Naming Research Participants in Qualitative Language Learning Research: Numbers, Pseudonyms, or Real Names?

ABSTRACT

This review article examines how researchers name their study participants and how these naming practices reflect their application of the ethical principles of anonymity and confidentiality in qualitative research on language learners. To identify the variety of naming practices in use, we reviewed 181 journal articles that reported on qualitative research on language learners in the context of higher education. Our review identified the use of names based on learners’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds other than English and the use of English names as the most frequent naming practices. The use of “Letter + Number” or “Title + Number” is also a popular naming practice. Our analysis further revealed that most of the articles (174/181) did not provide justification for their naming practices. Reflecting on the findings, we contend that researchers should give the choice to participants, allowing space for them to negotiate the way they wish their identities to be represented in research publications. Therefore, this review concludes with a call on language learning researchers to engage participants more fully in the research process and to pay sufficient attention to micro-ethical issues such as naming.

KEYWORDS:

• Anonymity
• ethics
• naming practice
• pseudonyms
• qualitative language learning research

Introduction

I let him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life: I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name. (Defoe, 2007, p. 174)

This well-known passage from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe could be interpreted in multiple ways, but Crusoe’s giving the name “Friday” to a person he had saved from captors is an act of objectifying that person. Crusoe’s act of naming reflects the social status and power imbalance between him, the Master, and Friday, the servant (Barlık, 2017). While the relationship between participants and researchers is by no means similar to the master-servant relationship, a power imbalance exists between researchers and their study participants, raising concerns about researchers’ conduct, including their practices in naming participants (Råheim et al., 2016). Due to this power imbalance between participants and researchers, applied linguistics researchers may cause occasional offence to research participants such as language learners in the research process. To raise our critical awareness of this increasingly important micro-ethical research issue, this review explores researchers’ practices in naming study participants when reporting on qualitative research on language learners in the context of higher education.

In order to ensure research participants’ welfare and protect them from potential harm resulting from their participation, researchers are routinely required to follow the codes of ethical research issued by institutional review boards and professional organizations. These codes, including general ethical principles such as minimizing potential risks to participants, research integrity, protection of privacy and confidentiality, and beneficence, are usually enforced through procedural regulations, such as a requirement that approval be obtained from institutional review boards or ethical clearance committees before research commences (De Costa, 2016; Mahboob et al., 2016). While these macro-ethical principles offer useful guidance for researchers, there is a gap between such macro-level principles and ethical practices in the actual conduct of research, that is, micro-ethics. Macro-ethical principles are sometimes found to be ambiguous or inadequate in guiding research conduct in different contexts (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004; Kubanyiova, 2008). For example, in some cultures, requesting signatures from participants on a consent form may be regarded as unusual and perplexing, at times to the point of giving offense (e.g., Nochi, 2020; Sarfraz, 2020). In a school with a hierarchical governance structure, only obtaining consent from the school principal as the gatekeeper may make vice principals feel ignored and not respected (Burns et al., 2020). Such micro-ethical issues, if not dealt with carefully, can cause discomfort to research participants (Kubanyiova, 2008). Hence, it is critical not only that researchers be aware of general ethical research principles but also that they demonstrate the conscientious application of these principles in the process of conducting research (Barnard & Wang, 2021; Guillemin & Gillam, 2004; Tao et al., 2017). Scholars have called for the development of a more contextualized code of ethical practices that recognizes the value of macro-ethical principles and addresses the particularity of different research contexts and circumstances (Kubanyiova, 2008). This generates an imperative for researchers to actively engage with everyday ethical issues before, during, and after the research and to continually reflect on specific micro-ethical research practices.

Anonymity and confidentiality are key considerations in the conduct of research, especially qualitative research that involves human participants (Moore, 2012; Thomas & Hodges, 2010). In order to de-identify participants and protect their privacy, researchers are expected to remove participants’ names and assign them pseudonyms. However, there is usually no explicit, detailed instruction to guide this important research practice. For example, while Australia’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research stipulates that “consideration should be given to the use of pseudonyms, or to the removal of links between names and data” (NHMRC, 2007, Section 4.6.4), it does not state what kinds of pseudonyms are proper or what researchers should bear in mind when assigning pseudonyms to research participants. Likewise, many researchers tend to regard naming participants as a minor issue and are much less concerned about their naming practices than other aspects of micro-ethical research conduct, such as obtaining informed consent from research participants and building rapport with participants. Despite the close relationship of naming practice to the power relations attendant on the process of data collection, its significance is often underestimated and neglected in the research process. It should also be noted that naming places and people is seen as an important act of colonization and name change is also regarded as a significant aspect of decolonization (e.g., Wanjiru & Matsubara, 2017). Thus, it can be argued that naming participants is associated with applied linguists’ efforts to achieve “epistemic and cognitive justice” in the research process (Ndhlovu, 2021, p. 193).

