Presentation by Prue Holmes from Durham University (with Jane Andrews, The University of the West of England, Mariam Attia, Durham University and Richard Fay, The University of Manchester) at the Centre of Applied Cross-cultural Research of the Victoria University of Wellington, 26 July 2016

1. Cross-cultural research at the borders of
language, the body, law and the state:
Researchers’ linguistic resources
Prue Holmes (Durham University)
with
Jane Andrews (The University of the West of England)
Mariam Attia (Durham University)
Richard Fay (The University of Manchester)
Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research
Victoria University of Wellington
26 July 2016

2. Preview
“Researching multilingually”
1. The two projects:
– RMly network project (AH/J005037/1)
– RMly@borders project (AH/L006936/1)
1. Building the framework: Contributions from:
– Translanguaging & translingual practice
– Critical & indigenous methodologies
– Ethics and RMly
– Multilingual/intercultural relationships and capabilities
1. Building the methodology: Our “ways of working”
2. Contributions from one case study:
– CS1: Translating the emotional impact of sexual and gender-based
trauma – Uganda
– CS5 Developing TASOL in Gaza – researcher experiences
1. Conclusions

3. 1. The two projects
• RMly network project (AH/J005037/1)
http://researchingmultilingually.com/
(AHRC network grant under the “Translating cultures” theme, 2011-12)
• RMly@borders project (AH/L006936/1)
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/
(AHRC large grant under the “Translating cultures” theme, 2014-17)

4. Aim of the initial RMly network 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.
⇒ implications for understanding, reporting, and representation of people of
other languages
Opportunities, affordances, challenges, obstacles
Holmes, P., Fay, R., Andrews, J., Attia, M. (2013). Researching multilingually: New
theoretical and methodological directions. International Journal of Applied
Linguistics, 23(3), 285-299.
Holmes, P., Fay, R., Andrews, J., & Attia, M. (2016,). How to research multilingually:
Possibilities and complexities. In H. Zhu (Ed., pp. 88-102). Research methods in
intercultural communication. London: Wiley.

5. The “Researching Multilingually”
process
… from the inception of a research project, to designing the
project, the lit review, research questions, research framework,
choice of methods, ethics and reflexivity, analysis, modes of
(re)presentation

6. RMly conceptualisation
1. Intentionality (purposefulness)
• Making informed and intentional researcher decisions
• Researcher reflexivity & sensitivity, identity
2. Relationality/interculturality
• Researcher, supervisor, participants,
translators/interpreters/transcribers
• Trust, ethics, power
3. Researching multilingually spaces
• Research phenomenon (the “what”)
• Context of research (the “where”)
• Linguistic resources of researcher (the “who”)
• Representational possibilities (the language(s) of dissemination,
the “for where” or “for whom”)
=> Interdisciplinary insights ??

7.  Concepts of borders and security/insecurity raise
important practical and ethical questions as to how
research might be conducted.
 Focus on Methods:
 comparing across discipline-specific methods,
 interrogating arts and humanities methods where the
body and body politic are under threat,
 developing theoretical and methodological insights as
a result.
 There are some pockets of work in disciplines but no
overarching framework across multiple disciplines.”
Context of the AHRC large-grant project:
Languages under pressure and pain
(at borders)

8. The project structure
Multimodal complementary methods
Processes
(exploratory, reflexive, ethical)
Researchers
(Research teams: Two hubs, five case study sites, five PhDs)
CATC hub
Performance, artistic
creative methods
RMTC hub
Academic, investigative,
comparative methods

9. The five case studies
CS1: Translating the Emotional Impact of Sexual and Gender-
Based Trauma [Uganda] (University of Glasgow)
CS2: Translating Vulnerability and Silence into the Legal Process
(UG & University of Nijmegen)
CS3: Working and Researching Multilingually at State (and
European Union [Romania & Bulgaria]) Borders (UG)
CS4: Multilingual Ecologies in the American Southwest
Borderlands (University of Arizona)
CS5: Arabic as a Foreign Language for International Learners
(IUG, Gaza)

10. RMly@Borders brief …
… 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

11. RMTC Hub RQs (from proposal)
• 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?

12. RMTC developments in the
RMly@Borders project
 To develop a theoretical understanding of how researchers
draw on their multilingual resources, and those of others, in
multilingual contexts of pressure and pain, e.g., where
people are stateless and homeless due to war, poverty,
persecution, and economic instability.
• Generally, we are concerned with the following:
– what it means to “language”, “be languaged”, “be languagers”, and
“language oneself” in the world today
– what alternatives or other modes of researching and representation
might be possible
– what is unsaid, liminal
– the messiness, precarity, unpredictability of RMly experience

