New Directions in Linguistic Ethnography

In September we will be publishing Essays in Linguistic Ethnography by Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese. In this post the authors explain their innovative approach to linguistic ethnography.

This book offers new directions in linguistic ethnography. It introduces relational ethics to better comprehend everyday encounters; it makes visible the research process, listening to the reflexive voices of researchers; it resists the ethnographic urge to explain and make meaningful the lives of others; and it proposes a polyphonic approach to ethnographic writing which seeks to flatten established hierarchies.

The essays here depart from previous research in linguistic ethnography, drawing on Levinas’ (1985) notion of the humanism of the other. In linguistic ethnographic research we observe that strangers are often disposed to social engagement, participation and connection. This orientation to difference is also frequently evident in relations between researchers and research participants who are initially unknown to one another. Through innovative ethnographic writing we make manifest relations between people who encounter each other as strangers. Relational ethics provides a point of departure as we come to better understand human engagement in everyday encounters.

We propose an approach to research on communication in cities which engages the creative imagination in coming to new understandings. Ethnographic poems can incorporate the rhythm and rhyme of everyday life, and move beyond the literal. They speak to something universal, to clarify some part of the human condition. Poets have much to teach ethnographers about how metaphor, metonym, rhythm and rhyme can illuminate and enhance understandings of social life. We suggest that the poem has considerable potential as a way of seeing, and a way of saying, in linguistic ethnography.

We reflect on the process of turning linguistic ethnographic data into playscripts to be performed in the theatre. The polyphonic voices of research subjects inform the voices of characters in ethnographic dramas which tell stories from a community centre, a city library and a volleyball club. Researchers, too, become visible on stage as they go about their observation and recording of daily interaction. Aware of the audience, even addressing them directly, researchers are at the same time the observers and the observed. Ethnographic drama does not so much explain social life as lay it before the audience, inviting critical comment.

A series of extended vignettes written by researchers in a large linguistic ethnographic team provides a window into the world of the researcher. The vignettes, written at the end of intensive periods of ethnographic fieldwork, reflect on relations in the field, and relations in the research team. They tell stories of tensions, compromises, resolutions and realisations, making visible the often hidden work of successful relations in ethnographic field work. We listen to multiple voices, a chorus of individual perspectives from a range of research contexts, each with its own singularity and irreducibility.

This collection of essays offers a guide to researchers in linguistic ethnography who see the potential of creativity in showing aspects of communication in social life. But it does far more than this, placing the listening subject front and centre. These essays introduce a philosophical orientation to research which offers theory and practice to engage with social relations in contexts of difference.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might like the following books referred to in the authors’ post: Ode to the City – An Ethnographic Drama, Volleyball – An Ethnographic Drama, Interpretations – An Ethnographic Drama and Voices of a City Market.

Why Choose Duoethnography as a Research Method?

This month we published Duoethnography in English Language Teaching edited by Robert J. Lowe and Luke Lawrence. In this post the editors explain what duoethnography is and why you might choose it as a method for research.

Duoethnography as a best-fit method for research

Duoethnography is an emerging qualitative research method that involves two researchers working together to harness the power of dialogue and the researchers’ own lived experiences to uncover new insights and challenge grand narratives. Here we talk about how we came to duoethnography, lay out the main characteristics of the method and offer it up as a method of best-fit, especially for new researchers.

Finding a research method

Finding an appropriate research method, especially for new and emerging scholars, can be one of the most challenging aspects of carrying out any research. You might have read up on all the literature, found an area in your field that you are passionate about, and come up with a great idea for a project – but then the problems start! One problem is simply finding the confidence that you have the skills to carry out the research, and another is that the research methods available don’t seem to fit what you want to do. For us, although there were a number of alternative qualitative research methods out there, the problem we found was that our own voices and experiences – the very people whose knowledge and experience had inspired the research projects in the first place – were shut out at every turn.

How we came to duoethnography

We both came to duoethnography when we found that our own personal experiences didn’t quite chime with what we were reading in the literature. However, there didn’t seem to be an academic frame within which to explore these experiences. As well as not seeing our own experiences reflected in what we were reading about and studying, we also realised that our individual experiences were just that: individual experiences. Although valuable and valid in their own right, they would benefit by being juxtaposed with the experiences of others, preferably someone coming from a different background or perspective.

