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.