We are currently experiencing a critical moment in critical sociolinguistics research, with the impact of multiple intersecting and expansive turns. At the same time, notions of innovation and newness dominate, including responding to massive technical shifts in the way we communicate, teach and learn, engage with cultural life and go about our everyday lives. This newness can translate into significant ‘moments’ for the field, which we often conceptualise and experience as ‘turns’. In critical sociolinguistics, the ‘ethnographic turn’ (e.g. Heller, 2006) radically shaped the field in the last half century, shaping our understandings of ‘context’ and subjectivity, opening up the field epistemologically and methodologically. The ‘multilingual’ turn (e.g. May, 2013) raises significant and important questions around why multilingualism had not previously been the norm for sociolinguistics research. More recently, the ‘collaborative’ or ‘participatory’ turn (e.g. Bodó et al., 2022) has expanded our toolkits and disbanded perceived notions of expert and non-expert, and researcher and researched. More inter, or trans-, disciplinary  the last five years what might be called the ‘creative’ turn (e.g. Bradley & Harvey, 2019) brings language research into contact with artistic practice and performance, while Canagarajah (2023) describes a ‘decolonial crip linguistics’, bringing critical disability studies in dialogue with linguistics. 

Beyond these ‘turns’, sociolinguistics, as a field of inquiry, is cottoning on to how the analysis of what is sayable is not enough to fully engage with or account for the vast range and breadth of communicative activity. In this colloquium we consider positionality and critical reflection as a way to encounter and engage with that which is often unsayable in research. The unsayable is such a huge part of our being and knowing, and we ask how that can be accounted for (Busch & McNamara, 2020; Harvey et al., 2022).

These ‘turns’ entail significant critical reflexivity for the researcher in addition to challenging accepted understandings of what research in ‘language/s’ has been, is and what it might be, in terms of what might be considered unsayable. They also require us to consider our engagements with authority and power and our own complicitness with reinforcing the status quo. How do we - as sociolinguists - reckon with our own positionality and perceived insiderness and outsiderness? Contemplation of issues of power and authority, and who is allowed to ‘speak’ for whom, become most pronounced in certain circumstances, including times of crisis and moments of change. These moments require us to explore why the ‘extraordinary’ is prioritised, and how our research discourses might contribute to this - who decides what is ordinary (and therefore unremarkable) or extraordinary, and whose perspectives are driving this narrative. 

Reflecting on these ‘turns’, and mindful of future shifts in sociolinguistics research, In this colloquium we pause to consider researcher positionality, asking whether there is a need for more engagement with authority and power within sociolinguistics research, pushing forward with interdisciplinary perspectives. Colloquium speakers come from diverse disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, but have in common their interest in multilingualism, identities and ideologies. Our colloquium takes a creative lens on positionality, bringing researchers into dialogue with each other, moving away from a traditional colloquium format. After an introduction by the colloquium chairs, speakers will engage in four 15-minute conversations, bringing their research into dialogue across four thematic areas, ending in group discussion led by Annamaria Paulino. 

Introduction 

Jessica Bradley, University of Sheffield and Kristine Horner, University of Sheffield 

Conversation One: power, positionality and critical incidents in classroom research

Abigail Parrish, University of Sheffield and Emilee Moore, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona 

In this conversation, the presenters reflect on their research in formal and non-formal classrooms. Both researchers approach from different disciplinary perspectives. Abigail Parrish researches multilingualism and student motivation to learn a language at school in England, using questionnaires grounded in self-determination theory. Emilee Moore's research takes place in non-formal educational settings and explores the experiences of multilingual youth. Emilee reflects on a critical incident occurring during a recent non-formal educational and research project with multilingual youth inspired by youth-led participatory action research (Ozer et al., 2010), which aimed to support the redistribution of power between youth and adults and support youth participants’ self-determination. For different reasons, however, the team failed to generate the epistemological context planned for, and because of (or with the excuse of) the COVID-19 pandemic, they eventually cancelled the planned activities. Inspired by models of teacher professional development (e.g. Tripp, 1993), Emilee unpacks the critical incident, reflecting on the researchers’ role in it, and identifies the lessons for future research and action. In response, Abigail describes how, as a former teacher, she is positioned in the classroom as an insider on the outside. She asks how research might give power to young people, and to what extent it means exercising outsider power over their views. She also asks whether the position of an outsider classroom researcher is one of power or weakness in the current educational climate, and to what extent her conclusions matter. Together they wrestle with the question of whether research can ever really foreground the voices of the participants.

