Published by ICAAP Journal of Research Practice

Journal of Research Practice

Volume 2, Issue 1, Article M2, 2006

Main Article:
Being Bilingual: Issues for Cross-Language
Research
Bogusia Temple
Department of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, UK
[email protected]

Abstract

The current political debates in England highlight the role of language in citizenship,
social exclusion, and discrimination. Similar debates can also be found around the world.
Correspondingly, research addressing different language communities is burgeoning.
Service providers and academics are increasingly employing bilingual community
researchers or interpreters to carry out research. However, there is very little written
about the effect of working with bilingual researchers. What it means to be bilingual is
often essentialised and rarely problematised. Bilingual researchers are seen as
unproblematically acting as bridges between communities just because they are bilingual.
Their ties to communities, their use of language, and their perspectives on the research
are rarely investigated. Language is tied in an unproblematic way to meaning, values, and
beliefs. In this article, I use examples from my own research to question what it means to
be bilingual and to do cross-language research. I argue that there is no straightforward
way in which meanings can be read off from researchers’ ties to language and that being
bilingual is not the same for everyone.

Keywords: bilingual researcher; cross-language research; interpretation; translation

Suggested Citation: Temple, B. (2006). Being bilingual: Issues for cross-language

research. Journal of Research Practice, 2(1), Article M2. Retrieved [date of access], from
http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/20/66

1. Introduction

The current political agenda in England, where my research was carried out, highlights
the role of the English language in citizenship, social exclusion, and discrimination.
Alexander, Edwards, and Temple (2004) describe how mother-tongue competency has
acquired different political significance in England over the years. In the 1980s it was
associated with positive ethnic identity; but now it is seen more as a constraint in building

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citizenship and community cohesion. A new blueprint for citizenship education was laid
out in England in the Crick Report (2003), in which English language facility was viewed
as a core measure of an individual’s merit for national inclusion.

The idea behind this article came from a conversation I once had with an academic
colleague. He was interested in cultural differences and international social work
research. He attributed my beliefs about an issue at work to the fact that I was from
Eastern Europe, i.e., since I spoke Polish, my views would be those of someone from
Eastern Europe. I was born in Reading, England, and my parents were from Poland. I
grew up in England and was taken aback by the suggestion that my perspectives and
beliefs were due to an assumed affinity I had with views from Eastern Europe, whatever
these might be. However, the comment did start me thinking about the role of bilingual
researchers employed in England to work with people who speak languages other than
English. In this article, I challenge the view that everyone who is bilingual experiences
the social world in the same way and therefore it does not matter who works on research
as all bilingual researchers are in effect interchangeable.

Research on, and sometimes with, people from communities who do not share the
researcher’s language is burgeoning. Service providers and academics are increasingly
employing bilingual community researchers or interpreters who are bi/multilingual to
access populations that otherwise would be excluded (see for example, Cole & Robinson,
2003; Steele, 1999). Researchers in health, housing, and social care in England have
begun to look at concept and word equivalence across languages and to examine issues
around the communication of difference in their research (Bradby, 2002; Rhodes &
Nocon, 2003). There has also been some debate about the role of interpreters and
bilingual researchers (e.g., see Gerrish, 2000; Robinson, 2002; Thomson, Rogers, Honey,
& King 1999). However, many researchers working across languages still do not address
the possible effects of language difference within their research and there has been very
little written about the effects of being bilingual on research. For example, in a study
looking at housing and social care needs of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) households
in Derby, England (Steele, 1999), personal interviews were carried out with a sample of
Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and African/Caribbean elders. Chinese respondents were
identified via the Chinese Welfare Association and a focus group discussion was held
with 16 older Bosnian people. No indication is given of the languages involved, the
background of the bilingual researchers, or indeed their names, their level of input into
the research, or how concepts were interpreted or translated across languages (for another
example, see Karn, Mian, Brown, & Dale, 1999).

2. Position of the Bilingual Researcher

Debates about the influence of the researcher on research are common in a range of
disciplines. Discussions centre on the effect--or the lack of it--of the social circumstances
and perspectives of researchers on research, i.e., on questions of objectivity and
subjectivity in research. On this issue, the broad positions of social constructionism and
interpretivism resonate with my own perspective. I will not rehearse the position here (for

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relevant discussions, see Hammersley, 1995; Stanley & Wise, 1993), but state that it is
based on a view that researchers jointly construct accounts and findings with research
participants. This does not mean that there is no social reality, just that there are different
perspectives. The researcher’s role is to present accounts of reality that are open to
scrutiny by other people who may see the social world differently. The issue of the role of
bilingual researchers becomes quite significant in this perspective.

