“what does it mean to be (en)languaged in a world of vulnerability, discrimination, inequity and...
TRANSCRIPT
“What does it mean to be (en)languaged in a world of vulnerability, discrimination, inequity and pain?”
Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state
Richard Fay [on behalf of the RMTC Hub]
Research Matters Manchester Institute of Education: 28th October, 2015
AHRC Large Grant (2014-17) under the Translating Cultures theme
PI: Professor Alison Phipps (Glasgow)http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/
“Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the body, law and the state [AH/L006936/1]
Ment of 1. … to introduce this AHRC-funded , three-year (2014-17), large grant and to
outline some of its complexity (‘multi-multi’) 2. … to trace the development of an initial idea into a large project and note what
has changed along the way (what made it more fundable?) 3. … to identify key elements in the project (embed creative arts, aspire multi- --->
inter-disciplinary, challenge global knowledge flows, embrace ideological-philosophical problematisation re ‘language’ + ‘pain and pressure’)
4. … to focus on some of the RMTC Hub ‘ways of working’ and outline some of the insights arising (some HOWs and WHATs)
5. … to consider the educational aspects of what is an Arts & Humanities (rather than e.g. Social Sciences) project
6. … to reflect upon the socially-engaged/transformative criticality inherent in the project (in academia and in society more generally)
I am a Co-Investigator located in the RMTC Hub (Researching Multilingually and Translating Cultures Hub)
Introduction (main aims of the session - not necessarily in order!)
• A chance conversation Exploratory Symposium (Durham 2010)
… possibilities for, complexities of RM-ly… developing researcher competence… ecological framing (intentionality)… narratives / reflective practice… UK HE Doctoral emphasis
• 1st BAAL Colloquium (2011)
• An AHRC Research Network (2011-13)• “rooted in intercultural communication, linguistics, and interpretation and translation” • invited “researchers across a range of disciplines, through a series of seminars, to demonstrate how they theorise and operationalise their data collection processes when working in more than one language”.• aimed to “build cross-disciplinary/-domain researchcapacity by foregrounding this under-investigated epistemological and methodological domain”.
The Development of an Idea (1)
• 2nd BAAL Colloquium (2012) – jointly with large ESRC project “Researching multilingualism: multilingualism in research practice”
researching multilingually (RM-ly) vs researching multilingualism (RM-ism)Papers on: researcher trajectories vis-à-vis RM-ly; on policy re RM-ly; etc
• Special Issue of IJAL (2013)e.g. “Researching multilingually: New theoretical and methodological directions”e.g. “Developing intentionality and researching multilingually: An ecological and
methodological perspective”. e.g. “It’s a very difficult question, isn’t it?” Researcher, interpreter and research
participant negotiating meanings in an education research interview.”e.g. “Linguistic incompetence: Giving an account of researching multilingually.”e.g. “Multilingual research practices in community research: The case of
migrant/refugee women in North East England.”
• Book Chapter (2016)How to research multilingually: possibilities and complexities. In Z. Hua (Ed.), Research methods in intercultural communication: a practical guide.
The development of an idea (2)
Our RM-ly activities … • seemed to ‘hit a rich but under-discussed spot’ in researcher (including supervisor and
examiner) practice• benefited from support from senior colleagues elsewhere (e.g. ESRC project)• quickly broadened in disciplinary reach• quickly broadened out from a main focus on data and analysis to all aspects of the
research endeavour vis-à-vis the possibilities and complexities of RM-ly • valued researcher reflections on, narratives of, and presentations about some of the RM-
ly aspects of their work (researcher thinking, researcher development, researcher praxis)• distinguished RM-ly from RM-ism• focused on praxis, on researcher development, and on language in research policy • benefitted from, and contributed to, our existing work* on developing researcher
competence and ecological thinking (intentionality/purposefulness)• generated sufficient outputs and impact as to be noticed
* Juup Stelma and me
Taking Stock
• Shift in focus 1: from an instrumental concern with the possibilities for, and complexities of, RM-ly … to a more philosophical and sociological concern with “What does it mean to be languaged (and to language) ….?”