Key points of duoethnography

Duoethnography is designed to be simple enough for beginner researchers to try out, but also sophisticated enough to handle the complexity of the modern ELT and applied linguistics field. Although it is flexible to individual needs and style, some key points of carrying out a duoethnography are:

• The self as research site – in duoethnography the researchers and their personal histories are the site of the research, but not the topic
• Dialogic – conversation and dialogue are used to explore topics. These dialogues are then reconstructed into readable and accessible scripts
• Requires trust – due to the often intimate and personal nature of duoethnography, trust between researchers is very important
• Disrupts grand narratives – duoethnograhy uses personal stories to question taken-for-granted ideas

At first glance duoethnography may seem like an unorthodox method of research, but we believe that as researchers, rather than bending to outdated methods that are ill-fitting for what we want to do, it is best to find the research method that best fits our own needs. Duoethnography is a flexible, accessible method of research that any researcher, whether just starting out or a veteran in the field, can make use of to find their their own voice and forge their own path in ELT.

Robert J. Lowe and Luke Lawrence

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Critical Reflections on Research Methods edited by Doris S. Warriner and Martha Bigelow.

Exciting New Multilingual Matters Titles for 2020

We can’t believe the first month of 2020 is almost over! It seems like only yesterday we were decorating the office and singing along to our Christmas playlist. However, if January has seemed like a very long month to you, we have plenty of exciting new titles coming up to fend off the winter blues. Here’s a selection of what we’ve got in store for you this spring…

Global TESOL for the 21st Century by Heath Rose, Mona Syrbe, Anuchaya Montakantiwong and Natsuno Funada

This book explores the impact of the spread of English on language teaching and learning. It provides a framework for change in the way English is taught to better reflect global realities and to embrace current research. The book is essential reading for postgraduate researchers, teachers and teacher trainers in TESOL.

Speaking Spanish in the US by Janet M. Fuller and Jennifer Leeman

This book introduces readers to basic concepts of sociolinguistics with a focus on Spanish in the US. The coverage goes beyond linguistics to examine the history and politics of Spanish in the US, the relationship of language to Latinx identities, and how language ideologies and policies reflect and shape societal views of Spanish and its speakers.

Teaching Adult Immigrants with Limited Formal Education edited by Joy Kreeft Peyton and Martha Young-Scholten

This book aims to empower teachers working with adult migrants who have had little or no prior formal schooling, and give them the information and skills that they need to reach the highest possible levels of literacy in their new languages.

Essays on Conference Interpreting by James Nolan

This book, drawing on the author’s 30-year career, seeks to define what constitutes good interpreting and how to develop the skills and abilities that are conducive to it. It places interpretation in its historical context and examines the uses and limitations of modern technology for interpreting.

 

The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education edited by Joel Austin Windle, Dánie de Jesus and Lesley Bartlett

This book contributes new perspectives from the Global South on the ways in which linguistic and discursive boundaries shape inequalities in educational contexts, ranging from Amazonian missions to Mongolian universities, using critical ethnographic and sociolinguistic analyses.

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Language Teaching edited by Christina Gkonou, Jean-Marc Dewaele and Jim King

This book focuses on the emotional complexity of language teaching and how the diverse emotions that teachers experience are shaped and function. The book covers a range of emotion-related topics on both positive and negative emotions, including emotional labour, burnout, emotion regulation, resilience, emotional intelligence and wellbeing.

 

Seen something you like? All these titles are available to pre-order on our website and you can get 50% off this month when you enter the code JANSALE at the checkout!

Starting a Dialogue between Social Semiotics and Complexity Theory

We recently published Making Signs, Translanguaging Ethnographies edited by Ari Sherris and Elisabetta Adami. In this post the editors introduce us to the book and its unique Bricolage and Talmudic sections.

Preparing this volume has been a work of encounters which gave way to layers of experiences and we hope is just one possible opening to a new way of thinking about how we make and interpret meaning. It started as a serendipitous encounter between the two of us, when we met once at a symposium on translanguaging and ethnography and later began conversations on the possibilities of crossing perspectives, in an attempt at starting a dialogue between social semiotics and complexity theory. The experiences of the volume’s contributors form additional layers at the core of this volume from ethnographic/documentary linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic landscape, and multimodality (broadly conceived). The volume is also a site of encounters among four theorists of what we envisage as among the most innovative and promising perspectives on research and activism across inclusive approaches to communication, language and education with a Bricolage piece asking Jan Blommaert, Ofelia García, Gunther Kress and Diane Larsen-Freeman to answer ten key questions and trace interrelations with each other’s viewpoints.

