Category Archives: Researching multilingually

This category is for postings about research conducted within an English-medium academic environment but involving data generation, analysis, and presentation in other languages.

Doing Research Multilingually (DRM) – at BAAL 2011?

Posted on 14, April 2011 by Richard Fay| 2 Comments

Doing Research Multilingually (DRM) is the focus of a BAAL Colloquium proposal that MEd TESOL and PhD alumnus Jane Andrews has put in for the September 2011 BAAL conference (hosted in Bristol by the University of the West of England where Jane works). In this colloquium, if accepted, there will be papers on aspects of DRM by:

  • Xiaowei Zhou (Viv) – a PhD alumnus — and Richard Fay
  • Mariam Attia — also a PhD alumnus
  • Jane Andrews (see above)
  • Leah Davcheva — a research associate — and Richard Fay

More news on and detail about this when we hear if the proposal has been successful.

Richard

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The Durham seminar approaches ….

Posted on 30, June 2010 by Richard Fay| Leave a comment

The previously announced exploratory two-day workshop on the theme of “Doing research multilingually” will soon be upon us (7th and 8th).

PhD students (past and present) – i.e. Mariam Attia, Xiaowei Zhou (Viv), Tzu-hsuan Liu (Carol) – as well myself and former colleague and LTE doctoral student Jane Andrews will all be attending.

The previously announced exploratory two-day workshop on the theme of “Doing research multilingually” will soon be upon us (7th and 8th).

Mariam Attia (whose blog page has just appeared here!), Xiaowei Zhou (Viv), Tzu-hsuan Liu (Carol), myself and former colleague and former LTE doctoral student Jane Andrews (I hope her blog page may also appear soon-ish) will all be attending.

Some provisional details for some of the inputs at this event:

 

Researching learning in children’s homes: some benefits and challenges of working with an interpreter (Jane andrews)

In this session I would like to share some experiences of working collaboratively with a community interpreter to engage in educational research in multilingual homes. I would welcome hearing participants’ thoughts on ways in which I have tackled ways of gathering, analysing and presenting multilingual data.

 

Walking the less trodden path: An account of bilingual research experiences (Mariam)

As doctoral researchers, we often think of our work in terms of area of investigation, theoretical framework, methodology, fieldwork, findings, supervisors, and research community. Rarely, do we approach it from the angle of the languages used, and their influence on the progression of the work. In this presentation, I delve deep into my experiences of doing research bilingually. I shed light on the different interactions between the languages used, and examine their impact on the development of the research.

Analyzing native and non-native ethnographic interviews (Chen, Shu-Hsin) 

In this presentation I will share my experiences of doing ethnographic research in two languages. I will also talk about methodological issues that arose from my PhD study.

Communication styles, Intercultural Exchanges and Translation (Alain Wolf)

This workshop is a discussion of some basic aspects of intercultural communication styles and translation from the perspectives of linguistic pragmatics and translation. Please note that this isn’t my own research but is intended to be part of a workshop exploring different examples of where translation has been taken for granted in research.

Conceptual frameworks: what we (perhaps) take for granted when researching across languages (jane Woodin)

This contribution will offer some insights into possible linguistic differences in conceptual frameworks relating to everyday words in languages (in this case English/Spanish). Through the consideration of examples of bilingual conversations between language learners, it will ask how easy it is in real-time communication to ‘decentre’ from the communication focus and consider the communication process itself. Possible implications of this question will be linked to ‘Doing Research Multilingually’, whether through research in multilingual groups, or working with multilingual data.

Implications of undertaking research bi-/multi-lingually: extra resources and responsibilities (Xiaowei Zhou)

I will use my PhD research as a case study to illustrate how bi-/multi-lingual considerations can run through the whole research process and bring extra resources and responsibilities to the researcher

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How multilingual are LTE’s student researchers?

Posted on 5, May 2010 by Richard Fay| Leave a comment

Here is an email message I sent to all LTE’s doctoral students recently to find out more about the multilingual possibilities and actualities of their research. It would also be interesting to know more about our MA students in the same regard ….

Introduction

Some of you will have heard – e.g. via the main LTE blog and/or the Doctoral Community blogs about my interest in our Doctoral students undertaking their research bi-/multilingually. For example, arising from this interest, there will be a seminar on this theme at the University of Durham in early July.

Prior to that, with Xiaowei Zhou and Tzu-hsuan Liu, I will be presenting a paper on this theme at the Narrative Matters conference in late May. It would help us greatly if we could be more certain what the situation is regarding this theme in relation to your Doctoral studies.

