Researching Across Languages and Cultures ─ A Guide to Doing Research Interculturally

We are working within an increasingly globalised knowledge economy, where researchers collaborate in cross-cultural teams, collect data in a variety of languages and share findings for international audiences who may be unfamiliar with the cultural context. Researching across Languages and Cultures is a guide for doctoral students and other researchers engaged in such multilingual and intercultural research, providing a framework for analysis and development of their experiences.

Demonstrating the link between the theoretical approaches offered by the authors and the practical problems encountered by doctoral researchers, this ground-breaking book draws on research interviews with doctoral students from around the world. Students’ written reflections on their experiences are presented as interludes between each chapter. A practical, hands-on guide to planning, conducting and writing up research, the book explores the crucial roles involved in interpreting data across cultures within doctoral research.

Key topics include:

• The role of the interpreter and/or local research assistant in the research process and the ethics of translation.
• Constructing knowledge across cultures: addressing questions of audience, power and voice
• Academic literacy practices in multilingual settings
• The doctoral student’s role within the geopolitics of academic publishing and forms of research dissemination
• The pragmatics of mediated communication (implicatures, intentions, dialogue)

Researchers who come from and work in monolingual societies often forget that their context is unusual – most of the world live in multilingual contexts, where linguistic shifts and hybridities are the norm. Two authors with extensive experience, together with a number of their existing or former research students, share insights into these issues that surround language and culture in research.

This book will be a useful guide for academic researchers, doctoral students, research supervisors and Masters students who carry out empirical research in multilingual or multicultural contexts and/or are writing about their research for a diverse readership across the world.

Anna Robinson-Pant is a Professor of Education and holds the UNESCO Chair in Adult Literacy and Learning for Social Transformation at the University of East Anglia.

Alain Wolf is a lecturer in Translation Theory at the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia.