Language Over Lunch: Spring 2013 Language Institute Brownbag Series
Multilingual Subjectivity in Linguistic Ethnography: Meeting the Native in the Diaspora
Isil Erduyan, Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition
12:00 pm, Monday, March 11, 2013
1322 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Abstract: In this talk, ‘turning the gaze inwards,’ I explore the construction and enactment of researcher subjectivity in multilingual linguistic-ethnographic research. More specifically, I question the construct “native” as a researcher attribute and discuss how it played out in my ethnographic fieldwork within a multilingual setting. The research site that I talk about is an urban high school in Berlin, Germany with a high percentage of students of Turkish origin. My approach to the field encompassed a repertoire of identities, including that of a non-diasporic national, negotiation of which required constant evaluation of nativeness. In this process, languages that I speak and how I speak them played important roles. Drawing on my fieldnotes and interview accounts I will try to demonstrate how my subjectivity in this research was shaped, modified, and challenged through multilingual resources. I will then discuss what this might imply for analyzing multilingual ethnographic data.
Language Over Lunch brownbag presentations and discussions are free and open to the public. Sponsored by the Language Institute.
For more information or accommodations: Kazeem Sanuth (608) 262-1473.
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