Mapping multilingualism in research practice:
the view from two research networks
Colloquium at BAAL 2012
Co-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 practice
Funded 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 MartinJones, Adrian Blackledge & Angela Creese
Project based at Universities of the West of England
(UWE), Durham and Manchester
Researching multilingually
Funded 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, UWE
and
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 examples
Reflection 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.