The perspectives of bilingual researchers employed because of their language skills

should form part of cross-language research. Bilingual researchers, interpreters, and
translators in English speaking contexts are not just transmitters of the English language
but are part of the process of meaning construction in research (Edwards, 1998; Temple,
2005). The assumption that there is no need to examine the position and perspective of
bilingual researchers since knowledge of a language per se gives them a direct access to
the views of supposedly homogeneous communities is an essentialist one. It is built on
the premise that is there is only one way to experience being bilingual and only one way
of being part of a community.

There have been developments within sociolinguistics, particularly around what it means
to be bilingual, that could make a valuable contribution to cross-language research across
a range of disciplines and would go some way to re-dressing the current essentialist
premise about what it means to be bilingual. For example, numerous authors have
signalled the dangers of assuming that use of a language determines meanings or values
within a language or culture (Ashcroft, 2003; de Bot, Lowie, & Verspoor, 2005; Gubbins
& Holt, 2002; Harris & Rampton, 2003; Holliday, Hyde, & Kullman, 2004; Wei, 2000a).
Language is used to create and re-create social worlds and identities and no one person is
positioned neutrally in these processes. Ashcroft (2003, p. 50) argues that “the belief,
inherited from nineteenth century philology [the science of the structure and development
of languages], that language actually embodies cultural difference rather than inscribes or
articulates it, is one of the most tenacious in contemporary theory.” Wei (2000a) and
others in the area of bilingual research argue for the investigation of multiple identities
and experiences of being bilingual (Kanno, 2003; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Wei
(2000a, 2000b, 2000c) points to the need to recognise the bilingual researcher’s identity
and to make it a part of research. He challenges the notion that the role and identity of the
bilingual researcher are irrelevant. In an interview or focus group, such researchers
constantly make decisions about what concepts mean in different languages and how they
will be interpreted, although they are rarely asked to discuss this aspect of their work.

The problematisation of the links between languages, identities, and speech is relevant for
all cross-language researchers. Within translation and interpretation studies researchers
also point to the importance of language in constructing identities within oral and written
accounts of people’s lives (Simon, 1996; Spivak, 1992, 1993; Venuti, 1995, 1998).
Language is used to construct accounts of who we are and how we differ from “others,”
i.e., those who are not like us. For example, Simon (1996) shows how translators produce
accounts that are gendered. None of these writers argue that identity or perspective on
issues is tied in any deterministic way to which language people speak. Rather they argue

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that possibilities for different perspectives of who we are can be opened up by examining
the role of language in constructing identity and influencing how people see the social
world.

Researchers’ concerns about attaching views to particular communities, identities, or

languages (Schick, 2002; Twine, 2000) need to be taken on board. Schick’s work with
Maori communities in New Zealand, exemplifies the argument against an essentialist
position on what it means to be bilingual or describe oneself solely in terms of ethnicity:

The committee held in effect that Maori identity corresponded at once to a

Maori body, knowledge about Maori, the ability to express Maori needs,
and a distinctively Maori worldview. An individual Maori leader was to
stand in for the dynamics and complexity internal to the group, to bear the
burden of community consultation with Maori, and to represent the
interests of all Maori. (Schick, 2002, p. 638)

Schick points out that when a researcher is seen to have expertise only in relation to
specific parts of the research, such as being Maori, this reifies social categories and
defines in advance what can be said by whom. This is the way much cross-language
needs assessments are carried out with unnamed bilingual researchers collecting data
from communities. Bilingual researchers’ roles are limited to accessing people from
communities and collecting data. Schick and others (e.g., Twine, 2000) question whether
researchers who share ethnicity with their research participants are necessarily better able
to elicit and interpret information and ensure adequate representation. Ethnicity,
particularly based solely on pre-conceived notions of linguistic competence and
understanding, may not be the only relevant social characteristics in the research.

If researchers want to work with people who speak languages that they do not speak, an
examination of the background and perspectives of all researchers is crucial to
understanding whom in the communities they are reaching and whom they are excluding.
The use of unaccountable self-appointed community leaders as the voice of “the
community” or as the sole conduit to reach respondents is increasingly being challenged
(Bowes & Dar, 2000; Jan-Khan, 2003; Jewkes & Murcott, 1998).

Pavlenko and Blackledge’s (2004) writing is particularly useful for its overview of
existing perspectives on language use in research (see also Ashcroft, 2003; Spivak, 1992).
They observe that researchers often use the concept of “code switching” in a way that
assumes a direct relationship between languages, values, meanings, and identities
(Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004, pp. 8-10). Code switching involves the movement
between languages within speech. It has been shown that this to and fro between
languages in speech can take place for a variety of reasons and the process does not
guarantee that a specific meaning will be conveyed because of a particular language
chosen.

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Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004) argue for “the sociohistorically shaped partiality,
contestability, instability, and mutability of ways in which language ideologies and
identities are linked to relations of power and political arrangements in communities and
societies” (p. 10). They point out that identities are constructed “at the interstices of
multiple axes, such as age, race, class, ethnicity, gender, generation, sexual orientation,
geopolitical locale, institutional affiliation, and social status, whereby each aspect of
identity redefines and modifies all others” (p. 16). If this point is made in relation to
bilingual researchers, it goes against the notion that bilingual researchers can be chosen
without affecting the findings, as long as they speak the relevant languages.

Bilingual researchers come to the research carrying their own perspectives and, possibly,
shared histories with the communities they are working with. However, rapidly
expanding research with bilingual community researchers or interpreters rarely raises
issues of language use and perspective. The status of findings is rarely discussed and the
position of bilingual researchers rarely problematised. Ability to speak a particular
language is used as the sole criterion to judge researchers’ ethnicity and whether they
represent the views of supposedly homogenous communities. Many cross-language
researchers therefore carry out research as if the code switching analogy described above
can be applied literally and one person can provide meanings and values inherent in an
entire language community.

3. A Way Forward?

Approaches have been suggested for cross-language researchers who want to take on
board debates about the influence of bilingual researchers on their research and at least
aim to allow them, and all researchers working in languages other than their own, a
chance to present their perspectives (for a review, see Temple, 2005). Methods based on
use of concepts such as “intellectual auto/biographies” (Stanley, 1990; Temple &
Edwards, 2002) or “key informants” (Edwards, 1998) have been put forward that involve
all participants as active in research. Stanley describes the concept of intellectual
auto/biography as “an analytic (not just descriptive) concern with the specifics of how we
come to understand what we do, by locating acts of understanding in an explication of the
grounded contexts these are located in and arise from” (Stanley, 1990, p. 62). This
involves examination of an account of an individual’s life to assess the impact of events
and choices on their perspectives on social issues. Accordingly, Edwards (1998) works
with interpreters as key informants rather than objective gatherers of findings. Such
methods involve, for example, discussion of concept and word choice in interview
schedules and transcripts as well as discussing everyone’s perspective on the issues as
part of the research process.

These methods do not provide us with the solution to the question about the nature of the
relationship between language and meaning in research as there is no single answer, but
they begin to address the possibilities of different meanings across languages without
essentialising what it means to speak another language. These perspectives therefore
show that language matters as meanings can differ across languages. They seek to

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problematise any deterministic links between language, identity, and meaning, for
example, arguing that there is no single homogeneous community and that within
communities, however defined, meanings cannot be read off from social characteristics
such as gender, language, or religion.

The notion that anyone is part or not part of any community according to only one single
unchanging criterion of language, gender, or anything else has been challenged by others
(Alexander, Edwards, & Temple, 2004; Schick, 2002; Twine, 2000). Minority ethnic
communities are made up from different phases of migration and contain generations that
have been born in the host country. Differences around age, gender, sexuality, and
language, among other characteristics, mean that it is possible to belong or not belong to
communities according to different criteria and sometimes, according to audience. When
picking a bilingual researcher in an attempt to engage communities in dialogue, the kind
of information generated will depend in part on how participants perceive and position
the researcher. This is no different from any interview where people make decisions
about what to say according to audience. In both cases it is important to investigate the
influence of all research participants on the findings. Miedema and de Jong (2005) put it
well when they state that “concepts are clearly more than language: they are historically,
socially and psychologically rooted, and need to be understood in this context. A mere
translation is often inadequate” (pp. 236-237).

However, taking on board the lessons from sociolinguistics, interpretation and translation
studies, and the broader debates within the social sciences about objectivity and
subjectivity implies that there is more to say my position in my research than the fact that
I can speak Polish. My various roles, identities, and orientations will also enter into my
research. My views are those of someone who is not just a bilingual researcher, but also a
woman, an academic, non-religious, and not active in formal Polish community
organisations, preferring informal ties. Polish was my first language but it was learnt in
England. To illustrate some of the issues involved in assuming that all bilingual people
experience being bilingual in the same way, I will discuss interviews I carried out with
two Polish-speaking people living in England and present my own experience of being a
bilingual researcher.