 

The Deal

I would therefore be grateful if you could answer the following questions for me (some tense changes may be necessary for you to interpret them depending on whether you are a former, current or likely doctoral student with us).

I will, in return, a) circulate what I learn from this process, b) circulate the paper and c) continue to raise this issue in our blogs and elsewhere.

I hope the Qs below are clear. Many thanks in advance. R.

 

Your linguistic resources

Q1. In what languages are you fluent (or have some fluency)?

(please list in order beginning with your most fluent languages, i.e. your first language(s))

 

Linguistics possibilities in your research

Q2. Which of the languages you list for Q1 could you conceivably use* in your research activities, e.g. to read the literature, to generate and analyse data, to write research texts / reports, etc?

* Or, for former students, “could you have conceivably used” / or, for likely students, “might you conceivably use”, etc

Your actual research design vis-a-vis your language resources

Q3, Which of the languages you list for Q1 above are you actually using+ in your doctoral research?

+ or, for former students, “did you actually use” / or, for likely students, “do you plan to use”, etc

 Would you be willing for me to follow up on your above responses (e.g. with a further email asking questions about how you are using each of these languages in your research)? Many thanks once more.

Richard

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The Durham Seminar

Posted on 22, April 2010 by Richard Fay| Leave a comment

Here is the text of the promotional flyer we are crafting for this event:

Doing research multilingually

An exploratory seminar

 

Durham University School of Education

7th – 8th July, 2010

 

Many researchers, both doctoral and post-doc, collect and/or generate data in one or more languages and present them in another. Such multilingual possibilities create both affordances and complexities but often the issues involved remain hidden and unspoken. This is partly a matter of translation: sometimes researchers analyse and then translate, sometimes they translate and analyse, and sometimes a combination of the two. The multilingual complexities also occur when, for example, researchers work with interpreters or other research facilitators, when they decide on the analytical procedures, and when drawing on literature in a variety of languages.

 

In this small meeting – based on work at Durham and Manchester Schools of Education – we shall hear of researchers’ experience and data – and what decisions they made vis-à-vis the multilingual dimension of their work. The seminar context means that the initial focus is on supervised research in English-medium universities but the meeting is exploratory with a view to a more substantial seminar at a later date.

 

We invite anyone interested in joining the meeting to write to us to explain their interest and how they might contribute at this stage.

 

Richard Fay (Manchester) and Mike Byram (Durham)

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Undertaking research bilingually

Posted on 22, December 2009 by Richard Fay| Leave a comment

For both the MA TESOL / EdTech & TESOL programmes and also PhD study, the LTE group attracts TESOL practitioners from many parts of the globe who bring to their studies and research complex contextual, linguistic and cultural resources. One fascinating outcome of this, an outcome which rarely receives much attention, is the possibilities arising for undertaking research bilingually even though the overall academic context at Manchester is English-medium.  

 

For example, a TESOL practitioner from Taiwan, fluent in both Mandarin and English, might undertake interviews with her colleagues in Taiwan, interviews in which all participants are first language users of Mandarin. In such a case, the interviews might very appropriately be conducted in Mandarin. The issue that arises from this is that of when to translate the interview transcripts – as part of the transcription process in readiness for analysis? Or selectively after analysis in Mandarin in order to make the analysis process and findings available for an English-reading audience?

 

The following conference paper represents a first attempt to explore this area through supervisor / supervisee reflections on the Mandarin-English data / analysis in the doctoral studies by Xiaowei Zhou and Tzu-Hsuan Liu as supervised by Richard:

 

Fay, R. Zhou, X. and Liu, T-H. (forthcoming, 2010). Some complexities of bilingual and monolingual sites (of research and supervision) in narrative inquiry. Paper (to be) presented at “Narrative Matters 2010 – Exploring the narrative landscape: Issues, investigations, and interventions” to be hosted by the CIRN in Fredericton, May 20th – 22nd 2010, New Brunswick, Canada.

 

Building on this, there are plans, for July 2010, to hold a seminar on this theme in conjunction with Professor Mike Byram and his PhD students working bilingually at the University of Durham, UK.

 

Stop press: Jan 2010 – we (i.e. Richard, Xiaowei and Tzu-Hsuan) have also just put in the following article proposal for a special issue of TESOL quarterly on narrative and TESOL (for Sept 2011): “Undertaking narrative research bilingually in a TESOL context”.

 

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