Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research

Power, privilege, hierarchy, and dependence shape and often complicate ethnographers’ forays into unfamiliar languages. These thoughtful, reflexive essays, addressing an impressive range of field experiences, incisively reveal and explore the shifting ground of the authors’ linguistic interactions in relation to dynamics that are often invisible, usually risky, and always unpredictable.

* Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University, USA *

This refreshing collection of articles reflects on issues of language in ethnographic research that anthropologists have tended to sweep under the carpet: The delicate issue of the ethnographer’s language competence; challenges of language learning; complications of multilingual fieldwork settings; and the ethnographer’s anxieties related to their own incomplete language mastery. Highly valuable for anyone doing ethnography in a language that is not one’s own!

* Axel Borchgrevink, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway *

What does learning a language well enough to conduct research really require? This treasure trove of fifteen rich case studies takes readers on a global tour of anthropologists’ searching inquiries into their sophisticated linguistic travels and travails. The joys and confounding challenges of mastering a foreign language will never again appear either opaque or generic.

* Alma Gottlieb, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA *

Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Fieldwork is an accessible, insightful and dynamic volume that aims to demystify the epistemological, methodological and practical aspects of multilingual ethnographic fieldwork, reassuring researchers that their anxieties surrounding their learning and use of languages are a normal – and inevitable – part of life in the field.

-- Katherine Williams, Cardiff University, UK * LSE Review of Books, July 20