Discursive Dances: Narratives of Insider/Outsider Researcher Tensions

ABSTRACT

In this article, two applied linguistics researchers who conducted qualitative studies in educational contexts in Italy and Jamaica reflexively interrogate identity tensions among their ascribed, felt and evolving insider/outsider identities and positions. The juxtaposition of selected discursively analyzed research vignettes reflects similarities and differences in our experiences in two very different contexts, but a convergence in the complexity of our (linguistic/cultural) identities, positions, and intersubjectivities as insider/outsider researchers. In both cases, as we sought to reconcile tensions in positions within interviews about language attitudes and language education policy, we performed “discursive dances” aimed at creating positional spaces as we collaboratively produced and co-constructed our experiences, identities, and positioning with our participants. We argue that the approaches, presentation, and re-presentation of our research are filtered through identity tensions. Therefore, in making these tensions explicit, we became sensitive to the role of power and positionality in our research process.

KEYWORDS:

• Discursive dances
• English
• language attitudes and ideologies
• qualitative interviews
• reflexivity
• researcher identities

Notes

1. A West Indian (of Anglophone background) refers to someone born and raised in any Caribbean island nation as well as the mainland countries of Guyana in South America, and Belize in Central America, where English is the official language and medium of instruction in school on account of a shared history of British colonization (Adderly, 2000).

2. This image established Southern Italy “as a land inhabited by brigands, lazy peasants and corruption” (Chambers, 2015, p. 13).

3. Over the past decade, Naples has been featured in the news for organized and petty crime, a waste management crisis, and record unemployment rates such that, for some, Neapolitanness evokes imagery of crime, trash, indolence, and poverty.

4. Bucholtz and Hall (2004) characterize adequation (one of their tactics of intersubjectivity) as a strategic pursuit of socially recognized sameness within an interaction.

5. Haugh (2014) defines jocular mockery as “social actions […] whereby the speaker somehow diminishes something of relevance to self, other, or a non-co-present third party, but does so within a non-serious or playful frame” (p. 78).

6. Bolded words are Mr. J’s emphasis.

7. When I first met Mr. J., we had a long unrecorded conversation about my West Indian background, my upbringing, and British colonial education in Guyana.

8. Here I find myself, ironically, employing the tactic of adequation as well, a strategic decision to build alignment with Mr. J. for reasons cited above.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for Shondel J. Nero’s study provided by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) Fulbright grant #49421111 in 2011. Jacqueline Aiello’s study was supported by a New York University Steinhardt School of Culture Education and Human Development Challenge Grant.