4. Being Bilingual: Examples from Research

I have been collecting narratives of people who describe themselves as Polish for about
15 years and now have over 50 such accounts. I have chosen two interviews for this
article and added my own experience of being bilingual to illustrate some of the different
ways that three people see their ties to the Polish language and the importance of the
Polish background in their lives. The names have been changed. The first interview I
discuss in this article was with Mr Kowacz in 1998. The interview took over eight hours
and covered a range of issues, including the importance, or otherwise, of ethnicity, the
role of language within this, and the need to narrate a life history. Mr Kowacz was in his
late 70s when I interviewed him. This interview was not part of any funded research
project. Mr Kowacz knew that I was interested in narratives, particularly in relation to

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people’s sense of who they had become since leaving Poland. He explained that the
interview would be useful for him, as “I want to debrief myself before I start pushing up
the daisies,” i.e., before he died. This was said in English and Mr Kowacz told me he
preferred to carry out the whole interview in English as “the mechanics of recall [were]
easier in English.” He said that Polish “was beginning to disappear as my natural
language.”

Mr Kowacz had been a Polish airman during the Second World War and described
himself as “of Polish stock” but said that his formative years had been spent in England.
He had lost his parents and explained that “they had survived the war but did not survive
the people.” They had survived the Warsaw Uprising and the fall of Warsaw but had been
killed in an air raid. He could not remember which side had killed them. He framed much
of his narrative of life during the War in terms of adventure, memories of the girls he met
and of “golly jeeps” (exciting adventures), and the fun he had. When discussing his
ethnicity he commented the following:

[T]here is hardly any situation when a precise definition is necessary. I am

not anything really. Man of the world sounds pompous ... internationalist
... I can become British. Never will I become English. For childrens sake it
is easier [to be a British citizen]. (Interviewee anonymised as Mr Kowacz,
personal communication, August 1998)

This fluid and context dependent definition of ethnicity had come up in other interviews I
had carried out and has also been documented by other researchers (for a good example,
see Song & Parker, 1995). Mr Kowacz was clear that his ethnicity was not always
relevant and although he was Polish occasionally, British sometimes, and internationalist
at other times, ethnicity he said “is no big deal for me.” He had concluded that for the
most part the Polish language had ceased to matter to him but that it seemed to be
important to other people:

Does it matter? Not for me but ... other people seem to think it is important
to put you in a box. He speaks Polish ... that sounds strange and different
... They do things differently there ... Stereotyping ... I ask them why?
Maybe it is to dismiss views that they don’t agree with ... or to explain
why they don’t like me. I have decided it is their problem. I am more
interested in how people see me as a confused old man. Sometimes I can’t
find the words in any language. They think I am stupid. I haven’t any bits
of paper [qualifications] but I am respected. I can think. (Interviewee
anonymised as Mr Kowacz, personal communication, August 1998)

He felt his age was of more concern to him than his ethnicity or the language that he
spoke since, as he got older, he believed that he could be dismissed as “a grumpy old
man.”

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Mrs Groch, my second example, saw her ties to the Polish language differently. She had
also been born in Poland and was in her late 40s when I interviewed her. She had come to
England about 20 years ago to marry a man with a Polish background she had met when
he went for a holiday to Poland. She spoke no English when she came to England. She
worked in a nursing home at the time of the interview and spoke fluent English. She had
two teenage children. Polish was the language used at home and both her children were
studying Polish at a Saturday School. Both parents were active in Polish organisations
and attended the Polish Church. Mrs Groch felt that the Polish language was central to
who they were:

Speaking Polish is very important to all of us. It is about keeping a way of

life going. It is a bit different for my husband and children. We have
decided that they should learn ... they should know about Poland and be
able to speak to relatives in Polish. It is part of who they are. An English
education is important but so is speaking Polish. They were born in
England but speak Polish at home. I know they feel both Polish and
English ... maybe English is easier for them and Polish is easier for me but
both are important in our lives because we mix with Polish and English
speakers. (Interviewee anonymised as Mrs Groch, personal
communication, September 2003)

For Mrs Groch, her husband, and family, speaking Polish was important for their sense of
themselves, but in differing ways. Mrs Groch recognised that speaking Polish did not
have the same significance for her husband and children:

