1. Researching multilingually: theory and practice
EUROMEC summer School, Trinity College, Dublin, July 2017
Sara Ganassin, Durham University

2. 1. Our aim
To draw on an ethnographic doctoral study on Mandarin-Chinese community schooling in England to investigate the value of a multilingual approach to community-based research, and particularly research of language community schooling.
Use of data from doctoral project: verbal data collected from participants and researcher’s diary

3. 2. Project context: research on and across languages
Focus on Chinese as heritage language
Chinese community schools as multilingual spaces
Different (possible) languages in the research context?
Previous studies: Mixed team of British (English speaking) researchers; ‘Native speaker’ researcher (Mandarin or Cantonese)
Intro to the research project

4. 3. Methodology: RM-lly framework
 Our theoretical standpoints:
Theoretical framework created by Holmes, Fay, Andrews, and Attia (2013, 2016) that theorises RM-lly praxis (how researchers make choices about their linguistic resources in theorising, designing, undertaking, and writing up their research):
Intentionality
Spatiality (research spaces)
Relationality (relationships)
Reflection and reflexivity in community-based research (Ganassin & Holmes, 2013)
RM-lly and researching ethically

5. 4. Emergent findings: intentionality and the role of English
Centrality of English depending on the fact that: The study was located in an English university, and the researched schools, that largely represent Chinese speaking contexts, are in a predominantly English-speaking community. Language repertoires of the researcher who was not able to offer full interviews in Mandarin (language of the schools and supposedly of the research participants)
First, we draw on the concept of “purposefulness” in multilingual research, which concerns the researcher’s ability to make informed decisions, to explore how the first author negotiated the centrality of English in her study

6. Languages and recruitment: the vantage point of a native speaker
The research design and language affordances of the researcher had an impact on the participant recruitment process
However:
In a context where many (Chinese) languages are spoken, who, as a researcher, can have the vantage point of a “native speaker”? How does the researcher’s linguistic identity shape his/her relationship with the participants?

7. Research spaces
The spatial aspect of a research project concerns affordances and challenges offered by:
The researched phenomenon (a doctoral study on Chinese community schools in England); (ii) the research context (two Mandarin Chinese community schools); (iii) the research resources (language competencies of researcher and researched that included, but were not limited to, English and some Mandarin); and, (iv) the representational possibilities (i.e., dissemination in English; inclusion of data in Chinese).

8. Findings: Research spaces and the research context
Different languages at play in the schools:
1) Mandarin, as the official language of the schools and the first or second language of a number of people involved;
2) other方言 fāngyán (i.e., Cantonese, Hakka, and Hokkien) spoken by several adults and pupils; and,
3) English, often used as a lingua franca, and generally used by pupils to communicate with their peers.
4) Other languages were also part of the context of the school (e.g., Spanish, Vietnamese and Malay, the first languages of a minority of parents)
Wider English-speaking macrocontext (e.g., two different counties in England). However, within the microcontext of the research sites different languages were at play.

9. Findings: English as a lingua franca
“Of course some people need to use English with other Chinese [parents] in the school. A lot of Mainlanders only speak Mandarin and there are people from Fujian, Malaysia or even Cantonese people that cannot speak Mandarin almost at all. Very few people are like me and can juggle all the languages and get a choice”. (excerpt from Adrian’s interview, Apple Valley school)
To a number of people, and particularly parents, Mandarin was as much of a foreign language to them as English because they were speakers of Hokkien, Hakka or Cantonese.

