Methodological Issues and Challenges in Researching Transculturally

This book sheds light on the ‘unseen’ challenges encountered by qualitative researchers before, during and long after conducting their study. These issues, often shrouded in mystery, are seldom found in academic publications. They tend to remain tucked away in piles of field notes, memos, transcriptions and diaries—written records that might expose the researchers’ vulnerabilities, indecisions and self-doubts. This collection presents first-person accounts by contributors whose investigations involved highly diverse multilingual and multicultural contexts. They share how they navigated the challenges—ethical tensions, unequal power relations, linguistic mis/non-understanding, translation difficulties, and social, cultural and religious differences—of researching transculturally. This volume, which includes practical recommendations on researching across and within cultures, is an invaluable methodological resource for linguistic ethnographers, sociolinguists, literacy researchers, applied linguists, and intercultural communication scholars.