We are all mixed up! I could speak only Polish until I came to England. I
cannot forget that that was ... is how it is ... They [husband and children]
spoke Polish and English as they grew up. There are differences in the
way we speak [Polish] but these are not so big now that we have stayed in
Poland a few times together. My English will never be as easy for me. I
think in Polish. (Interviewee anonymised as Mrs Groch, personal
communication, September 2003)

Later on she commented that this situation might not be that unusual anymore:

Everyone is mixed up now. It is difficult to say who we are. People ask me

where I am from because I have an accent but my English is as good ... I
have qualifications ... better than some of theirs. I need to be Polish but I
am part of what happens in England now. (Interviewee anonymised as Mrs
Groch, personal communication, September 2003)

Mrs Groch’s English was respected by the people she interpreted for when they needed
help and she valued being able to give something back to the Polish people who had
welcomed her to England. The interview was in English. This was her choice as we had
met through English friends and had previously spoken in English for the benefit of non-

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Polish friends. In other words, she felt we had a history of speaking English to each other
and she felt more comfortable continuing in English rather than switching back and forth.

Looking at my own ties to the Polish language presents another way of experiencing
being bilingual. I spoke only Polish until I was about five but learnt my Polish in
England. This was common in the community where I grew up, particularly for the first
child in a family, as many Polish people who came here after the Second World War
believed that they would be going back with their families. My bilingual abilities were
often seen as a disadvantage at school or at best a waste of time that could be spent on
other subjects. My language biography shows my path from monolingual Polish speaker,
to reluctant bilingual (reluctant to speak English), to reluctant bilingual again (reluctant to
speak Polish), and finally to proud bilingual. The centrality of each language in my life
has changed in part as a result of my experiences both at work and in my social life.

The three examples show that not only are there different ways of experiencing being
bilingual but that experiences may also change during the course of life. My reluctance to
speak Polish was in part due to the gendered nature of my experiences in the community
where I grew up. There were associations for me between the Polish language and
traditional views about a woman’s place being in the home and being Catholic. I
preferred to mix with people with Polish backgrounds (speaking English) in informal
networks rather than attending organised events. This way of connecting with my
heritage has always been important to me. However, as new waves of Polish people come
to England, these very traditional views have been challenged. Of particular interest here
is that the kind of Polish spoken has also changed as people continue arriving from
Poland. For example, there have been influxes of Polish Roma people--an ethnic group
mostly living in Europe--seeking asylum, Polish people coming to marry English people,
and more recently coming to work in England since Poland joined the EU. They have
bought with them a more modern spoken Polish. The Polish Mr Kowacz, Mrs Groch, and
I speak is different. Mrs Groch’s is the most modern but “not always grammatically
correct,” Mr Kowacz describes his as “stale but accurate,” and mine is moving from a
Second World War spoken Polish that was taught at a Polish school in England to a more
up-to-date version as my confidence grows following visits to Poland.

There are, however, other differences between us than the kind of Polish we speak. The
way we interpret the world around us also varies. My understandings would be situated
within my experiences of community life as gendered and restrictive for women. Mr
Kowacz questions the current “advantages” women have whilst Mrs Groch feels it is her
sole responsibility to juggle home and work. There is no “Polish” perspective here, as
there is no single English or British one either. The position bilingual researchers take on
issues is influenced by their intellectual and emotional auto/biographies, where gender
and age may be as important as the language spoken. One interesting point about my
experiences as a bilingual is that although my first language was Polish it was not learnt
in Poland. This situation is common among bilingual researchers and I believe it has
important consequences for the ways we experience being bilingual. As Gubbins and
Holt (2002) argue, “the language identity chosen by children of migrants is not a simple

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attachment to the language of their parents but involves choice and change. The choices
made by such speakers have different symbolic and affective meanings” (p. 3).

In a fascinating discussion of what it means to be bilingual, Schrauf and Rubin (2003)

suggest that bilingual people have two sets of memories. They ask, “might not the
bilingual individual have at least two curriculum vitae, two chains of associations, two
sets of memories?” (p. 124). The attempt to position bilingual speakers into two worlds,
two languages, two sets of memories and two cultures is one that was prevalent in
debates in the 1970s and 1980s around assimilation: they are torn in ways monolingual
people are not. My experience suggests the impossibility of separating Polish and English
memories, especially when they have been made in the same place since these memories
are tied to more than the language used. Mrs Groch’s comment that “Everyone is mixed
up” seems to be more akin to the way that I experience being bilingual than attempts to
separate my Polish memories from my English memories. I can’t remember which
language I used on which occasions in the past and I recall them all in English.