Conversation Two: researcher positionality and small, smaller and even smaller languages

Kristine Horner, University of Sheffield and Gro-Renée Rambø, Universitetet i Agder  

In our second conversation, Kristine Horner and  Gro-Renée Rambø discuss their work with small language communities, considering issues of researcher positionality. Gro-Renée researches multilingual landscapes in Finnmark, Northern Norway, where Sami and Kven/Finnish have been socio-historically minoritised and/or marginalised languages but recently have been part of revitalisation processes and now visible in linguistic (and semiotic) landscapes. Kristine’s research takes place in the officially multilingual state of Luxembourg, where Luxembourgish speakers have not been marginalised and Luxembourgish is undergoing state-sanctioned promotion. Here, they consider experiences of researching small languages in different circumstances. Gro-Renée explores how a discursive understanding of linguistic landscapes, focusing on commodification and layers of language indexicality, can enhance our understanding of everyday life and multilingual practices. The linguistic landscapes are explored as possible reflections, or representations, of both historical and present-day multilingualism, language policy and ideology - and aspirations for the future. She asks whose power and agency are represented, and in what ways? Kristine also explores language, power and agency but with a focus on co-construction in interviews with newcomers to Luxembourg. She describes how the question ‘whose language is it?’ can be riddled with tensions when links between small languages and the ethnolinguistic community come into question. Although small languages are often viewed as peripheral, the case of Luxembourgish illustrates how small languages can function as dominant languages despite being in ‘cluttered fields of competing ideologies’ due to their smallness (Pietkäinen et al., 2016). Together, they grapple with the intricacies of working with small language communities and consider how views of ‘small languages’ as ordinary or extraordinary can be shaped by insider/outsider positionalities. 

Conversation Three: creative grappling with multiple and fluid identities in research

Jessica Bradley, University of Sheffield and Sally Thomas, University of Sheffield

Our third conversation moves to methodological reflections, and in particular the role of and possibilities of creative practice, or creative inquiry (Bradley & Harvey, 2019), in exploring positionalities and identities in research. Sally Thomas is an art therapist and counsellor, currently undertaking her doctoral research which explores young people’s hopes and dreams for the future, drawing on arts-based research (Barone & Eisner, 2011), ethnography and co-production. Jessica Bradley is a linguist whose research takes place at the intersections of language and the arts. She takes an ethnographic approach to researching in creative contexts, including co-production with creative practitioners, exploring identities and belonging. Her recent research has explored participatory arts and creative journaling in communities, as a response to the isolation experienced by many during the pandemic. In dialogue they consider two very different research projects, both of which engage with diverse community groups in times of rapid change, including the pandemic aftermath. They discuss how we have used creative methods to consider what can feel ‘unsayable’ (Harvey et al., 2022) in research, including exploring shifting positionalities and conflicting identities. They show examples from their fieldwork, which includes drawing, collage and making, to show how they have drawn on creative methods to reflect on these complexities, in ways which are authentic to their research approaches and contexts, offering ways forward for linguists in complex contexts.  

Conversation Four: age differences in ethnographic research and participatory possibilities 

Adriana Patiño Santos, University of Southampton 

The fourth paper brings together positionality and participatory possibilities in research. Adriana Patiño Santos discusses dilemmas emerging from positionality as an ‘adult’ researcher within the ‘field’ (Patino-Santos, 2019) when researching with young people. Age, gender, but also experience expressed in different temporalities, might act as facilitators or obstacles when inquiring about the role of language(s) in youngsters’ life projects (Blommaert & Varis 2013). She describes episodes of insider/outsiderness in a 6-month virtual ethnography with a group of finalists at a Catalan university, with the analytical concept of of ‘social generation’ (Woodman & Wyn, 2015) as a lens to discuss how experiences, mediated by age, mobility and social change, are co-constructed in the biographies of two young women, interacting with a researcher 25 years older than them. Interviews become discursive spaces (Arfuch, 1995) where the interlocutors reflect and position themselves in relation to a crossroads of important social changes in contemporary Spain.  She considers how participatory methods contribute to sociolinguistic theory, methods, and applications – and to societal and public engagement (Lawson & Sayers, 2016). This paper explores the differences, the benefits, and the challenges of ethnography and participatory methods with regard to linguistic expertise and ownership as well as ethical issues.

Discussion

Annamaria Paulino, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

References

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Barone, T. & Eisner, E. (2011). Arts Based Research. London: Sage. 

Blommaert, J., & Varis, P. (2013). Life projects. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 58.

Bodó, C., Barabás, B.,  Fazakas, N., Gáspár, J., Jani-Demetriou, B., Laihonen, P., Lajo, V. &   Szabó, G. Bodó, C. (2022). Participation in sociolinguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass, 16(4). 

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