Researching Multilingually AHRC-funded Network Project

1. Researching Multilingually AHRC-funded Network Project Prue Holmes, Richard Fay, Jane Andrews, MariamAttia Cultnet 27-29 April 2012

2. History of our collaboration • 2010 Seminar at Durham University – Doing • Research Multilingually • 2011 Colloquium at British Association of Applied • Linguistics, UWE annual conference – Doing • research multilingually – diverse approaches and • representational choices • Dec 2011 AHRC project started

3. Arts & Humanities Research Council Research Theme: Translating Cultures “… ‘translation’ is an essential tool in ensuring that languages, values, beliefs, histories and narratives can be mutually shared and comprehended. We need to consider not only the complex mechanisms of translating one language into another, but also more broadly how cultural exchange and transmission functions in a variety of circumstances and periods, including communication and miscommunication, multiculturalism, toleration and migration.” http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/translatingcultures. aspx

4. Aim of the project • To investigate and clarify the epistemological and methodological processes of researching in more than one language—whether dialogic, observational, textual, or mediated—and their implications for research design, instruments, data collection and generation, translation and interpretation, and reporting. • => understanding, reporting and representation of people of other languages

5. Research gap • We need approaches that involve the multilingual co-production of data and the inclusion of everyone involved in the analysis and reporting of the language, whatever their language (Collier, Hegde, Lee, Nakayama & Yep, 2002) • The multilingual nature of such complex and ambiguous processes of meaning construction largely occur in the minds of researchers, or translators/interpreters • What level of engagement is required? • What resources are available?

6. Methodology • 3 two-day seminars (Durham, Bristol, Manchester) • 12 presentations in each • Feed back • Conference papers, publications

7. Researching Multilingually website http://researchingmultilingually.com/

8. Issues arising from Durham seminar • Researching in teams • Ethical constraints • Power • Impacts & opportunities of not knowing a • language • Researchers’ trajectories in engaging in • multilingual research • Postgraduate students’ stories

9. Issues arising from Bristol seminar • The role of mediators – how do they influence interpretation of findings? What about children? How to make the role of mediators (as researchers) more visible • => “How correctly did we express the spirit of their needs?” • Market research—”quick and dirty” • The “professionals”! Working with translators; managing transcriptions • Preparing translated data for the supervisor/examiner – when is enough enough? faithfulness? The correct way?

10. Emerging epists & meths • A theoretical framework: • Fashion, intentionality, convention • What is usually done? • What you think is right • What you should to • (Convention and fashion ignore awareness) • Researching Multilinguallyspaces • (Research; researched; researcher; presentation) • Double processing of meaning of pps’ insights/Double distillation of data • Analytical complexities (reflexive, textual, linguistic) • Good practice: ethics, consistency, explicitness (training for next generation of researchers)

11. Where to next? • “English was everywhere; it entered indirectly, even if it wasn’t foreseen” • building the network • panels • group projects • more meetings annually (through PhD students) • strands within disciplines • conferences/papers • workshops • training materials • And … ???