Contrary to Schrauf and Rubin’s (2003, p. 141) position that “memories are in fact
encoded in stable manner in one language and preferentially retrieved in that same
language,” I argue that memories are re-worked according to a bilingual person’s current
experiences to form narratives of self and that these re-workings can be in a different
language. The memories I recall as a child must have been those of someone who did not
speak English but because of my experiences since then, I recall them in English. Mr
Kowacz’s comment about the mechanics of recall being easier in English now is also
relevant here, as is Mrs Groch’s about thinking in Polish even when all around her are
speaking in English. I have long given up trying to separate my Polish and English
memories or beliefs. I do not hold that “remembering is language specific” or that there
are “language specific selves” (Schrauf & Rubin, 2003, p. 141) for all bilingual people. I
am increasingly drawn to the literature on hybridity (Bhabha, 1994) and different ways of
being bilingual with language as a factor to investigate rather than an assumed way of
being different. As Bhabha states, “by exploring this Third Space [as migrants], we may
elude the politics and emerge as the others of our selves” (Bhabha, 1994, pp. 38-39). This
is very different from a view of encoded stable memories.

These three brief descriptions I have given of what it means to be bilingual illustrate the
argument that people experience being bilingual in different ways. Mrs Groch’s life still
affords a key place to the Polish language, whilst English has become a greater part of her
life. Mr Kowacz, however, feels he can better express himself in English and his ties are
mostly with English people. He appears to have little need to speak Polish and his
children and grandchildren speak only English. Arguably, speaking Polish has
increasingly become part of who I am. Speaking Polish is a part of my work and
sometimes part of my social life. In this sense the Polish language has become re-centred
in my life.

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5. Discussion

The bilingual researcher has a difficult task in spotting similarities and differences across
language communities without stereotyping people. This task can only be achieved if
bilingual researchers are seen as active in the research process and not as just neutral
transmitters of messages across languages. The focus needs to shift to establishing how
concepts are being used rather than assuming one meaning is all embracing for an entire
group of language speakers.

Being bilingual is not the same experience for Mrs Groch, Mr Kowacz, or for me. It
matters who serves as the link between a cross-language researcher and the language
community being studied. This is more than the issue of sampling and whom bilingual
researchers can access. Moreover, close ties with a community are not always an
advantage since people may feel they want to talk to researchers they do not know. There
is no correct choice of a bilingual researcher but the research outcome may differ
depending upon who does it. The choice, for example, between Mr Kowacz, Mrs Groch,
and I may effect who will participate in the research and what they would be prepared to
say, but it will also influence the way Polish and English are used in the research and the
assumptions made about the meanings of concepts and words.

The assumption underlying much research involving bilingual researchers is a simplistic

one: they will know the non-English meanings if they differ from the English meanings,
because they must be from “the community” as they speak the language. However,
meanings need to be investigated rather than built upon dubious notions of essentialised
links between language and representation. Behind this kind of approach is an assumption
that has come under increasing attack within sociolinguistics: the assumption implies that
any speaker of a language can decode the meaning supposedly shared in that language
community. The employment of bilingual researchers has many benefits but they are not
interchangeable conduits of meaning across languages.

The intellectual auto/biographies of all research participants matter. Words and concepts
have connotations for all researchers that are arguably carried across languages as much
as they are tied to them. Employing Mr Kowacz as a bilingual researcher would be a very
different experience to employing Mrs Groch. Speaking a language is not the same
experience for everyone and there is no way to investigate similarities and differences
between languages without putting the bilingual researcher into the frame of reference.
Even then, researchers cannot deterministically tie meaning to language community, as
there is no such single language community or meaning. There are not many researchers
remaining who believe, for example, that there is only one way in which it is possible to
experience being a woman, being black, or being disabled. Yet that is the assumption
behind the way people experience ties to different languages. Bilingual researchers are
still seen to be interchangeable, except perhaps for issues around gender matching.

The call to investigate the role of the researcher in research can be found across many
disciplines. The largely unquestioned role of bilingual researchers spans issues beyond

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the advantages and disadvantages of employing them. There are epistemological

questions that need to be addressed in any cross-language research around the
intermediary role of the bilingual researchers in constructing accounts. Arguing that
language constructs as well as describes our social world does not mean that there are any
deterministic links between language, identity, and meaning. It is up to researchers to
investigate the links and to persuade the reader of differences and similarities in meanings
across languages. Part of the investigation should be the perspectives of bilingual
researchers and the ways in which they use language.

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Received 26 September 2005

Accepted 14 November 2005

Copyright © 2006 Journal of Research Practice and the author

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