Researching multilingually as a political act

Editor’s note: Multilingualism researchers and the products of their research can be surprisingly monolingual. It is therefore good to see the black box of multilingual research processes under the microscope in a new book devoted to the The Politics of Researching Multilingually. In this post we hear from the editors.

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Judith Reynolds, Sara Ganassin and Prue Holmes

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Readers of Language On The Move will be familiar with the idea that different languages and language varieties are imbued with different levels of social prestige, and that language use and language choice are closely tied up with issues of social justice in many contexts. But have you ever considered what impact the language choices made during a multilingual research process might have on the research outcomes, and on the individuals involved in research?

The Politics of Researching Multilingually

In our recently published edited volume The Politics of Researching Multilingually, this question is critically and reflexively explored by researchers from across the social sciences, many of whom are researching in global South contexts. We asked our contributors to think, write and research about the political dimensions of how they did researching multilingually, defined as ‘the process and practice of using, or accounting for the use of, more than one language in the research process’ (Holmes et al., 2016, p. 101). The result is a collection of 16 powerful chapters, in which our authors write candidly about their own ideological positions towards the languages involved in their research, their changing awareness of the power effects inherent in language choices and language use in research, and their journeys towards ‘researcher intentionality’ (Stelma and Fay, 2014; Stelma, Fay and Zhou, 2013) when researching in or through multiple languages.

In introducing the volume, we argue that our decisions about how we use linguistic resources in research are political, in that they involve the negotiation of relationships of unequal power in aspects such as the selection of research topics, engaging with different stakeholders, navigating the language hierarchies in play in the different contexts of the research, and determining the languages of dissemination of the research. The volume thematises both the constraints on researchers working multilingually, and their responses to such constraints, under four themes briefly presented here.

Hegemonic structures

Under the theme of hegemonic structures, contributions critically examine the role of institutional structures such as funding bodies, gatekeepers, the academy and the publishing industry in prioritising and legitimising or delegitimising certain languages in research.

In the context of French academia, Adam Wilson discusses the double linguistic burden placed on researchers seeking to publish and advance their careers in a dual French- and English-dominated globalised academic environment. In turn, Shameem Oozeerally describes the tensions involved in working as an interdisciplinary and multilingual research team in a Mauritian university context defined by a particular linguistic ideology and epistemological stance.

Lamia Nemouchi and Prue Holmes reflect on the experience of an international doctoral researcher implementing a project grounded in fieldwork in the multilingual context of Algeria, yet which was framed by the Anglo-monolingual conventions and expectations of a British university. In a different context, Wine Tesseur’s reflexive account of doing research about language practices within international NGOs operating in Kyrgyzstan emphasises the imperative to accommodate languages other than English in the research process.

Overall in this section of the volume, the impact of institutional frameworks of power on researching multilingually are highlighted.

Power relations

In contrast, within the second theme of power relations, contributions focus on the micro-interactional dimension of power and its negotiation in and through language use and language choices in a range of research spaces and relationships.

Jessica Chandras offers an ethnographic account of her heritage language learning process in the context of class- and caste-bound Indian-Pune society, and reflects on how this impacted on her research outcomes. In a study about multilingual refugee children in Cyprus, Alexandra Georgiou demonstrates the importance of understanding children’s views and perspectives through their own forms of expression using an inclusive research practice.

Helina Hookoomsing also highlights language choices and power dynamics in engaging in research focused on children’s multilingualism, albeit in the postcolonial context of multilingual Mauritius. In a further multilingual postcolonial context, Olga Camila Hernández Morales and Anne-Marie de Mejía discuss how they dealt with the linguistic hierarchies manifest in the Caribbean island of San Andrés in order to give access to the voices of the participants.

The contributions within this theme remind us that research is a domain of social life like any other, with inherent power dynamics that are negotiated in, with and through language(s).

