Research+design

Should justify the choice of the language for conducting the interviews. I insisted on conducting the first one in English driven by my long-standing belief that it should be done in English because it is about English. However, Pavlenko (2006) in her article devoted to the discussion of data analysis in narrative studies suggests a number of reasons to be taken into account when choosing whether to conduct a interview in the native language of the interviewees or their L2. Choosing in favour of doing it in 2 languages can contribute to the scope and quality of data the researcher obtains. The article also points out different factors that can make the data collection in this kind of research more or less reliable.

Three types of autobiographic narratives: 1. Diaries and journals: L2 Ls spontaneously/Ts’ request – beliefs and feelings 2. Linguistic autobiography: life histories – languages of the speaker/how acquired, used, abandoned Collected: · history interviews (Europe) · interviews (North America) · classroom assignments (NA) 3. Published linguistic autobiographies (to avoid researcher’s influence) Information collected from life histories: a) subject reality (“how ‘things’ or events were experienced”: some form of thematic or content analysis – “thoughts and feelings about the language learning process”; “bilinguals attitudes t/w their respective languages”, “heritage language speakers’ views about language maintenance and ethnic identification” (p. 4) Main analytic step: “coding according to emerging themes, trends, patterns or conceptual categories” (p. 4) Advantages: sensitivity to recurrent motifs and themes Problems: How generalizable are they? They result from 5 major weaknesses of such analysis: - insufficient theoretical premise - “the lack of established procedure for matching of instances to categories” (p. 4) - “overreliance on repeated instances” - “exclusive focus on what is in the text” - “the lack of attention to ways in which storytellers use language to  Thus content analysis can turn into a “laundry list” the problem with which is its inability to present the larger picture (p. 5); can “offer conclusions that are too obvious and trite” (p. 5) Pavlenko argues that “content cannot be analysed in separation from context and form, and that thematisation is a preliminary analytical step and cannot be confused with analysis” (p. 5). She suggests “adopting a specific theoretical framework that would allow [the researchers] to clarify the nature of their conceptual categories and to pinpoint the links between the recurrent themes and conceptual constructs” (p. 5). b) life reality (“how ‘things’ are/were”) In NA tradition such studies rely on thematic analysis “to pinpoint repeated events and commonalities in L2 learners’ and users’ experiences” (p. 6) In Europe, linguistic autobiographies are used “to reconstruct sociolinguistic circumstances of bi- and multilingual families and speech communities” or “linguistic trajectories of individual learners” (p. 7)  c) text reality (“how ‘things’/events are narrated” (Pavlenko, 2010, p.3): “These studies examine how bilinguals construct selves in their respective languages […] or in a second language, […] how L2 writers create textual homes in a second language […] and how language learning experiences are reflected in L2 users’ positioning and narrative plots” (p. 8) Possible features for analysis:  - narrative structure: “consider plots and schemas that allow storytellers to create engaging and coherent stories” (p. 8) - Labovian analysis  - Davies and Harre’s (1990) notion of positioning  - Bakhtinian analysis “highlights creative appropriation of new linguistic resources and active engagement with the voices and positions of others”. This method allows the researchers to “explore the tension between the study participant’ beliefs about linguistic self-cpnstruction and th actual processes they are engaged in| (p. 8) Collecting linguistic autobiographies  “It’s well known that even in one language different renderings of the ‘same’ story may vary in the amount of details, reported speech, emotional intensity, episodic structure, and framing of particular episodes (Chafe 1998; Norric 1998; Shiffrin 2003; Tannen 1982). The differences are even more pronounced between stories of the ‘same’ experience told in different languages (Koven 1998, 2001, 2002, 2004)” (p. 9-10). […] Stories told in the language in which the original events took place are higher in emotional intensity and amount of detail (Javier //et al.// 1993; Marian and Kaushanskaya 2004) It’s important to take into account too that the same story told in 2 different languages can be different in form and content, with one of the factors of influence being the language proficiency (p. 10). The choice of one language for the study is “problematic where the focus is on the actual linguistic construction of self and the inquiry could benefit from a comparison of L1 and L2 narrative constructions (cf. Koven 1998). The choice of the a single language is also problematic in studies that involve participants with high proficiency in more than one language” (p.10).

Thus, “Nekvapil (2003) recommends collecting several autobiographies from the same informant, at significant intervals, and in all of the informant’s languages. When possible, […] by different interviewers…“ (p. 11). Transcribing oral narratives In addition, “all narratives should be analysed in the language in which they were told and not in translation” (p. 11). Analyzing language choice The author poses the question whether telling the story not in the language the events took place in can cause a “the discrepancy [its] telling, for instance, by lowering the level of affect and the amount of detail” (p. 12).

Analysing content This involves the analysis of the narrative content, context, and form. A range of theoretical frameworks at present is quite broad. “The choice will depend on the research interests and its purposes. For example, sociocultural theory brings with it the notion of activity (Pavlenko and Lantolf 2000)” (p. 13). Analyzing context The author supports the idea of including both global or macro-level of analysis and micro-level. “The former should attend to historic, political, economic and cultural circumstances … while the local or micto-level should attend to the context of the interview or manuscript writing, and thus to the influence of language choice, audience, setting, modality, narrative functions, interactional concerns, and power relations on ways in which speakers and writers verbalise their experiences” (p. 13). Analysing form “It exposes linguistic, cultural, and genre influences on ways in which people structure their life-stories (macro-level). It also allows us to examine how storytellers achieve their interactional goals through particular narrative devices or lexical choice (micro-level) and illuminates individual creativity and agency in the presentation of self” (p. 15). “In oral interviews, the degree of explicitness is co-constructed between the interviewer and the narrator. [..] It presents a challenge for analysis” (p. 16). “Compiling interview answers into narratives ignores interactional influences on the presentation of self. To acknowledge these influences researchers should incorporate methods developed in conversation and interaction analysis” (p. 16). “Bachtin’s (1981) theory of the dialogic nature of the language: notion of voice refers to “recognizable social voices individuals appropriate in order to author selves and position themselves as particular kinds of individuals

How can I justify my choice of the interview language in view of the arguments presented in this article?