25. Thank you
p.m.holmes@durham.ac.uk
Holmes, P., Fay, R., Andrews, J., Attia,
M. (2013). Researching multilingually:
New theoretical and methodological
directions. International Journal of
Applied Linguistics, 23(3), 285–299.
Holmes, P. Fay, R., Andrews, J., Attia,
M. (2016, in press). The possibility of
researching multilingually. In H. Zhu
(Ed.), Research methods in
intercultural communication: A
practical guide. London: Wiley.