• Shift in focus 2: from multi-disciplinary research focused on any sites …. to sites of pain and pressure in particular
• Addition 1: a critical-transformative ethos / challenging contexts
• Addition 2: creative arts as, in, and for research (embedded/ integrated throughout)
• Addition 3: research interactions between (five) case studies (different
disciplines, traditions, sites, RQs, methods, language possibilities, etc) and (two) hubs (RM-ly/applied linguistics and creative/performative arts)
• Addition 4: disciplinary-boundaries challenge/intent (interdisciplinarity + repositioning of Arts/Humanities research)
The New Vision – becoming more fundable?
practice
• What difference does your language make to your life, safety, well-being?• How many ways might your life and stories be translated and be represented by others?• With what kind of power and ethics?• ‘What does it mean to be languaged in today’s world?’• Languaged/ing under Pain and Pressure.• Troubling the cult of English/monolingually masked research.
Translating Cultures (AHRC Large Grant 2014-17)
RM-ly at Borders: Aims
Two over-arching aims:
1. to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practices in challenging contexts;
and
2. while doing so, to document, describe and evaluate appropriate research methods (traditional and arts-based) and develop theoretical approaches for this type of academic exploration.
How can translation and interpretation processes and practices at the borders of language, the body, law, and the state be rigorously theorised and researched, and research findings
effectively represented and evaluated, in a multilingual manner?
(1) Theory: How can researchers develop a rigorous and coherent approach to research on translation and interpretation processes and practices in multilingual settings where the body or body politic is perceived to be in pain, danger or transition, and where language relations are distant and proximate? (2) Methodology: How can research methodologies and ethical practices for working in multilingual contexts and/or with multilingual people, particularly but not exclusively where vulnerability, power differences and conflict are key issues, be developed, tested and refined? (3) Representation: What is the role of language and translation at times of considerable pressure and how can this be described and represented when multiple languages, silences, and media are involved? (4) Evaluation and Knowledge Exchange: How can the challenges and contribution of research in multilingual environments be made more explicit, and be effectively evaluated and exchanged?
RM-ly at Borders: Research Questions
Five Case Studies1) Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender
Based Trauma – Scotland/Uganda (Sierra Leone)
2) Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal process - UK/Netherlands
3) State: Working and Researching Multilingually at State and EU borders - Bulgaria/Romania
4) Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American Southwest borderlands - Arizona
5) Language Education: Arabic as a Foreign Language for International Learners - Gaza
Translating Cultures – Case Studies
Focus on Methods: Part of the innovative nature of the project lies not in using new methods per se, but rather …
(i) in comparing across discipline-specific methods, (ii) interrogating research methods where the body and body politic are
under threat, and (iii) in developing theoretical and methodological insights as a result.
(iv) Arts-based representations … “performance, artistic and creative methods”
Using accessible arts-based methods to open up settled meanings whilst documenting and analysing commonalities and differences in concepts, methods, processes and practices across a range of fields, countries, disciplines and policy areas ….
Translating Cultures - Methods
… the members of the RMTC 'hub' will lead the development of integrated conceptual and methodological approaches, tools,
and methods for researching translation processes and practices at borders where bodies are often at risk, in pain and/or in
transition
… together with the CATC 'hub' they will work with all researchers in the team, both in the field and remotely, at strategic stages and milestones throughout the project, to
collate, consolidate and improve research practices in multilingual contexts.
The RMTC Hub: Responsibilities
• How do researchers generate, translate, interpret and write up data (dialogic, mediated, textual, performance) from one language to another?
• What ethical issues emerge in the planning and execution of data collection and representation (textual, visual, performance) 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?
RMTC Hub: RQs
The RMTC’s data corpus will be derived from six complementary and overlapping sources of data within and across the research team and sites:
• the five case studies (data generated by the methods outlined in each case … and other emergent methods);
• reflections and narratives gathered from researchers’ journals, virtual communication tools, and multilingual researcher practice;
• data generated within interactive social media and other virtual sites (e.g. the project blog);
• performative data (generated by the CATC ‘hub’);• RMTC ‘hub’ members’ dialogues, reflections, observations, and where necessary,
their own data collection with researchers and participants, and with documents (drawing on the methods described above, and the data generation methods outlined below); and
• their synthesis and insights drawn from researching multilingually practices and representation across the project.
Simultaneously, data emerging from the case studies will retain their own integrity and contribution to knowledge and understanding as specific sites of multilingual practice
RMTC Hub: Data Corpus
• Researching the researchers? (ethical issues)• Exploratory Practice (curiosities re project collaborations)• Return to earlier methods (researcher narratives, reflections,
and examples of practice; conceptualisation/theory-work)
Two examples:• RM-ly in the research process: Interdisciplinary fieldwork
(Uganda/GMH/DIME methodology + language and intercultural issues)
• RM-ly thinking betwixt and between research sites: Hotspots (e.g. researchers’ linguistic preparation for fieldwork, an issue arising in the space between Case Study 1 (GMH-focus) and Case Study 3 (Anthropology-focused)
• Theory-work …….• Literature Review (e.g. David Boder)
Ways of Working
Uganda Fieldwork (1)
‘Building capacity for culturally appropriate psychosocial interventions in Northern Uganda’• DIME (Design, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation) developed at John Hopkins University by
Applied Mental Health Research Group (AMHR)• A multiphasic approach developed to assist with the development of psychosocial interventions for
mental health difficulties in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). • …. the process is based on the principles of community-based participatory research (CBCR)
• Over 40 different languages are spoken in Uganda.• There has been a tendency to translate local language understanding about distress into English (as a
step to providing local people with access to pre-existing, or new developed, forms of treatment often offered by international NGOs).
• The textbooks used to train mental health professionals in Uganda tend to come from US/UK.• English language descriptions of forms of psychopathology predominate in training.• This has created a context where the global and the local dynamically interact.
https://rosswhiteblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/working-multilingually-to-promote-wellbeing-in-northern-uganda/
Uganda Fieldwork (2)
From the earlier project … and ongoing in new project:• Researcher thinking / researcher praxis / researcher education• Ecological thinking re researcher ‘purposefulness’ (process model)• Mapping – of RM-ly in aspects of the research process and of the RM-ly
aspects of each study (spatial and relational)• Policy formulation• Ethics reframing• Theory of ‘language’ - languaged/languaging/translingual practice• Theory re global knowledge flows (e.g., decolonizing methodology,
Southern Theory)• Theory of Aesthetics – language/intercultural/research aesthetics• Critical Theory – e.g. CAL, critical pedagogy, applied ethnomusicology• Pain and Pressure – language/the body under pain and pressure• Capabilities Approach
Theory-work
Literature Review (1)
• Boder, D.P. (1949). I did not interview the dead. • Rosen, A. (2010). The wonder of the voices: the 1946 Holocaust interviews
of David Boder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.• http://voices.iit.edu -- Voices of the Holocaust• Niewyk, D.L. (ed.) (1998). Fresh wounds: early narratives of Holocaust
survival. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press.
• David Boder - Jewish Russian/Latvian-born emigrant to the US; psychologist
• July 1946, visited DP (displaced persons) camps and ‘shelter houses’ - 16 sites across four countries France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany
• interviewed Holocaust survivors …. to: -- preserve authentic record of wartime suffering; -- explore impact of extreme suffering on personality; -- inform post-war American public about the ghetto and camp victims; -- support the DP’s case for immigration to America. • “We know very little in America about the things that happened to you
people who were in concentration camps”.• 130 interviews (20 mins - several hours) recorded (wire technology) in 9
weeks in 9 languages (English, French, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Spanish/Ladino, Yiddish)
• interviews - broad ethnographic purpose (songs also recorded)
Literature Review (2)
data transcribed, translated (80+ of the interviews into English), analysed, disseminated and publicised these stories.
published accounts included Boder’s (revealing re knowledge and language issues) questions/comments
intentionally multilingual: -- case for neutral language (e.g. English) to minimise the potential to relive trauma -- Boder: survivors use “their own language” to avoid potential for “curtailment, straining and oversimplification of the content” using a foreign tongue -- “Since that is her language in which she can talk freely without any difficulty or artificiality, I will endeavor to understand her” -- However, given US-audience, sometimes used English as shared lingua franca -- Thus, ‘tension’ between storyteller comfort and audience-reach. transcription close to original - “their language habits show[ed] evidence of
trauma” published interviews preserved/represented the “verbal peculiarities” of the
original speakers since these bore linguistic evidence of their trauma. some interviews translated / annotated by camp survivor Bernard Wolf
(1998) Niewyk edited / presented 36 of Boder's interviews
Literature Review (3)
• Islamic University of Gaza (Dr Nazmi Al-Masri, PhD alumnus)- online curriculum development for (and teacher education to support) Teaching Arabic to Speakers of Other Languages (TASOL) informed by critical pedagogy, appropriate methodology, human rights education, and intercultural perspectives - developing (online) language (teacher) education under conditions of siege- education in challenging contexts (and the role of technology in them)
• Language Education (and other forms of language-work) - ML/MC aspects of education for new arrivals (Germany more than the UK!!)
