Symposium presentation by Alison Phipps

1. Researching Multilingually at the borders
of the body, language, law and the state
AHRC “Translating Cultures” Programme
Alison Phipps (University of Glasgow) (PI)

2. Translating Cultures
Multilingual, 2.0?
Context
‘It is becoming clear that the
very nature of
multilingualism is now
increasingly unmoored –
even from the frameworks
that were applied in the
1990s’

3. Unpredictability
The languages used to language – to
attempt to work through the loss and
possibilities, the pain and the hope –
are now radically unpredictable.
The unmoorings (loss of one or both
anchors) of multilingualism are
myriad and occurring at the levels of :
• Self
• Kin
• Community
• Work
• Environment
• Market
• Politics (local / global)

4. Researching Multilingually
Each of these aspects have
attracted some scholarly
attention in the Translating
Cultures theme.
Each is suffused by myriad
forms of migration and
mobility which come into
conflict with the body,
language, law and the state.

5. Subjectivity
“so little is said about how each of us comes to
the pen and the computer and the authority to speak
and author texts.”
Ruth Behar Translated Woman

6. Researching Multilingually
Two overarching aims:
1) to research interpreting, translation and multilingual
practices in challenging contexts, and,
1) while doing so, to document, describe and evaluate
appropriate research methods (traditional and arts based)
and develop theoretical approaches for this type of academic
exploration.

7. The Body in Pain
Intense pain is also language-destroying: as the content of
one’s world disintegrates, so that which would express and
project the self is robbed of its source and its subject. Word,
self and voice are lost, or nearly lost...[…].
(Scarry: 35 )

8. Research Context
• Concepts of borders and embodiment, superdiversity,
security/insecurity, raise important practical and ethical
questions as to how research might be conducted.
• These concepts trouble the nature of traditional modern
languages and concepts of translation and culture.
• The contribution to the Translating Cultures is therefore both
theoretical/conceptual and also methodological.

9. Methods
Focus on Methods: Part of the innovative nature of the project
lies not in using new methods per se, but rather
(i) in comparing across discipline-specific methods,
(ii) interrogating arts and humanities methods where the
body and body politic are under threat, and
(iii) in developing theoretical and methodological insights as
a result.
(iv) Arts based representations

10. A framework for
researching multilingually
An overarching theme – Develop researcher intentionality of
possibilities and complexities of researching multilingually at all
stages of a research process across wide range of fields.
Relationships - researchers, participants, mediators,
interpreters, translations, team members
Spaces – research (phenomena); researched (context);
researcher (language resources); re/presentation
(reporting/dissemination)

11. 5 Case Studies
1) Global Mental Health: Translating Sexual and Gender
Based Trauma (Scotland/Sierra Leone)
2) Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal
process (UK/Netherlands)
3) State: Working and Researching Multilingually at State and
EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania)
4) Borders: Multilingual Ecologies in American Southwest
borderlands
5) Language Education: Arabic as a Foreign Language for
International Learners (Gaza)

12. Global Mental Health

13. Law

14. EU Borders

15. US Borderlands

16. Gaza

17. Hubs and Impacts
- Academic Hub
-Creative Arts Hub
Multimodal Outputs which create impact and communicate
beyond the theme for a new generation of researchers and
stakeholders who have tools, theories and methods for
researching multilingually across wide range of disciplines.

18. Public and Third Sector Organisations
….together with international partners.
• A Moment's Peace
• BEMIS
• Bridges Programmes
• Camcorder Guerillas
• CARA
• Centre for Rural Childhood
• Citizens for Sanctuary
• COSLA SMP
• Glasgow Centre for International Development
• Glasgow City Council
• Glasgow Housing Association
• Haven
• Lifelong Learning in Palestine
• Human Rights Cluster, Uni South Australia
• Migrant/Ethnic Churches
Together in Scotland
• Migrants' Rights Scotland
• Migrant Voice
• Oxfam Scotland
• Pan African Arts Scotland
• Positive Action in Housing
• Scottish Red Cross
• Scottish Detainee Visitors
• Scottish Migrants Network
• Scottish Refugee Council
• Street Level Photoworks
• Student Action for Refugees
• Unity Centre Glasgow

20. Challenges

21. Creative Arts
Some Surprises
Ha Orchestra; Poetry Collection
Musical Drama
Marsden – Aotearoa New Zealand
Refugee Language Education in Lebanon
Scotland’s Future
Poverty Truth Commission
Multimodal Emergent Outputs which create impact and communicate beyond
the theme for a new generation of researchers and stakeholders who have tools,
theories and methods for researching multilingually across wide range of
disciplines.

22. New theoretical, conceptual and empirical
understandings
• Unique contribution in opening up existing disciplinary
pockets to critical, comparative attention.
• Using arts based methods to open up settled meanings whilst
documenting and analysing commonalities and differences in
concepts, methods, processes and practices across a range of
fields, countries, disciplines and policy areas.
• Creating a context where multilingual realities are not feared
or masked, but engaged across societies, in direct response to
the needs of multiple partners.