From Fluency to Linguistic Incompetence:

Humble Reflections on Multilingual

Research

Alison Phipps

University of Glasgow

Researching Multilingual Research:

an invitation to narrate

1.What is your

experience of

researching

multilingually?

2. What is your

experience of

becoming aware of

the complexities in

this area?

Narrative 1: How Competent?.

Narrative 2:

Competent enough?.

Giving an account of myself..

Competent?

Incompetent?

Heroic?

Foolhardy?

Professional?

Unprofessional?

Interpellation

“ We start to give an account only because

we are interpellated as beings who are

rendered accountable by a system of

justice and punishment. This system is not

there from the start, but becomes

instituted over time at great cost to the

human instincts.” (Butler, 2005: 11)

Linguistic Incompetence and

Accountability.Risks = ‘language

/communication’

Avalanches, food

poisoning, sleeping

sickness, HIV, civil

unrest, muggings,

robbery, kidnap.

Monolingualism: The Unmarked

Case (Ellis, 2006)Scholarly descriptions

of monolingualism:-

1. Presumed norm.

2. Limiting cognition

3. Uses metaphors of

disease to portray

monolingualism as a

pathological state.

“It tends to be monolingual discourses in

powerful Western nations and particularly

in English Speaking nations, which

dominate discussions in educational and

social policy [ ...] the application of these

policies can lead to statelessness,

imprisonment or event death. These are

not small stakes.” (Ellis, 2006: 185)

Accounting for a Causal

Relationship to Suffering

What is my experience of being

aware of the complexities? (Q2)Found wanting

....either way.

Not competent

enough.

Punishment and/or

Remedy.

RossettaStone.com

Rosetta Stone gives you the flexibility to fit language learning into your life whenever it’s convenient. All it takes is a computer or an Internet connection.

Training and Technology

Languages as Technology

Technology is therefore a

game pertaining not to

the true, the just, or the

beautiful, etc., but to

efficiency: a technical

“move” is “good” when it

does better and /or

expends less energy than

another.

(Lyotard 1984)

Narrative 3. Stories of Researching

without the Language

Learning the Arts

Auto-ethnographic work in

adult education tourist

language classes for Italian

and Portuguese

Language holiday in Lisbon

Beginners’ language

classes

Researching without the

language

Ethnographic notes:

Difficulty and struggle to hear and

make meaning

The jouiscence of making

progress

Resource to common language

(German and English) for rest and

reflection and writing

Notes full of new words and

phrases – mulitlingual research

notes

Chichewa

Greetings

Animals

Status of people

Surprise - Mzungu

Detained Languages

Linguists needed

Languages useless

Language greetings learned

with detainees

Contact with Swahili,

Georgian, Arabic,

Congolese, Somali;

Language teaching as

leveller

Research value in

ignorance. Access.

Lifelong Learning in Palestine

Arabic - tenderness

of lack:

Borders

Welcomes

Security

Research interviews

NGO/academic

English

Suspicion or Trust

I quickly learned:

- greetings

- food names

-Prayer language

(Insha'allah)

- to trust my hosts

Monolinguals: la,la,la

Gestures and some

aggression/suspicion that

translation maybe in correct

Materiality

Material objects

Scarves

Children practising English

and teaching us Arabic

Flowers in a garden

Reliance on translation

Gifts and appreciation.

Movement of body in

segregated space.

Enforced time for

observation.

Occupy Languages!

Rilke: “Du musst dein Lebenändern.”

Living with the displaced.

Deconstructing my own learned languages (French, German)

Learning to be (and research) multilingualism from below.

Experiencing monolingualismfrom above.

Mother Tongue: Mother’s

IncompetenceBlen & Tigrinya

New script

Tonality

Linguistic exhaustion and

pain – auto-didacticism

Paucity of resource and

opportunity.

Patterns

Relationships formed

through other means (food,

coffee ceremonies, gifts)

Listening in to patterns for

hand holds – food,

greetings, God, place

names, goodness and

beauty.

Ritual Learning

Sensory awareness heightened:

incense, cloth, scarf, coffee

beans, skin and hair oil; spices,

texture

Ethics: Linguistic power remains

with powerless

Tsada: expections of whiteness

Blen

Expectations of hope

Moments of profound

joy.

‘Being done to...’

No words...

Words Fail Me

So, what is my experience

of becoming aware of the

complexities of

researching

multilingually?

“Is there an ethical valence

to my unknowingness?”

(Butler, 2005: 84)

The Value in ‘Incompetence’

•Time to observe

•Practice of researcherly

patience and humility.

•Experience of frustration

and powerlessness which

enables empathy.

•Noticing of greetings,

rituals, sensory dimensions

•Valuable stage, but not

status quo.

•De-colonizing qualities of a

‘commons’ (Tuhiwai-Smith)

Anthropology

“My main difficulty at this early stage was inability to

converse freely with the Nuer. I had no interpreter. None

of the Nuer spoke Arabic, There was no adequate

grammar of the language, and apart from three short

Nuer-English vocabularies, no dictionary. Consequently

the whole of my first and a large part of my second

expedition were taken up with trying to master the

language sufficiently to make inquiries (my emphasis)

through it, and only those who have tried to learn a very

difficult tongue without the aid of an interpreter and

adequate literary guidance will fully appreciate the

magnitude of the task.” (Evans-Pritchard, 1940: 10)

“To survive linguistically and

emotionally the contradictions

of everyday life, multilingual

subjects draw on the formal

semiotic and aesthetic

resources afforded by various

symbolic systems to reframe

these contradictions and

create alternative worlds of

their own.”(Kramsch: 29)

Creative Capability

Good English

Context of

the project

UK Arts and Humanities Research Council:Researching Multilingually at the Borders of the Body, Language, Law, and the State(2014-2017)

Translating Cultures

After Multilingualism

Context

‘It is becoming clear that the

very nature of

multilingualism is now

increasingly unmoored –

even from the

frameworks that were

applied in the 1990s’

Researching Multilingually

Aims:

1) to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practicesin challenging contexts, and,

1) 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.

2) To up end the ‘normal’ routines of academic representation giving control and voice to those normally denied representational power as artists.

Noyam - Broken World, Broken

Word