Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research

Promotes a wider debate among researchers about how they themselves learn and use different languages in their work

This book breaks the silence that surrounds learning a language for ethnographic research and in the process demystifies some of the multilingual aspects of contemporary ethnographic work. It offers a set of engaging and accessible accounts of language learning and use written by ethnographers who are at different stages of their academic career.

Robert Gibb is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests include asylum procedures, the state, borders and translation.

Annabel Tremlett is Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Her research investigates the differences between public and self-representations of minority or marginalized groups. She is particularly dedicated to understanding the everyday experiences of people from these groups and challenging misleading representations.

Julien Danero Iglesias is Principal Policy and Projects Officer at Camden Council (Housing) and an Affiliate Researcher at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests include nationalism, discourse, borders and minorities.

Robert Gibb is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests include asylum procedures, the state, borders and translation.

Annabel Tremlett is Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, UK. Her research investigates the differences between public and self-representations of minority or marginalized groups. She is particularly dedicated to understanding the everyday experiences of people from these groups and challenging misleading representations.

Julien Danero Iglesias is Principal Policy and Projects Officer at Camden Council (Housing) and an Affiliate Researcher at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests include nationalism, discourse, borders and minorities.

This refreshing collection of articles reflects on issues of language in ethnographic research that anthropologists have tended to sweep under the carpet: The delicate issue of the ethnographer’s language competence; challenges of language learning; complications of multilingual fieldwork settings; and the ethnographer’s anxieties related to their own incomplete language mastery. Highly valuable for anyone doing ethnography in a language that is not one’s own!

Power, privilege, hierarchy, and dependence shape and often complicate ethnographers’ forays into unfamiliar languages. These thoughtful, reflexive essays, addressing an impressive range of field experiences, incisively reveal and explore the shifting ground of the authors’ linguistic interactions in relation to dynamics that are often invisible, usually risky, and always unpredictable.