13. 2. Building the framework - Contributions
from:
• Translanguaging & translingual practice
• Critical & indigenous methodologies
• Ethics and RMly
• Multilingual/intercultural relationships and
intercultural capabilities
• Reflective practice

14. Languaging
Languaging is …
•“… being a person in that language in the social and
material world of everyday interactions.” (Phipps,
2011, p. 365)
Languaging – not just cultural work, but translation as
embodiment of feeling, and ways of relating to place
and to words; shared through habitation
 Yolland speaks of the land to Marie using the Irish names
 Maori identity – whakapapa, mihi
How can researchers draw on languaging in their
researcher praxis?

15. Translingual practice
“My aim has been to provide new research insights into
the ways in which mobile semiotic resources are
negotiated for meaning in global contact zones, and
also to suggest pedago gical[methodological]
approaches to develop such co-operative dispositions
and performative competence for cosmopolitan
relationships” (Canagarajah, 2013, p.202).
How can a translingual approach be nurtured in
researcher praxis?

16. Critical theory - Southern theory
“Southern” emphasises “relations of authority,
exclusion and inclusion, hegemony, partnership,
sponsorship, appropriation—between intellectuals and
institutions in the metropole and those in the world
periphery” (Connell, 2007, p. ix).
How can critical (“Southern”) theory inform a praxis of
RMly?

17. Critical indigenous methodologies
 Indigenous communities seek a “set of ethical
principles that are feminist, caring, communitarian,
holistic, respectful, mutual (rather than power
imbalanced), sacred, and ecologically sound”
Denzin, Lincoln and Smith (2008, p. 569)

18. Critical indigenous
methodologies …
 seek to address injustices through research processes
that demonstrate an ethical and reciprocal relationship
between researcher and researched.
 acknowledge marginalised people and “recognize the
need to avoid forms of representation that maintain
power in traditional locations” (Cannella & Lincoln,
2011, p. 82).
 For RMly researchers, they enable the examination of
privilege and exclusion created by language in research
practices.

19. Critical indigenous
methodologies …
… offer frameworks for democratic research that
advocate for voices to be heard—that have been, and
continue to be, marginalised and unauthorised by
dominant (and often colonial) regimes of power.
(Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; 2012)
(Freire, 1972; 1976)
(hooks, 2003)

20. Ethical practice and languages
‘There is a need to recognise the role of languages and
how they are brought into being by all concerned as
researchers “join with,” and “learn from” rather than
“speak for” or “intervene into” others’ lives’ (Cannella
& Lincoln, 2011, p. 83).

21. Ethical practices in Rmly work
Speaking back (and listening)
We have to find ways in which the marginalized can
enter our discourses in their own genres and their own
terms so that we can learn to hear them. They have a
universal right to impart information and ideas
through any media [and any language] and regardless
of frontiers, and we have a duty to listen and
understand them through engaging in new acts of
becoming (Krog, 2011, p. 384).

22. 3. Building the methodology: The “Ways of
working” document
• Exploratory practice
• Reflective practice

23. 4. Contributions from two case studies
CS1: Translating the emotional impact of sexual and
gender-based trauma – Uganda
• Ross White, (Richard Fay, Katja Frimberger)
CS5: Arabic as a foreign language for international
learners – Islamic University of Gaza
• Mariam Attia, Giovanna Fazetta, Katja Frimberger, Maria
Grazia Imperiale, (Prue Holmes)

24. CS1: Translating the emotional impact of
sexual and gender-based trauma - Uganda
Context:
Emotional distress across borders of geography, language, beliefs, and
practices => relevance and validity of interventions
Complex translation processes associated with understanding and
supporting the needs of these people
People are not in a place of their choosing – “moments of precarity” (Butler)
Role of family (not acknowledged in DIME); role of local practices
(witchcraft)
Languages:
English language descriptions of forms of psychopathology predominate in
the training of professionals
Local (Acoli, Swahili), Lango (LF of most of ppts), English
Ppts had access to English via US TV programmes (blurring of
global/local??) => syncretisation

25. The DIME methodology:
some researcher critiques (1)
Method
–Predetermined rather than locally contingent (quant.
instrument for evidence-based medicine)
–What do participants think and say about it => trust?
–Data scribed verbatim - Dangers around written recording
(feelings of “interrogation”)
–Fragility of evidence (meta analysis – reducing narratives into
numbers, e.g., RTCs)
–Positionality - researcher and participants (methods seeks
validity across “countries” => “category” fallacy)