• Researcher Education• Interdisciplinary education• Professional education (e.g. Law, GMH) and disciplinary
education (e.g. anthropology)
(Some) Educational Perspectives
• Problematises the conventional research and disciplinary boundaries (researchers-without-borders)
• Seeks to ‘make a difference’ (e.g. inform public policy, provide support for those who have experienced / experiencing trauma, act as advocates for social justice, etc)
• Embeds the arts in the project as, in, and for research• Invites practitioners to reflect on their practice and to develop
praxis informed by RM-ly thinking and considerations• Works with wide-range of NGOs, arts groups, support groups,
etc• Challenges Global North (final performance)
Some aspects of criticality
• Seminar organisation• Guest-speaker / lecture / plenary• Advisory Group membership (AHRC / Glasgow)• Creative Artist (music, poetry, Brussels Performance)• (joint) Special Issue editor• (joint) Book Series editor• (joint) book editor• (joint) author of many papers at unusual events, e.g. Medical Anthropology,
Creative Arts & Performance in (Language) Research• (joint) author of book chapters and journal articles (more to come), e.g.
Transcultural Psychiatry, Languages and Intercultural Communication …• Papers/Publications/Events collaborative with former and current PGRs• Workshops in the community (Brussels, Bucharest, Glasgow)• PGR Researcher Development workshops (DTC NE at Durham)• Upcoming event RM@Borders + HCRI (Manchester early summer 2016)
Perrsonal Development
The Birth of the Idea
“I like(d) the idea of an inter-hub joint “Performance” … because it:
• takes us into the space that the final production (musical) will occupy; because it would take me (and I’m guessing others) into the rich (in terms of my researcher development) but still unfamiliar and a bit intimidating process of fully embedding CA methods, ways of thinking and working etc, into our research work; and
• starts the process of synthesising work (synthesising across the project along the lines of the cross-unit constellations that are now forming) in ways which the project will need to do by the end.
But, it may be that this is (possibly) a good idea coming at the wrong time and place? Too soon?”
Brussels Performance
HOTSPOTSI have five ‘hot-spots’ (or moments of puzzlement, curiosity and/or revelation) to share with you. These have arisen in – and from and through my reflections on, conversations about, and theorising my practice from - my (often shared) experiences and engagements with various (and not predictable) encounters within the project and intersections (and resonances and collisions between) them.
Brussels Performance
4) Drawing on one’s linguistic resources – Taken for granted“One of the arguments we make in the RM-ly project is that multilingual researchers need to draw on their linguistic resources when doing research multilingually.
I think this is easier said than done, and more exploration is needed to identify the challenges to ‘drawing one one’s own linguistic resources’, especially for researchers whose research training was/has been in English, and/or operate in English-medium research circles.
Although I find it easy to speak to Nazmi in Arabic, I would find it challenging to write an academic piece in the same language.
Being multilingual doesn’t mean that you have the complete competence or confidence to produce research multilingually.”
Brussels Performance
I'll start simply .... I play music, not really a creative artist, more a ‘musiker’ I play with languages, not really a linguist, more a ‘languager’
But it gets more complicated ... I support others, not a therapist, just a ??? …. hmmm, ‘well-being-er’? I explore ‘cultures’, not an anthropologist, just an ‘interculturalist’ I fight injustice, not a lawyer, just an activist
And even more complicated ... I’m thinking about researching multilingually,
but I’m not researching multilingualismI’ve developed online language courses,
but I’m not a Arabic as a Foreign Language expert and I've never worked under siege
(just in awe of what those who are can achieve)And my brother asks me, as brothers do,
“so exactly what parts of your skill-set qualify you for the project in Uganda?”And I wonder “just how I am contributing?”
I emerge, reflectively and reflexively, looking for hotspotsI immerse, curiously and exploratorily, becoming interdisciplinary
And it gets simpler …
Brussels Performance
?