10. Research spaces: what place for Italian?
The researcher could not draw on the vantage point of native ethnography /native English speaker and writer
Risk to feel estranged from her own writing
However
Italian was there at all times

11. Research relationships: Trust and inclusivity
(Not) using interpreters and value of flexible multilingualism
Negotiating access and building friendships: the researcher a community member
Adult-researcher and child-participants: language and power

12. (Not) using interpreters and value of flexible multilingualism
Conscious decision of not using interpreters: creating a sense of distance with participants, impact on trust, engagement with data, ethical issues, financial issues.
Opportunity to consider the hidden opportunities offered by both by research context and by the researcher’s own research resources.
Flexible multilingualism—a research strategy that draws upon the multilingual skills naturally present in the research context. This approach draws from her previous researcher experience in migrant communities (Ganassin & Holmes, 2013).
Negotiation of a shared language—other than the native language of either the researcher or the participant—can provide an opportunity for neutralising the inbuilt power imbalance within research relationships (Ganassin & Holmes, 2013; Holmes et al., 2016).
At the outset of the study, she made the conscious decision not to use interpreters for a number of reasons. First, she felt that the mediation of an interpreter would have impacted on her relationships with participants and potentially created a sense of distance. Second, she wanted to be fully able to engage with the data both during and after the different research phases (i.e., data collection, analysis, and writing up of findings). Although she was familiar with the拼音pīnyīn transliteration system, she had some literacy in simplified characters, she was also mindful about collecting data that she could not fully transcribe or understand. Further, her previous experience of working with interpreters in other contexts, raised such ethical and practical issues that she did not feel that her doctoral study would have significantly benefited from their involvement. For example, she was concerned about confidentiality, inadequate communication, inaccuracy of translation and, most of all, about how the presence of a mediator could have impacted on the researcher-researched trust building process.

13. Negotiating access and building friendships: The researcher a community member
Chloe: Now that I know you and we are friends, I will speak to you like a Chinese speaks to another Chinese, which means that I will tell you the truth. How things really are. What people really think.
Sara: Do you mean that Chinese people only tell the truth to other Chinese?
Chloe: It’s not about that. Because I know that you lived there [China] and you understand some of the language and our culture…it makes things easier.
(excerpt from Chloe’s interview, Deer River school)
The researcher’s sustained involvement in the schools gave her the opportunity to forge a number of friendships that lasted beyond the context of her doctoral study.

14. Adult-researcher and child-participants: language and power
Roy: Where are you from? You don’t sound from here.
Lily: No, and you don’t look like the English [people].
Sara: You can try and guess.
Julian: Portugal or maybe Argentina?
Sara: Nope.
Roy: What about S. Marino? That’s quite exotic.
Sara: [She laughs] Nearly there, I am from Italy. What about you?
Roy: I am just local. Well, a local Chinese, from Scotland.
(excerpt from pupil focus group, Deer River school)
Unlike a number of other researchers who previously conducted studies on Chinese community schooling in the UK (i.e., Li, 1993; Wu, 2006; Mau, 2013), the first author, as an Italian national and first language speaker, could not draw on the vantage point of native ethnography. However, her own language repertoires and life trajectories (i.e., experience of living in different countries including China and Taiwan, being Italian, speaking some Mandarin) were also valuable for her experience as multilingual researcher as they helped her to develop research relationships with pupils and adults.

15. 5. Our conclusions
Conducting a multilingual study/acknowledging a study as multilingual:
As multilingualism permeated the researcher’s role at all stages, it had a major impact on the ethics of the research and the researcher reflexivity and also on researcher-participant linguistic agency and relationship-building and trust with participants.
Our findings support the need to embed a multilingual approach in the research methodology of a project (see, for example, Holmes et al., 2013) where multilingual interactions and language practices—of the researcher, participants, and context—are present.
Any language repertoire that the researcher brings into his or her research site contributes to the richness and uniqueness of his/her study.
Although we acknowledge that every multilingual research context is a unique ecological system, and unique is the way that each researcher and participant construct their own multilingualism, the considerations that we have exposed could hopefully offer to other researchers some guidance towards the design and developments of their own multilingual studies.

16. References
Ganassin, S., & Holmes, P. (2013). Multilingual research practices in community research: The case of migrant/refugee women in North East England. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 23(3),
Holmes, P., Fay, R., Andrews, J., & Attia, M. (2013). Researching multilingually: New theoretical and methodological directions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 23(3), doi: /ijal.12038
Holmes, P., Fay, R., Andrews, J., & Attia, M. (2016). How to research multilingually: Possibilities and complexities. In Z. Hua (Ed.), Research methods in intercultural communication: A practical guide (pp ). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.