In this paper, we would like to argue that names are not just words but a part of people’s identities and a carrier of their ethnolinguistic backgrounds, family histories, and cultural legacy (Patel, 2017). For this reason, researchers need careful consideration when naming research participants so that research participants can be represented with appropriate (fictitious) names for research dissemination. In academic publications, it is very common for applied linguistics researchers to use numbers or Anglo-sounding names to represent participants. Numbering participants is an efficient sorting technique that helps researchers locate specific participants in the dataset, and using Anglo-sounding names helps English-speaking readers pronounce and remember participants easily, a priority due to the dominance of English in academic publishing. Unfortunately, both practices may leave an impression that participants’ distinctive identities are denied, and their ethnolinguistic backgrounds are not respected.

Moreover, anonymization is not simply a technical process; it is a significant act of research influenced by power, voice, epistemological stance, and consideration of the audience, and pseudonyms have psychological meaning to participants (Allen & Wiles, 2016). It is usually the researchers who decide which accounts from participants will be included and how they will be presented, and the act of pseudonymizing participants can sometimes compound the power differentials involved in this process (Gordon, 2019). In other words, randomly assigning pseudonyms to participants may lead to their further marginalization by reifying stereotypes and stigmas based on negative assumptions associated with the participants. In addition, the process of anonymization raises conflicts when the participants want their real names to be presented in publications (Guillemin & Gillam, 2004); it also raises other issues, such as how to secure participants’ anonymity while providing sufficient background information for readers’ reference (Kubanyiova, 2008). Therefore, it is important to understand how researchers address the power imbalance between themselves and research participants as they consider participants’ backgrounds and identities and exercise respect in naming them while conferring anonymity. It is also important for us to reflect on the ethical principles of anonymity and confidentiality and their applications in research. We will undertake such reflection in the context of qualitative research involving language learners at universities.

A rising number of qualitative studies have been conducted on language learners and their identities in the context of higher education (e.g., Kiaer et al., 2022; O’Rourke, 2011; Riley, 2007; Tualaulelei, 2021; Wei, 2016), following Peirce’s (1995) call for a “comprehensive theory of social identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context” (p. 12). These studies have indicated the significant influence of identity in language learning and draw our attention to language teachers’ naming practices. For example, Tualaulelei (2021) generated valuable insights to support teachers in refining their naming practices as a pedagogical practice to empower language learners in negotiating their identities. These studies have also motivated us to explore how researchers assign pseudonyms to them based on factors such as gender, culture, age, and ethnonational background as language learners interact with naming practices not only in their learning but also in the research itself (Allen & Wiles, 2016). Nevertheless, researchers usually pay more attention to other aspects of research (e.g., data collection and analysis) and do not invest much time working on how to name research participants appropriately, which is arguably indicative of the power imbalance between research participants and researchers. Researchers’ naming practices deserve further attention and exploration of its ethical implications for research. This can be a highly significant issue for researchers working with equity-seeking groups such as indigenous people, international students, and language learners, as members of these populations are often questioned about or denied their ethno-racial identities and have to regularly negotiate their identities under conditions of systemic racism or linguistic discrimination (Tsai et al., 2022). It is thus important to examine how language learners are named in these studies, whether researchers’ naming practices reflect an awareness of ethical principles, and what potential problems and issues should be considered when naming participants in research. However, very few studies have examined researchers’ naming practices, including those in the field of applied linguistics. Therefore, we conducted this systematic review to address the following research questions in qualitative studies on language learners in the context of higher education:

• (a) What naming practices can be found in qualitative studies on language learners in the context of higher education?

• (b) How do researchers justify their naming practices?

The review process

To undertake this review, we conducted systematic searches following the procedure laid out by Campbell et al. (2014) and reviewed English-language journal articles adopting qualitative approaches and focusing on language learners at universities in the field of applied linguistics. Table 1 and Figure 1 present the inclusion and exclusion criteria and the search and screening procedures we followed in the review process. Universities have more cross-border, international students with diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds than primary or secondary schools, and for this reason, we were likely to find more qualitative studies on language learners in the context of higher education, affording us a larger sample in which to explore researchers’ participant-naming practices. We included only English publications because English serves as a global lingua franca for academic publishing. English is also the only language shared by all the authors on this multilingual research team, allowing us to conduct this review collaboratively and communicate without a language barrier as we examined how researchers explained their naming practices. To make the review manageable, we focused on relevant studies published between January 2007 and December 2021. The review focused on qualitative studies only because researchers for such studies need to name participants when reporting findings. Since we aimed to examine researchers’ naming practices in empirical research on language learning, we excluded studies without human participants (such as review articles or secondary research). To ensure the quality of the reviewed studies, we included only peer-reviewed journal articles.

Figure 1. Screening procedures.

