Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Jane Andrews (University of the West of England)Richard Fay (The University of Manchester)Mariam Attia (Durham University) Prue Holmes (Durham University)
BAAL 49th Annual Meeting“Taking Stock of Applied Linguistics – Where Are We Now?”
Anglia Ruskin University(1st – 3rd September, 2016)
Researching Language/ing Under Pain and Pressure: Perspectives from 1946 and 2016
Outline
1. Researching (in) contexts of pain and pressure – insights from David Boder’s work (1946)
2. Taking stock – our selection of insights from applied linguistics research
3. Reflections on and connections with our ongoing multi-disciplinary research (in) contexts of pain and pressure -‘Researching multilingually at the borders of language, the law, the body and the state’
Researching (in) Contexts of Pain and Pressure – David Boder (1946)
Boder, D.P. (1949). I did not interview the dead. Champaign-Urbana, ILL., University of Illinois Press.Niewyk, D.L. (ed.) (1998). Fresh wounds: early narratives of Holocaust survival. Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press.Rosen, A. (2010). The wonder of the voices: the 1946 Holocaust interviews of David Boder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
David Boder’s work (1)
Jewish/Russian/Latvian emigrant to the US Linguistically-oriented psychologist July 1946, visited DP (displaced persons) camps and - 16 sites
across 4 countries (France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany)
• His focus – to listen to and record the stories of Holocaust survivors
• His purpose – to enable survivor stories to be heard and to understand the linguistic traces of trauma
David Boder’s work (2)
130 such interviews (20 mins - several hours) recorded (wire
technology) in 9 weeks using 9 languages (English, French, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Spanish/Ladino, Yiddish)
interviews - broad ethnographic purpose (songs also)
data transcribed, translated (80+ of the interviews into English), analysed, disseminated and publicised.
Aspects (re philosophy/ideology; language and methodology, ethics) of his study resonate with AppLing concerns over subsequent years
Our process of taking stock – applied linguistics research
• Language and identity – Bonny Norton Peirce• Language and emotions – Aneta Pavlenko• The multilingual subject, theories of self in language – Claire
Kramsch• Linguistic resources, linguistic ethnography – Marilyn Martin-
Jones• Translingual practice, purposeful moves between languages
– Suresh Canagarajah• Representation in research accounts, doing and writing
qualitative research – Adrian Holliday• The role of the interviewer in elicited data – Steve Mann • Use of narrative in applied linguistics research – Aneta
Pavlenko, Gary Barkhuisen
Researching multilingually at borders project
Brief background• AHRC-funded, 3-year, multilingual, multi-disciplinary,
multi-modal, multi-site large project• 5 case studies: Uganda, Scotland (Global mental health) Scotland, Netherlands (Immigration and Asylum Law) Bulgaria, Romania (Anthropology) Arizona (Multilingualism) Gaza (Foreign language education)
• 2 cross-case study hubs: creative artists applied linguists / intercultural communication researchers
Reflections & Connections 1: Philosophical & ideological
Boder interested in disseminating the (original) “verbal peculiarities” of the speakers since these bore linguistic evidence of their trauma
He was interested to explore how “their language habits show[ed] evidence of trauma”
• “What happens to languages when they are under pain and pressure in very challenging contexts.”
Alison Phipps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLHlriFl7io
• “‘Languagers’, for us, are those people, we may even term them ‘agents’ or ‘language activists’, who engage with the world-in-action, who move in the world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of speaking and attempt to develop different, more relational ways of interacting with the people and phenomena that one encounters in everyday life.” (Phipps, 2011:365)
Reflections & Connections 2: Ethical
• Boder: “We know very little in America about the things that happened to you people who were in concentration camps”.
• wider ethic of ensuring voices were heard, stories known more widely and then not lost
• (Linguistic) ‘duty of care’: “Since that is her language in which she can talk freely without any difficulty or artificiality, I will endeavor to understand her”
• Our work – assumptions within universities’ governance procedures – preference for written consent (lack of recognition of cross cultural differences in orientation towards speech and writing, Walter Ong’s work)
• challenge of working cross-culturally within one national context and within other countries (ethical approval in one context for research in a different context)
Reflections & Connections 3: Methodological/Linguistic
• Boder - drew on his own diverse linguistic resources (an organic / naturalistic approach) rather than use particular languages for the research• he wanted survivors use “their own language” to avoid potential for “curtailment, straining and oversimplification of the content” using a foreign tongue
• Our work – examples of researchers’ decision-making regarding presentation of themselves within their research contexts – i)resisting assumptions of ELF ii)researcher assumptions about the need for native-speaker-like proficiency iii)researcher desire to express solidarity through language choice, use
Taking stock – learning from the two perspectives
• Norms of the time, place, discipline, institution shape research which is carried out• Boder’s mission to listen to and record survivors’ stories took priority over
questions of methodology, consistency• Changing times, orientations towards ethical research practice raise questions for
our project such as what we conceptualise as “data” with associated processes for ethical approval, consent (risk of “using” people’s experience for our “gain”)
• Conceptualisations of research shapes what is done in terms of process and product of research - our work is conceived of as arts and humanities research with a strong role for the creative arts, rather than social science research
• Outcomes of research - participative events as well as data sets (Lawson & Sayers, 2016) – outcomes beyond academic texts, events, resources
• Conceptualisations of multilingualism in practice since Boder’s time have helped in our understandings – translingual practice
Concluding Thoughts
Reflecting on Boder’s work, applied linguistics contributions and our current research we note that:•Phipps (2012) applied linguists explore real world questions, going to sites of pain and pressure to develop understandings•The applied aspect of applied linguistics continues to take us to diverse contexts, disciplines, languages•Researchers applying their theories and methodologies need to remain purposeful, flexible, intentional •Operating as a researcher in the real world necessitates being flexible in engaging in complex contexts•Languaging – applied linguists use language to explore language in real world contexts as a way of reaching human experience
ReferencesBarkhuizen, G. (2013) Narrative Research in Applied Linguistics Cambridge: CUPBoder, D. (1949) I did not interview the dead Champaign, IL, US: University of Illinois PressCanagarajah, S. (2012) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations London: Routledge Gardner, S. & Martin-Jones, M. (2012) Multilingualism, Discourse and Ethnography London: Routledge Heller, M. (2007) Bilingualism: A Social Approach New York: Palgrave MacmillanHolliday, A. (2016) Doing and Writing Qualitative Research London: SageKramsch, K. (2009) The Multilingual Subject Oxford: Oxford University PressLawson, R. & Sayers, D. (2016) Sociolinguistic Research – Application and Impact London: RoutledgeMann, S. (2011) A Critical Review of Qualitative Interviews in Applied Linguistics Applied Linguistics, 32/1, 6-24Moorhead, C. (2006/2015) Human Cargo – A journey among refugees London: VintageNorton Peirce, N. (2000) Identity and Language Learning: Gender, Ethnicity and Educational Change Harlow: LongmanOng, W. (1982) Orality and Literacy: Technologising the Word London: Methuen Pavlenko, A. (2007) Autobiographical narratives as data in applied linguistics in Applied Linguistics, 28/2, 163-188Phipps, A. (2011) Travelling languages? Land, languaging and translation, Language and Intercultural Communication, 11:4, 364-376Phipps, A. (2012) Voicing Solidarity: Linguistic Hospitality and Poststructuralism in the Real World in Applied Linguistics 33/5, 582-602Phipps, A. (2013) Intercultural ethics: questions of methods in language and intercultural communication, Language and Intercultural Communication, 13:1, 10-26
