26.2995, Review: Discourse; Ling Theories; Socioling: Risager, Dervin (2014)

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Subject: 26.2995, Review: Discourse; Ling Theories; Socioling: Risager, Dervin (2014)

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Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 12:57:39
From: Le Chen [chenle99 at hotmail.com]
Subject: Researching Identity and Interculturality

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4026.html

EDITOR: Fred  Dervin
EDITOR: Karen  Risager
TITLE: Researching Identity and Interculturality
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Studies in Language and Intercultural Communication
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Le Chen, University of Western Ontario

Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture

SUMMARY

“Researching identity and interculturality,” a volume edited by Fred Dervin
and Karen Risager, brings together articles written by renowned experts with a
focus on qualitative methodology in the interdisciplinary field. The book is
structured in four sections, in addition to the introduction and conclusion by
the editors. In the opening chapter, Dervin and Risager reveal their positions
in taking up intercultural research and provide an overview of how research
methodology is defined in terms of five aspects: theory (contested concepts of
identity, interculturality, and discourse), research methods, reflexivity and
awareness of power, multilingual dimensions, and the research process in
context (p. 7). The four sections following the introduction are:  The first
three sections present studies with a range of qualitative approaches, such as
studies of interaction, narratives, conversation analysis, ethnographies,
postcolonial studies, and critical discourse analysis, while the fourth
section concludes the volume with a review of the basic concepts of identity
and interculturality. 

Section 1, “Identity and interculturality: Studying narratives.”

Section 1 consists of three chapters: Kadianaki, O’Sullivan-Lago and
Gillespie’s “Identity transformations in intercultural encounters: A
dialogical analysis,” Anna De Fina’s “Enregistered and emergent identities in
narrative,” and Michael Baynham’s “Identity: Brought about or brought along?
Narratives as a privileged site for researching intercultural identities.” All
authors in this section focus on narratives by analyzing interview data while
acknowledging the subjectivity of the researcher. 

In the first chapter, based on the assumption of the social nature of
identity, Kadianaki, O’Sullivan-Lago and Gillespie propose a methodological
and analytical framework for analyzing the discourse of immigrant identity
transformation in Greece. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews and focus
group discussions, as well as eight months of ethnographic participatory
observation in three immigrant communities, the authors followed Gillespie and
Cornish’s (2010) three steps of dialogical analysis to examine how immigrant
participants internalize intercultural relations, resist the voice of the
other, and reposition the “self” through internalized intercultural contact,
all from an intra-psychological perspective. Their findings reveal the
tensions between multiple voices and processes through which individuals
challenge/resist stigma imposed on them during intercultural encounters,
rather than being victimized. 

In the second chapter, Anna De Fina, as a sociocultural linguist, analyzes the
interplay between stereotypical and emergent identities in narratives by Latin
American migrant and transmigrant women in the US. As opposed to cultural
essentialism and ethnic reductionism, she adopts a social constructionist
paradigm in her analysis of the relationships between language and identity,
highlighting the relational nature of identity making and human interaction.
Drawing on notions of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981) and positioning (Davies
and Harre, 1990), De Fina highlights the centrality of indexicality in
discourse analysis and proposes the combined use of ethnography and
micro-discourse analysis as a privileged tool to explore the interconnections
between the reproduction of socially established patterns and the emergence of
new ones in the discursive construction of identities. 

In chapter three, Michael Baynham also endorses narrative as a privileged site
for researching identity which in his argument contains both ‘brought about’
and ‘brought along’ dimensions. Four characteristics in narrative are
identified, including repeatability, involvement, distribution of evidential
responsibility, and pragmatic and metapragmatic explicitness. Taking up an
interdisciplinary approach by incorporating cultural studies, he draws on
Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of habitus as well as Butler’s (1990, cited in Burke,
Crowley and Girvin, 2000, p. 176) notion of repetition in identity work in
terms of “the accumulation and sedimentation of identity positions through
narrative” and “the performativity by which identity is contingently made and
remade in discourse” (p. 73). Based on his analysis of migration narratives by
means of linguistic realizations of stance, positioning and alignment, he
demonstrates the case of narrative to be specifically useful in researching
intercultural identity.

Section 2, “Identity and interculturality: Studying interaction and discursive
contexts.”

Section 2 contains three chapters written by authors from the field of applied
linguistics: Elizabeth Stokoe and Frederick Attenborough’s
“Ethnomethodological methods for identity and culture: Conversation analysis
and membership categorization,” Zhu Hua’s “Interculturality: Reconceptualising
cultural membership and identities through translanguaging practice,” and
Louise Tranekjaer’s “Discursive ethnography – A microanalytical perspective on
cultural performance and common sense in student counseling interviews.” These
chapters share a common objective of reconstructing the context with a focus
on the analysis of linguistic interaction in natural settings. 

In chapter four, Elizabeth Stokoe and Frederick Attenborough follow an
ethnomethological approach to study identity and culture. Using conversation
analysis and membership categorization as the analytical lens, they highlight
the importance of identity categories and the ways in which cultural meanings
and actions are performed. Besides, they explore two phenomena (i.e.
complaints and denials) in relation to identity making and ‘categorical
practices’ and reflect on the social organization of cultural knowledge by
drawing on data from everyday life such as classroom and Internet forums.
Further, they propose a systematic combination of conversation analysis and
ethnomethological approaches to be “a warrantable method for making claims
about culture” (p. 106), something that a macro-level analysis of discourses
fails to present. 

Zhu Hua, in chapter five, also uses membership categorization as an analytical
tool to investigate the interplay between language use and socio-cultural
identities in translanguaging practice. Sharing the concern on the risk of
cultural essentialism in intercultural research, she problematizes the concept
of cultural identity by highlighting the ways in which individuals make their
cultural identities either relevant or irrelevant to interactions. Drawing on
data from a conversation within a Chinese diasporic family, Zhu analyzes the
participants’ cultural practices in terms of address terms, metalanguaging,
multilingual creativity, and codeswitching, respectively. Her findings reflect
the contingent nature of cultural memberships as “the interplay of
self-orientation and ascription-by-others” (p. 119), and more importantly, the
critical role translanguaging plays in constructing (dis)affiliation towards
cultural memberships. 

Chapter six, in a similar vein, explores cultural identity as a hybrid
performance of various cultural memberships in the context of international
student counseling interactions. Louise Tranekjaer advocates discursive
methodology (a combination of ethnomethodology, discursive psychology and
cultural studies) as the microanalytic approach to structures of meaning and
ideology in face-to-face encounters. Drawing on the notions of
interculturality, cultural performance and passing, the author investigates
how international students and counselors negotiate and perform cultural
identities, and how interculturality is “a fundamental premise of a
heterogeneous social reality” (p. 145). 

Section 3, “Identity and interculturality: Studying practices and discourses
in local and global contexts.”

Section 3 comprises two chapters: Lise Paulsen Galal’s “Interculturality in
ethnographic practice: Noisy silences” and Heidi Bojsen’s “Who decides what to
develop and how? Methodological reflections on postcolonial contributions to
analysis of development fieldwork.” Shifting from a linguistic perspective,
both chapters perceive identity and interculturality as situated social and
cultural practices in terms of local and global context. 

Coming from an anthropological perspective, Lise Paulsen Galal proposes the
notion of ‘methodological interculturality’ as an ethnographic practice and
analytical approach. She focuses on “how to apply the interculturality of
ethnographic fieldwork to the analysis” (p. 152) by examining issues of
access, autoethnography and interactionism, as well as the varieties of
interactions between the researcher and three interlocutors constructing
Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt in different ways (i.e. the community
perspective, the minority perspective, and the transnational perspective).
Given the centrality of direct access to the subjective experiences of
cultural ‘Others’ and their emic perspectives in traditional ethnography
literature, she argues for ethnographic reflexivity (and autoethnographic
sensibility) on the ethnographer’s side; that is, the ethnographer
himself/herself is regarded as the methodological instrument in analyzing
interactions in the field. Moreover, the researcher’s positioning, whether as
outsider or insider, is viewed in a positive light, “not a disturbance but
rather data-productive” (p. 166) throughout the research process, a
progressive shift from the positivist paradigm which endorses maximized
objectivity and minimized researcher bias in the inquiry.

Heidi Bojsen, employing a postcolonial perspective, explains why and how
postcolonial reflections and critical research on development may inform each
other in research on cultural diversity. The author also provides examples of
methodological problems in critical development research to which postcolonial
reflections are suggested as a potential solution. Based on the idea of
‘critical quantification,’ she presents a chart outlining the relevance of
various epistemological and ontological concepts to practice by different
agents who use specific vocabulary and syntax and communication strategies
when discourse patterns arise. It can be used as a tool to scrutinize the
researcher’s as well as the interlocutors’ subjective experience, not with an
attempt to confirm the researcher’s assumptions, but to identify discourse
patterns with an analytical and critical awareness and open up space for
dialogues between the researcher and the different agents as partners in
research projects.

Section 4, “Identity and interculturality: revisiting concepts and analytical
foci”

The final section includes two chapters: Birgitta Frello’s “On legitimate and
illegitimate blendings – Towards an analytics of hybridity” and Claire
Kramsch’s “Identity and subjectivity: Different timescales, different
methodologies.” In chapter nine, Birgitta Frello sets out by problematizing
the notion of interculturality and transculturality and arguing that
conceptual discussions should not focus on seeking the ultimate term for
cultural complexity but rather on justification of its use for specific
purposes. In order to develop an analytic of cultural hybridity, she firstly
distinguishes ‘hybridity as displacement’ from ‘hybridity as blending,’
arguing the former is a more appropriate conceptualization as it challenges
essentialism by questioning the very basis of boundary maintenance. Then she
points out the importance of studying hybridity not only “as a critical
perspective but also as a potential form of power in its own right” (p. 201),
thus a critical reflection on one’s own perspective is crucial to the
researcher in the first place. Finally she concludes that the key question in
cultural hybridity is not the actual ‘blending’ itself but rather the
asymmetrical power relations that lead to specific power struggles over
legitimacy claims. 
 
In Chapter ten, Claire Kramsch compares research on identity and research on
subjectivity in intercultural communication at epistemological and
methodological levels. She suggests the two analytic categories to be kept
separate since they are informed by two different epistemological assumptions
(i.e., modernist and postmodernist) to answer different questions. In author’s
own words, “[w]hile identity fits into a diversity paradigm, subjectivity
brings difference into the picture” (p. 217). Based on data collected from
students’ essays on the topic of “What does it mean to be multilingual?”,
Kramsch demonstrates how each approach can be used to analyze the same data
differently. She especially highlights the importance of reflexivity in
intercultural identity research and promotes Alison Phipps’ (2012)
recommendations to guide her postmodernist interpretation of the students’
accounts. In her conclusion, she regards identity and subjectivity, as well as
the modernist and postmodernist approaches they entail, as complementary to
each other in terms of balancing the demands of research validity and
reliability. 

The volume ends with the Concluding Remarks where the editors summarize some
key points made in previous chapters and invite readers’ further reflection on
identity and interculturality research. They reiterate the importance for the
researcher to explicitly address the histories and the ways polysemic concepts
have been used to avoid further confusion. They also highlight the necessity
of working on the hyphen between self-other by fully accounting for the social
relations involved in intercultural encounters. Finally, it is beneficial to
expand the notion of context and local interaction to include wider social
processes and discourses in order to understand how these conditions both
enable and constrain the subjectivity of interlocutors. 

EVALUATION

The importance attached to the concepts of identity and interculturality has
been reflected on in a growing wealth of journal articles, books, and
anthologies that have addressed various aspects of cultural identity and
intercultural interactions in foreign or second language teaching and learning
(e.g., Alfred, Byram, and Fleming, 2003; Hall, 2002; Jackson, 2013; Kramsch,
1998, 2000; Kubota and Lin, 2009; Le Baron-Earle, 2013; Scollon and Scollon,
1995). Likewise, this stimulating volume engages the complexity of the
interdisciplinary perspective of intercultural encounters and has successfully
achieved its goal of exploring a range of interrelated theories and
qualitative approaches that inform the research on identity, discourse and
interculturality. 

In this broad context of globalization, knowledge is perceived as highly
situated, dynamic and diverse (Appadurai, 1990). In a similar vein, all
chapters in this volume reject an essentialist conceptualization of cultures
as relatively stable and homogeneous systems of norms, but see culture and
cultural practices as dynamic and context sensitive. Also criticized is a
static and essentialist understanding of self as regulated by social
environment rather than autonomous agents. Besides, since the validity of data
is no longer reliant on the yardstick of objectivity but the researcher’s
reflexivity, subjectivity is mostly recognized not as a potential obstacle to
be screened for in order to maximize objectivity of data but is valued and
promoted in generating meaning negotiated between the researcher and the
interlocutor (a term sensitive to the power relations involved and indicative
of the partnership between). Here, the participant is not simply seen as an
informant of a single reality of the research site, but a partner who
co-constructs multiple versions of reality interactively with the research
(Gubrium and Holstein, 2003), as demonstrated in Lise Paulsen Galal’s study
(chapter 7) and Heidi Bojsen’s article (chapter 8). 

In spite of the shared understanding of cultural essentialism, the authors
differ in their epistemological and ontological positions in intercultural
research as they reflect on how the philosophical and ideological assumptions
are associated with the theories, research design, and analytic approaches
selected for their studies. The final chapter by Claire Kramsch, for example,
takes up a postmodernist perspective on subjectivity and sees language as
social construction, as opposed to Kadianaki, O’Sullivan-Lago and Gillespie’s
position in the first chapter that sees identity qualities in intra-psychic
representations as existing prior to and beyond conversational contexts (p.
33).

In addition, the volume has successfully managed to clarify conceptual
confusion caused by different definition and varied use of certain concepts or
notions in a field as fragmented and contested as intercultural communication.
In her critical examination of identity and subjectivity in the study of
communication across cultures in chapter 10, Claire Kramsch vigorously seeks
to clarify this conceptual confusion by arguing the former is informed by the
modernist stance while the latter is influenced by the postmodern position.
Although this comparison may not achieve a consensus within the field that is
already highly contested, it at least lays the groundwork to avoid further
confusion or misinterpretation in her study.  

While this volume presents a synthesis of powerful ideas particularly vital
for identity and intercultural work, some limitations remain. In terms of the
theoretical frameworks, while most authors follow a poststructuralist line of
inquiry and explicitly acknowledge their ontological positions, few provide
reflection on what insights may be offered by alternative worldviews (e.g.,
postpositivism) nor justify the exclusion of such perspectives. Such
worldviews may be seen as fundamentally different thus incommensurable with
poststructuralist inquiries. However, much as positivist theories are
criticized for their macro-sociological persuasion, poststructuralist theories
are challenged for their micro-sociological perspectives (Cohen, Manion, and
Morrison, 2011). Therefore there is need to acknowledge the wealth of
knowledge that can be produced in identity and intercultural research informed
by different paradigms. 

In addition to a tendency to theoretical polarization and incommensurability
hypothesis, the methodological frameworks adopted in the studies in this book
also seem to neglect the rich possibilities that quantitative methodology and
mixed methods research can bring about.  Situated within qualitative
methodology, the chapters included in this volume are categorized and divided
into sections that focus on different aspects of identity and interculturality
research: narratives (chapters 1, 2, 3), linguistic interactions (chapters 4,
5, 6), ethnographies (chapters 7, 8), and critical reviews of theoretical
concepts and analytics (chapters 9, 10). However, while qualitative
methodology is transformative in identity and human interaction work and the
approaches are well justified in the studies, it would be beneficial for the
volume as a whole to explore diverse ways in which quantitative and
qualitative methodologies can be complementarily and systematically combined
(Creswell and Plano Clark, 2008; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009). The tendency
to polarize research into either quantitative or qualitative approach can be
neither meaningful nor productive (Denscombe, 2008; Moss, 2005). 

In sum, this volume coherently integrates articles that articulately shed
light on core concepts, significant controversies and new directions in the
field and offer expertise, insight, and resources for teaching and learning
identity and intercultural encounters in the broad context of globalization.
It is an engaging and useful reading for scholars and graduate students in
multiple disciplines such as applied linguistics, cultural studies, and
international education.  

REFERENCES

Alfred, G., Byram, M., and Fleming, M. (Eds.). (2003). Intercultural
experience and education. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural
economy. Theory, Culture and Society, 7(2), 295–310. 

Bahktin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.

Butler, J. (2000). From parody to politics. In L. Burke, T. Crowley and A.
Girvin (Eds.), The Routledge language and cultural theory reader (pp.
174-179). London, UK: Routledge.

Cohen, L., Manion, L., and Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education
(7th ed.). London, UK: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. 

Creswell, J. W., and Plano Clark, V. L. (2008). The mixed methods reader.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Davis, B., and Harre, R. (1990). Positioning: The social construction of
selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20(1), 43-63.

Denscombe, M. (2008). Communities of practice: A research paradigm for the
mixed methods approach. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 2(3), 270-283.

Dervin, F., and Risager, K. (Eds.). (2015). Researching identity and
interculturality. New York, NY: Routledge.

Gillespie, A., and Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: Towards a dialogical
analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40(1), 19-46. 

Gubrium, J. F., and Holstein, J. A. (2003). From the individual interview to
the interview society. In J. F. Gubrium and J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Postmodern
interviewing (pp. 21-49). London, UK: Sage Publications.

Hall, K. (2002). Asserting ‘needs’ and claiming ‘rights’: The cultural
politics of community language education in England. Journal of Language,
Identity, and Education, 1(2), 97-119.

Jackson, J. (Ed.). (2013). The Routledge handbook of language and
intercultural communication. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kubota, R., and Lin, A. (Eds.). (2009). Race, culture, and identities in
second language education: exploring critically engaged practice. New York,
NY: Routledge

Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kramsch, C. (2000). Global and local identities in the contact zone. In C.
Gnutzmann (Ed.), Teaching and learning English as a global language (pp.
131-143). Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenberg Verlag.

Le Baron-Earle, F. (2013). Social media and language learning: Enhancing
intercultural communicative competence (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
University of Limerick.

Moss, P. A. (2005). Understanding the other/understanding ourselves: Toward a
constructive dialogue about “principles” in educational research. Educational
Theory, 55(3), 263-282.

Phipps, A. (2012). Voicing solidarity: Linguistic hospitality and
poststructuralism in the real world. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 582-602.

Scollon, R., and Wong Scollon, S. (1995). Intercultural communication: A
discourse approach. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Teddlie, C., and Tashakkori, A. (2009). Foundations of mixed methods research.
Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and
behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Le Chen is a PhD candidate in Education at the Faculty of Education,
University of Western Ontario. She is also a lecturer in Shanghai Maritime
University. Her main scholarly interests are related to language socialization
across bilingual and multilingual settings, mixed research methods in applied
linguistics, and sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and sociopolitical aspects of
language(s) in education.





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