26. The DIME methodology:
some researcher critiques (2)
Language issues:
–Manual - one shared language among Rs and participants;
assumed level of literacy
–Problems with translating the manual
–Social work/psych languaging – discourses of global mental
health
–Western/non W medical language? Violence of language
diagnosis
–Need to use Lango in a culturally and context sensitive way

27. Rmly implications
(for psycho-social interventions)
– Ethnographic/interdisciplinary methods; creative arts
(sensitive, embedded)
• Human & meaning-making element is important - explore narratives
(their meaning), and dignify those stories
• CA => understanding (CA therapeutic in itself); can combat structural
violence & social injustice
• Researcher involvement in research (and context), rather than
research product
– Translation issues (local -> Lango -> English)??
• Violence of language of diagnosis (language wrangles)
• How to translate aspirations & capabilities across borders
• Human development (Sen) => well being, education
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/?
page_id=795&paged=3?page_id=795

28. CS5: Arabic as a Foreign Language
for International Learners
(IUG, Gaza)
Researcher ecologies
Context - Researchers in Glasgow working with
researchers/teachers in Gaza (multimodality and technologies of
communication)
Offices and classrooms at UG and IUG
Katja’s home (Glasgow) to make a film
Mona’s bedroom (Gaza) - by skype
Nazmi’s office at IUG (vacated for the teachers to work in)

29. Researcher ecologies (cont.)
Positioning – Both Rs and R/Ts were co-producers of the
knowledge
“Researcher”/”teacher”/”participant” distinction was collapsed
All in a position of “becoming”, of “being stretched” (Katja)
Reciprocity; reflexivity; intersubjectivity
Trust as a language – Linguistic vulnerability
Four researchers (all multilingual, none English as lst lang)
Qualified to achieve their research objectives?
Student teachers in Gaza (Arabic)
=> Crucial to build a language of trust between researchers and
teachers

30. Researcher ecologies (cont.)
Rapport building - Power sharing—no micromanaging
Important in exploring the modalities of communication
(Grazia)
Patience, resilience, motivation - in realising the project, to
make it successful
Modes of communication
–Language affordances (English; Arabic; Italian)
–technologies (Moodle, Skype)
–nonverbal communication (to allow space for thinking)

31. Theoretical insights
• These ecologies aligned with the values of the researchers in
resisting methods developed in the global North (Southern
theory - Connell)
• => Resisting translation of methods - exportation of language
learning methods developed in TESOL depts in the UK and US =>
Acknowledging and drawing on methods appropriate to Gaza
(indigenous methodologies - Tuhiwai Smith)
• Ethics – reciprocity/speaking back/listening (Cannella &
Lincoln; Krog) – Rs & R/Ts experiment, share, give back =>
“offerings” & “remakings”
• Ethics of equality and “plenty” – All researchers realise their
capabilities => humaneness of the researcher role/context
• Languaging & translingual practice (Phipps; Canagarajah) –
multilinguality of Rs & R/Ts

32. 4. Conclusions

33. Researching multilingually
praxis…
To ensure the trustworthiness of the research (in contexts of language
marginalisation and discrimination), RMly researchers might consider the following:
•Interrogate hegemonic a-linguistic approaches developed in the “metropole”
•investigate the in-between communicative spaces—the silences, interruptions,
apprehensions, unexplored and unarticulated tensions and decision making—
invoked in the minds of researchers and research participants
•build and nurture relationships underpinned by linguistic power and positioning
among all stakeholders
•contest the language rules, values, and motivations of those initiating, undertaking,
and evaluating the research (project funders, managers, other researchers, policy
implementers)
•Negotiate language policies and regimes at all levels of research (examination,
dissemination, publication)

34. Implications for RMly praxis …
• How do/might these approaches inform researcher
multilingual practice, especially in conditions of
language precarity, marginalisation, and
discrimination?
• What opportunities do they offer for the in-between,
unexplored spaces in researcher praxis?
• What challenges?
• How can the outcomes support change in language
attitudes and policy implementation?

35. Building a wider RMly researcher knowledge base and network:
www.researchingmultingually.com
www.researching-multilingually-at-borders.com
1) What is your experience of doing research in more than one language?
2) What is your experience of becoming aware of the complexities in this
area?
Send 300 – 500 words (same text can be offered in different languages) and
photo (JPEG) to mariam.attia@durham.ac.uk or p.m.holmes@durham.ac.uk
Durham conference – 21-23 October 2016
“Education and migration: Language foregrounded”
http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/?page_id=1468
An invitation to participate