Besides the eye-opening preface by Jeff Bezemer and Gunther Kress, and the introduction written by us, the volume hosts seven chapters presenting empirical studies that relocate margins at the centre, through investigations of phenomena and settings that have been little explored so far, and by attempting various entanglements between approaches that have rarely been combined. Research of and through these uncharted entanglements allows the authors (and hopefully the readers) to show how observing and documenting domains of communication that are often neglected can not only problematize traditional ways of knowing, but also shed new light onto social interaction, meaning-making and human communication as a whole.

Finally, the volume attempts at stretching the boundaries of (the often too limiting) academic genres. It does so first and foremost in the Bricolage; the process of its making has been a wonderfully enriching enterprise, for us, the editors, and (we like to believe) for the four theorists too, who had never met on (screen and) paper before. Working with them at the Bricolage, we have not only had further proof of the immense intellectual value of Diane, Gunther, Jan and Ofelia, but also experienced the immensely humane, thoughtful and caring characters of the four. We hope that the Bricolage may be the first of a series opening a new genre enabling academic dialogue through joint forms of writing. A second genre innovation is in the final chapter of the book, in which we draw from the Talmudic tradition to construct commentaries to each of the empirical chapters that add additional layers, imagined next steps in meaning-making and interpretation. The commentaries ask themselves how these studies would be reframed and (re)investigated further by adopting a social semiotic and a complexity theory perspective. This, too, is an attempt to start a dialogue between two approaches that have good grounds for potential mutual integration and yet had not met until now. We hope this dialogue will continue further with those who read the book. We look forward to hearing from you!

Elisabetta Adami e.adami@leeds.ac.uk

Ari Sherris arieh.sherris@gmail.com

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Engaging Superdiversity edited by Karel Arnaut, Martha Sif Karrebæk, Massimiliano Spotti and Jan Blommaert.

Communication, Culture and Discourse: A Road Map for Cultural Discourse Studies

This autumn, the 6th International Conference on Multicultural Discourses is due to take place. Multilingual Matters is sponsoring the conference, specifically in order to enable two early career researchers from developing countries to attend it. This post is written by one of the organisers, Shi-xu of Hangzhou Normal University, China.

With the rapid advancement in communication, commerce and travel, our world has become smaller and people more interconnected. However, this has not meant that the global village is safer, more stable, or more harmonious, but more alienated, more volatile and more unpredictable. Even after three West-East wars of the past century, hot and cold, the old wisdom of dividing up mankind into good and evil and then retaining absolute hegemony remains as alive as ever and coercion continues to hold the day. At the same time, however, that familiar, traditional order is being tipped as non-Western powers and alliances emerge and spread. In the new century we find ourselves yet again at the crossroads of war and peace, repression and development, or more.

For scholars and students of Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS), to which this conference and the affiliated journal are devoted, the current human-cultural predicament is a big challenge, but it is also an opportunity. It is a big challenge because mainstream Communication Studies (CS, including studies of language, literature, rhetoric, media and discourse) insists on a Westcentric stance and ignores cultural diversity and obscure cultural division. It is also an opportunity because CDS is equipped with not only the determination but also the tools to help change the changing world.

The chosen and enduring objectives of CDS are: (1) to undermine and subvert ethnocentrism in CS, (2) to construct culturally conscious, critical and creative paradigms of human communication that are capable of facilitating the advancement of relevant cultural discourses, and (3) to firm up a truly culturally inclusive CS scholarship that is conducive to building a harmonious, pluralist and free world.

CDS’ strategic goals, under the turbulent circumstances just alluded to, call for urgent and specific tasks to be taken up. One is to expand and consolidate the existing international community of scholars and students of diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds who are culturally conscious, critical and creative and committed to helping reform CS towards a more diversified and egalitarian scholarship. Another is for this breed of researchers to utilize effective platforms and channels to discuss, formulate and promulgate a common vision for human communication and to invent practical ways to reach that consensus. Still another is to continue efforts to establish and improve relevant frameworks of cultural discourses in order to critically study and to guide particular practices. Yet another is to expose and subvert culturally divisive, discriminatory and domineering discourses on the one hand and to discover and promote culturally inclusive, dialogical and harmonious ones on the other hand.

For more information about the 6th International Conference on Multicultural Discourses, just click the link.

Jan Blommaert Reflects on his Reading of Classic Works about Ethnography

This month we published Dialogues with Ethnography: Notes on Classics, and How I Read Them by Jan Blommaert. Jan has made a short video introducing the book and its argument that ethnography must be viewed as a full theoretical system, and not just as a research method.

For more information about this book please see our website. If you found this interesting, you might also like Jan’s 2013 book Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes.