34.635, Review: Applied Linguistics: Purkarthofer, Flubacher (2022)
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Subject: 34.635, Review: Applied Linguistics: Purkarthofer, Flubacher (2022)
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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:21:14
From: Melissa Hauber-Özer [mhauber at missouri.edu]
Subject: Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-2371.html
EDITOR: Judith Purkarthofer
EDITOR: Mi-Cha Flubacher
TITLE: Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research
SUBTITLE: Biographical and Speaker-centred Approaches
SERIES TITLE: Researching Multilingually
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2022
REVIEWER: Melissa B Hauber-Özer, University of Missouri at Columbia
SUMMARY
Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research: Biographical and
Speaker-centred Approaches, edited by Judith Purkarthofer and Mi-Cha
Flubacher, comprises 18 chapters presenting a variety of methodological,
empirical, and theoretical contributions on the utility of biographical
approaches to multilingualism research.
Part 1: Introducing Speaking Subjects
Part 1 of the volume provides methodological and conceptual framing for the
empirical contributions. The first chapter, written by the editors, introduces
biographical approaches to multilingualism research, for example, the widely
used language portrait, nods to the work of Brigitta Busch in this area, and
provides an overview of the volume.
Chapter 2, “And the Subject Speaks to You: Biographical Narratives as Memories
and stories of the Narratable Self” by editor Judith Purkarthofer, introduces
biographical research and narratives and maps key concepts to frame the
volume’s contributions. These concepts include the conceptualization of
speaking subjects and the methodological considerations for the dialogic
construction of meaning by both the speaker and listener, drawing on Brigitta
Busch’s work on the embodied and affective lived experience of language
(Spracherleben, Busch, 2017) and trauma (e.g., Busch, 2020).
In Chapter 3, “Discourse and the Agency of the Subject in Autobiographical
Narratives,” Tim McNamara examines the position of the narrating subject in a
thought-provoking discussion of the concept of agency through a
poststructuralist lens. This perspective places primacy on discourses, “forms
of knowledge and practice which circulate and are evident in communities at
any given time” (McNamara, p. 40), which shape the subject (Foucault, 1977).
Furthermore, it is through discourses that the subject enacts agency, defined
as “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahern, 2001, p. 112, cited
on p. 41). As McNamara illustrates through the work of Jacques Derrida and
poet Paul Celan, discourse takes on a particularly nuanced role for agentic
action in multilingual contexts.
Chapter 4, “Ethnography as a Speaker-Centred Approach? Methodological
Reflections” by editor Mi-Cha Flubacher, reflects on epistemological and
methodological similarities and differences between ethnographic and
speaker-centred approaches. Using examples from her ethnographic research,
Flubacher highlights the distinction between an ethnographic focus on
practices and processes with the biographical focus on narratives, emotions,
and affect and “how the stories/cases are elicited, developed and analysed”
(p. 53), concluding that a combination of the two is promising for
speaker-centered multilingualism research.
Part 2: Empirical Insights
Part 2 makes up the bulk of the volume, with 10 empirical contributions
organized into three thematic groupings.
The first theme, Language Portraits as a Starting Ground, includes three
studies employing language portraits as visual representations of multilingual
identities and practices.
Chapter 5, Christine Anthonissen’s “Profiles of Multilingualism: An Analysis
of Language Biographies and Linguistic Repertoires of University Students,”
reports on a study conducted with 25 students in urban Johannesburg, South
Africa. Using questionnaires, language portraits, and interviews, Anthonissen
develops detailed language biographies which highlight the roles of English as
the medium of instruction and numerous indigenous languages in participants’
linguistic repertoires.
Chapter 6, “Experiencing Multimodal Languaging: The Use of Language Portraits
with Deaf and Hearing Multilingual Signers” by Maarte De Meulder and Annelies
Kusters, presents data from two studies exemplifying the experiences of
different language modalities, particularly the distinct role of body parts in
signed languages. For example, the hands and face featured more prominently
than the mouth in many participants’ language portraits, and different
languages were represented for signing, speaking, and reading practices.
Chapter 7, “Linguistic Biographies and Language Portraits as Tools for
Developing Shared Understandings of Multilingualism with an Indigenous
Australian Community” by Ruth Singer, exemplifies the importance of art and
the body in Indigenous cultures and knowledge transmission. Through
participants’ language portraits and narratives, Singer demonstrates
connections between language and kinship, region, and culture (e.g., body
paint and dances/ceremonies and the usefulness of arts-based ethnographic
methods to analyze “multilingual ideologies and practices that support
linguistic diversity” (p. 120).
The next theme, Linguistic Repertoires and Language Learning in Time and
Space, consists of four empirical chapters employing various speaker-centred
methods.
Chapter 8, “Children’s Use of Their Full Linguistic Repertoire to Establish a
Social and Linguistic Third Space for Learning: A Case Study of the Stars of
Today Literacy Club” by Xolisa Guzula, provides a concrete example of how
Guzula created a translanguaging third space where South African children were
encouraged to use their entire linguistic repertoires. This contribution,
which the author labels linguistic ethnography, combines field notes, audio-
and video-recordings, photographs, and visual and textual artifacts to
document the children’s use of multilingual repertoires.
Chapter 9, “Belonging: The Interplay of Linguistic Repertoires, Bodies and
Space in an Educational Context” by Simangele Mashazi and Marcelyn Oostendorp,
describes the experiences of linguistic minority students at Stellenbosch
University. Mashazi and Oostendorp examine “the linguistic, spatial and
embodied nature of belonging” (p. 142) using Busch’s (2012) post-structural
view of linguistic repertoire to demonstrate how spaces have different norms
which affect how linguistic repertoires are valued and deployed. Based on
thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of 12 students’ language portraits
and participatory photo interviews (Kolb, 2008) with eight staff members and
students, the authors identified ambiguous feelings toward English and
Afrikaans as oppressive toward home/native languages, and evidence of the
exclusion of linguistic and cultural diversity from the campus.
In Chapter 10, “Learning about Multilingual Language Learning Experiences
through Language Trajectory Grids,” Julie Choi offers a novel method for
research and instruction. Choi found that the language trajectory grid, on
which Chinese secondary students learning English in Australia mapped their
English language learning motivation over time and then developed narratives,
“is a method particularly useful for drawing out complexities, histories and
co-learning through reflection, reflexivity and dialog” (p. 170).
As the title outlines, Chapter 11, “Using Media Diaries to Study Multilingual
Media Repertoires: A Pilot Study with Language Learners in a Rural Community
Education Setting” by Andrea Sedlaczek, reports on a pilot study in which
adult German learners and teachers in rural Austria recorded their
multilingual media use in media diaries. The resulting media biographies
“revealed an intricate link between media repertoires and linguistic
repertoires” (p. 182).
The third thematic group offers three studies documenting how speaking
subjects address trauma.
Chapter 12, “A Past of Flesh and Blood: Chronotopic Agency and Embodiment in
Biographic Narrative” by Julia Sonnleitner, examines embodied subjectivity in
the narratives of South African young people born post-apartheid. Based on
Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of the chronotope, Sonnleitner presents abstract and
concrete chronotopes as two forms of agency employed in relating family
memories of space and time. Although the study analyzed discourse rather than
language per se, Sonnleitner suggests that the chronotypes are promising for
multilingualism research.
Chapter 13, “Freedom is Suffering for a Caged Bird: Biographical Approaches
and Psychotraumatology” by Mastura Raschidy, presents the role of biographical
approaches and language in psychotherapy through the case of an Afghan woman
processing traumatic experiences. In this brief chapter, Raschidy, a
psychotherapist, describes how an Afghan migrant woman processed experiences
of domestic violence and war through mother-tongue psychotherapy, illustrating
the function of language as “an emotional, social, and interactive process”
(p. 209).
Mascha Dabić also addresses the topic of trauma in Chapter 14, “Speaking about
the Unspeakable: Interpreter-mediated Psychotherapy for Survivors of War and
Torture.” This contribution reports on the perspectives of clients,
psychotherapists, and interpreters, in her case for Russian- and
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian-speaking survivors of war and torture who had
accessed psychotherapy through an NGO in Austria, finding that interpretation
requires a “precarious balance” (p. 221) in therapeutic settings.
Part 3: Unsettling and Extending Biographical Research and Speaker-centred
Approaches
The final part comprises four chapters contributing a variety of perspectives
on biographical multilingualism research.
Chapter 15, “Ilwiimi Zisulungekile: Reflections on Language, Meaning and
Communication” by Ana Deumert, Zolani Kupe, and Nkululeko Mabandla, offers a
decolonizing analysis of “how speakers think about language and linguistic
practices” (p. 228) in dialogues recorded in Cape Town, South Africa. The
authors incorporate a vernacular lens and original-language excerpts to
disrupt Anglocentric practices in sociolinguistic research, with interesting
findings on naming/self-introductions and complexity in the dialogues.
In Chapter 16, “Ideologies of Communication: The Social Link between Actors,
Signs and Practices,” Jürgen Spitzmüller asserts that ideologies about
language, writing, non-verbal communication, forms, and agency link actors and
practices with communicative means and proposes a model of metapragmatic
stancetaking. Drawing on a densely woven discussion of the term ideology and a
series of diagrams, Spitzmüller seeks to illuminate how metapragmatic stances
are co-constructed by interviewer and interviewee and impacted by language
ideologies in biographical research.
In Chapter 17, “Language Issues? On Collecting Language Biographies without
Focusing on Language,” Anne-Christel Zeiter uses data from an interview with
an Eritrean refugee in Switzerland to argue that focusing reflexively on
social practices rather than specifically on language or communication enables
learners to “demonstrate fully their abilities and the nature of their
language repertoire” (p. 187). Thus, she asserts, language biographies offer a
more empowering approach to evaluating social integration, particularly for
refugees who are positioned as “eternal learners” and “indebted toward the
host society” (p. 287).
Brigitta Busch closes the volume with Chapter 18, “A Few Remarks on Working
with Auto-Socio-Bio-Ethnography.” Busch discusses the key topics addressed in
the contributions under the headings Speaking Back, Writing Back; The
Autobiographical Dilemma; and Condensed Scenes and Vignettes.
EVALUATION
Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research: Biographical and
Speaker-centred Approaches succeeds in its mission to “demonstrate how
biographical and speaker-centred approaches can contribute to an understanding
of linguistic diversity, how researchers can empirically account for lived
experiences of languages, and how such accounts are embedded in a larger
discussion on social (in)equality” (back cover). The variety of methodological
approaches employed offers inspiration for emerging and more established
researchers alike, and the contributions represent numerous geographical
contexts and disciplinary backgrounds. The contributors also incorporate
interesting theoretical perspectives and useful concepts, and full-color
visuals – primarily language portraits in Part 2 – vividly illustrate several
of the chapters. Despite the methodological and contextual diversity of the
contributions, the volume is relatively cohesive, a significant challenge in
an edited collection, aided by the common thread of Brigitta Busch’s work
running throughout. There was noticeable variation in chapter length and depth
as well as writing style, with some contributions written in a very accessible
and practical tone (e.g., Choi) and others (e.g., Spitzmüller) heavily
theoretical and likely more challenging for graduate student and multilingual
scholars. As a qualitative methodologist who studies multilingualism, I found
the volume’s methodological variety enlightening, the theoretical and
conceptual lenses enriching, and the examination of minority, Indigenous,
deaf, post-apartheid, and post-colonial language users’ lived experiences
refreshing.
REFERENCES
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M.
Holquist, Trans.).
University of Texas Press. Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic
analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in
Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics,
33(5), 503-523.
Busch, B. (2017). Expanding the notion of the linguistic repertoire: On the
concept of \ Spracherleben – The lived experience of language. Applied
Linguistics, 38(3), 340-358).
Busch, B. (2020). Message in a bottle: Scenic presentation of the unsayable.
Applied Linguistics,
41(3), 408-427.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. (A. M.
Sheridan, Trans.).
Pantheon Books.
Kolb, B. (2008). Involving, sharing, analysing: Potential of the participatory
video interview.
Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(3), Article 12.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Melissa Hauber-Özer (Ph.D. in International Education, George Mason
University) is an Assistant Professor of Qualitative Inquiry in the University
of Missouri’s College of Education and Human Development. Melissa previously
taught adult literacy and English as a second language in the United States
for over 15 years in both non-formal and university settings. Her research
focuses on language and literacy education in migration contexts and employs
critical participatory methodology to examine issues of equity and access for
linguistically and culturally diverse learners. She teaches qualitative
research methods courses for master’s and doctoral students and language
teacher education courses.
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