1. Multilingual literacy practices and doctoral
supervision: exploring hidden voices,
identities and texts
Anna Robinson-Pant, University of East Anglia
A.Robinson-Pant@uea.ac.uk
Researching Multilingually Seminar, Manchester May 2012

2. Language as a barrier to supervision
“We give feedback about the style of the writing and
the ideas. Style is a big issue for international
students. I have one who volunteered to go for
language support – they could all do with that but
they don’t go… I find supervision very hard work
because of the language. It is a step up for
international students. Sometimes we are
communicating but I am not sure if they have
really understood it. They do all the form filling.”
[Interview with doctoral supervisor]

3. From language as a technical issue…
“I did my research in Swahili so I had to transcribe all my data then
translate it in English and sometimes when you think in another
language, even when I put down my sentences when sometimes in the
supervision, my supervisor will ask me, what do you mean here? I
will change things from backwards forwards because of how we speak
in Swahili and I had to transcribe it and give to someone to proof read
to be sure of the tenses and everything.” (Interview with Scholastica
Mokake)
“I challenge the golden rule which insists that learning the local
language is essential for successful fieldwork…Learning the language
is a ‘data collection exercise’ in its own right, and the investment of
valuable time and intellectual energy in acquiring this knowledge
should be assessed alongside the imperative to collect other kinds of
data” (Devereux 1992: 43)

4. … to language as a
methodological concern
“The head teacher initially told me that it was a good policy. Later on in
the conversation she went on to talk about the difficulties encountered
by her school, that it was impossible for her school with limited
resources to have so many goals. Implied in her indirect response to
me was a critique of the policy
But when I translated the statements into English, this did not seem to
have the same impact as it did in Bahasa Malaysia. So what then?
How do I tell my readers of a Western orientation that this is a
powerful critique of the policy? That the statement must be understood
in a cultural context where direct criticisms of ideas are said to violate
codes of language use and social conduct. One does not say an idea is
unworkable up front but rather one starts by praising the speaker and
the idea and then makes helpful suggestions to improve it, because
‘saving face’ is important.” Pillay (1995: 135)

5. Decolonising research
methodology
“Having been immersed in the Western academy
which claims theory as thoroughly Western, which
has constructed all the rules by which the
indigenous world has been theorised, indigenous
voices have been overwhelmingly silenced.”
Tuhiwai Smith 1999: 29
“I have always been disturbed by the way in which
the Euro-Western research process disconnects me
from the multiple relations that I have with my
community, the living and the non-living”
Chilisa 2012: 3

6. Academic literacies
“ Academic literacies research provides a methodology for understanding
the ways in which meanings are contested in higher education. In
particular, it is concerned with the broader social, cultural and
institutional frameworks within which meaning is negotiated through
particular texts, genres and discourses. It also moves away from a
focus on the individual learner, paying more attention to the broader
institutional context of learning and the ways in which meanings are
contested within this framing” (Lea, 2005: 192)
“Writers often experience a ‘crisis of identity’ when entering a new
discourse community” (Ivanic 2005: 394)
“Translators play a role, often hidden, in the discourses of academe”
(Nelson and Castello 2012: 49)

7. Intercultural communication
“Terms of cultural engagement, whether antagonistic
or affiliative, are produced performatively… the
representation of difference must not be hastily
read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or
cultural traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition”
(Bhabha 1994: 2)
“The tutorial encounter is a contested site, an
unstable ground where the footfalls are
unpredictable” (Turner 2011: 184)

8. Which journals? Whose authority?
Student: I think it’s difficult to find in English journal about
Thai study. So most of them are written in Thai language
and he [supervisor] not happy…one time he told me that
he cannot check that it’s OK because he cannot read the
Thai language.
Interviewer: And what did you feel about that?
Student: I’m OK because I understand – I think it’s necessary
about references, it should be good references... He said
that it’s not [well-known] journal… So I try to find journal
that talks about Thai culture and try to bring the Thai
culture to my supervisor.
[From interview with doctoral student]

9. When, what and how to
translate?
“I translate all the data myself. I can’t do anything but translation. My supervisor
read every transcript I translated so did it like a peer interview... checked her
interpretation and my view. Every step of my work got peer review. Only one
things annoys me this – they want me to do everything. We agreed at first that
I will translate a few interviews, then I will bring summaries but later she
wanted to read everything and the agreement changed”
“I need to translate lots of documents in Polish, I need an interpreter, it is the law.
I’m not so good to translate. So I had to pay to translated documents. I didn’t
translate everything – after I started to write in English, but in the annex, such
as the agreement for resettlement. My supervisor has experience in Russia but
can’t understand in Polish. If he can’t understand what I mean, we talk about it
and he says, maybe you can say it in this way… If I translate, Polish teachers
help me to say it.” [From interviews with doctoral students]

10. Writing in English: the ‘relational
dimension’ (Ivanic 2005: 398)
“My supervisors… say ‘you don’t write the way you talk - there’s a difference between
spoken English and written English’. I really didn’t understand what they were saying,
because after all I write and this is what I should have said. So it was a bit of a problem
to understand, and again I was writing too much, because we talk too much so we write
too much. …But now, I see…you just have to present this thing in a more concise way,
keep to the point.
I’ll give you an example – these things are mixed up, both in your study and in your culture.
It’s only when I came to England, for example that I have learnt how to critique – I mean
like there are some things you don’t say, let’s take an example – this was written by a
senior person, it’s difficult for a junior person to critique it, you know in the African
culture context. So you really need skills, you need some level of skill to do that, but
here I’ve learnt that ‘look, there is still a way to say no and be right’, without putting in
some insult or whatever, without breaking the culture. So what I’m trying to say is that
sometimes…writing is also a culture – your piece of writing can explain the kind of
culture you portray... That if your culture is not purely English culture, you re not likely
going to write very strong acceptable English, that would be within the English culture.
So you have to struggle, to move from your culture to the English culture.” [Interview
with doctoral student]

11. Reading and writing a thesis:
hidden voices, identities, texts
How can a thesis based on bilingual or multi-
lingual fieldwork incorporate or simply
acknowledge such voices?
Will the reader be aware of all the texts (published
and unpublished) shaping ideas in the thesis and
practices in the fieldwork?
How can the writer share with the reader the
experience of writing across cultures and
languages, in terms of her/his multiple and
shifting identities?

12. Implications for internationalising
UK higher education
Different emphasis within internationalisation policy:
from concern with integration, to focusing on transition/
migration as an educational experience in itself
Challenging power relationships within the university,
through positioning the student as ‘expert’ with regard to
multilingual research
Internationalisation as a way of destabilising and
transforming fixed genres and spaces within higher
education
Making language visible within research methodology
and theory building, rather than only in learning and
teaching contexts