Decolonising methodologies

The third theme of decolonising methodologies highlights how contributors to the volume have sought to address issues of inequality and voice in their research by drawing on methodological innovations and non-Eurocentric epistemologies.

Reporting on research examining community radio in rural India, Bridget Backhaus adopts a cognitive justice framework to theorise her collaboration with a local interpreter. In turn, in the context of a research project focusing on language learning experiences of forced migrants in Luxembourg, Erika Kalocsányiová and Malika Shatnawi describe a collaborative process of work between researcher and translator to faithfully represent participants’ complex linguistic repertoires on the page.

In the sphere of participatory arts research, Michael Richardson offers a reflexive account of the design and implementation of a UK based research project in deaf theatre, aiming to give equal prominence to spoken and signed languages. Finally, in a broader and more longitudinal account of their careers in research, Julie Byrd Clark and Sylvie Roy explore transdisciplinary and relational processes of interculturality that they have operationalised in their research on multilingual education for migrant youth in Canada.

The theme emphasises that when researching multilingually, researchers can and should engage in active processes of reshaping and repurposing the methodologies available to them in the research canon, in order to address epistemic and representational imbalances arising from and through language(s).

Decolonising languages

In the final theme of decolonising languages, contributors give accounts of the impact on their research of first, recognising that ‘named languages’ (Li, 2018, p. 19) often associated with nation-states are inherently political instruments carrying ideological baggage for participants; and second, acknowledging that human communication extends beyond named languages into languaging and translanguaging.

In this part of the volume, Rebekah Gordon proposes an approach to working multilingually with US-based transnational language teachers grounded in translanguaging pedagogy, that seeks to engage the linguistic and cultural repertoires of both researcher and participants. Liliane Meyer Pitton and Larissa Semiramis Schedel document language choices made in the different research phases of three projects conducted in Western Europe, exploring the reasons for these choices and analysing their (dis)empowering effects for researchers and researched.

Writing from Colombia, Rosa Alejandra Medina Riveros and Teresa Austin draw on critical multilingualism and translanguaging perspectives in their account of the research practices they developed for making decisions in a decolonising spirit in pedagogical research in this context. Finally, Christiana Holsapple shares an autoethnographic account of her own process of coming to understand the shifting significations and political nature of language practices in the Moldovan region of Gagauzia.

This theme opens the door to deeper conversations about the nature of research as a language process and product, and its potential to both preserve and maintain the status quo of established power relations and to disrupt, contest and resist that status quo.

Researchers as political actors

Overall, the volume takes a stance presenting researchers who research multilingually as social actors with the capacity for political action. We encourage all researchers, and particularly those involved in sociolinguistic, applied linguistic and/or intercultural communication research, to: (a) reflect actively on your own linguistic resources and those of others involved in the research; (b) become aware of the political and ideological implications of these language(s) in the spaces and relationships of research; and (c) take purposeful decisions about how to use which language(s) in research processes in ways that further the ultimate goals of the research and those whom it is intended to benefit.

Related content

Piller, Ingrid. (2022). How to challenge Anglocentricity in academic publishing.

Contributor bios

Judith Reynolds is a Lecturer in Intercultural Communication in the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research focuses on how language and culture intersect, and how both shape identities, in professional and workplace settings in particular. She has published on intercultural communication in refugee and asylum legal advice communication, and is the current Treasurer of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC).

Sara Ganassin is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Newcastle University (UK). She teaches, researches and supervises postgraduate students in intercultural communication and education, with a particular interest in migrant and refugee communities. She has published on internationalisation and mobility, on Chinese heritage language and on languages and research.

Prue Holmes is a Professor of Intercultural Communication and Education, and Director of Research at the School of Education, Durham University, United Kingdom. Her research areas include critical intercultural pedagogies for intercultural communication, language and intercultural education, and multilingualism in research and doctoral education. Prue has worked on several international projects. She was the former chair of the International Association of Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC), and she is the lead editor of the Multilingual Matters book series Researching Multilingually.