Table 1. Criteria and sources for selecting research articles for review.

Selection criteria

Inclusions: (a) research studies on language learners in universities in the field of applied linguistics; (b) qualitative studies; (c) published between January 2007 and December 2021 (d) journal articles published in English; (f) peer-reviewed journal articles Exclusions: (a) without participants (e.g., review articles); (b) articles without access; (c) lacking a clear methodology (i.e., no clear description of participants regarding their identities, no clarification of whether the names they used are pseudonyms or actual names, or no clear description of how research was conducted); and (d) articles adopting mixed methods or quantitative methods

Sources (databases)

(a) Web of Science; (b) Scopus; and (c) Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts (LLBA)

The initial search was for articles published in English without year limitations (we excluded articles published before 2007 and after 2021 in the manual screening process). The search was undertaken using three databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and Linguistic and Language Behaviour Abstracts (LLBA). We used an advanced search with three search filter strings to narrow the search. The first string was set up with the specification: “any title, keywords and abstract” contains “higher education” OR “universit*.” The second string, connected to the first by the Boolean operator “AND,” was: “language learner” OR “applied linguistics.” The third string filtered for methodology, including articles mentioning the terms “qualitative study” OR “qualitative research” in any field.

In the initial search, we identified 891 articles, of which 39 were duplicates. We then manually screened these studies based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria shown in Table 1. In the end, 181 papers were identified for in-depth analysis (see Figure 1 for detailed selection procedure and results). Screening was conducted by the first four authors in two pairs using Endnote X9, and the work done by each group was then cross-checked by the other group to ensure research validity.

In the data analysis process, the first author reviewed the included articles and categorized them using Endnote X9 based on the naming practices used by researchers. At the same time, the second author examined the researchers’ justifications for their choice of pseudonyms, analyzing factors that might have influenced the researchers’ naming practices. These two authors then cross-checked each other’s categorization and analysis. Other authors were asked for their opinions when there were disagreements over the data analysis and grouping. The following section presents the results of the analysis.

Findings

In this section, we report on the results of the analysis to answer the research questions. We present the identified types of naming practices and the rationale the authors of the reviewed papers provided for their naming practices.

Types of naming practices

In the review process, we identified nine practices employed by researchers to name participants. The practices and related examples can be found in Table 2. Among these naming practices, the most prominent (33.7%) was using names from ethnolinguistic backgrounds other than English, while the least popular practice (0.6%) was using participants’ actual surnames with their consent. The subsections below discuss the naming practices in detail.

Table 2. Types and distribution of naming practices.

Type of Naming Practice	Examples	Distribution
Names based on ethnolinguistic backgrounds other than English	Zhixuan (Gao, 2010)	61
English names	Dora, Fiona, Claire (Ding & Stapleton, 2016)	45
Letter + Number	P1, I21 (An & Zheng, 2021)	27
Title + Number	Participant 1 (Sheridan, 2021); Supervisor 1 (Andrews & Fay, 2020)	19
Omission of names	One student explained … Another student indicated … (van der Walt & Dornbrack, 2011)	16
Letters	PA, ML, NL (Austin, 2011)	4
Combination of strategies	Lucas, Teacher A, Adviser (Castro, 2018)	4
Number	(#6, male) (#10, female) (Sung, 2020)	4
Actual surname	Lafargue, Hay (Kristmanson et al., 2011)	1
Total		181

Names based on ethnolinguistic backgrounds

Among the 61 journal articles that gave participants pseudonyms according to their ethnolinguistic backgrounds, 13 ethnolinguistic backgrounds were identified (see Table 3). Twenty-two articles (36.2%) used more than one type of name because their participants came from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds, leading the authors to use pseudonyms from different languages. For example, Bailey and Evison (2020) named their Malaysian participants Ai-Leen, Abdul, and Aisyah; their Chinese participants Li Wei and Ching-Lan; and their British participants Ian, James, and Mark. Alongside names based on participants’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds, these authors also used English names such as Bella and Grace to identify some of their Malaysian participants. Unlike Bailey and Evison (2020), most of the articles did not provide corresponding demographic information for the pseudonyms they used. Therefore, those articles did not enable readers to identify participants’ cultural or ethnolinguistic backgrounds. For instance, the participants in the study conducted by Blaj-Ward (2017) included native speakers of Chinese, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, and Gujarati. The pseudonyms provided by the author included Jahan, Delia, Lilian, Leila, and Harry. Even though some of these names imply that these participants have ethnolinguistic backgrounds other than English, it is hard to determine participants’ specific backgrounds based on the pseudonyms given by the author. This may result in difficulties in understanding participants’ accounts from a cultural perspective. In other words, readers may find it hard to fully comprehend the meaning of participants’ accounts without being able to take their ethnolinguistic backgrounds into consideration. More importantly, this may leave participants with the impression that their diverse backgrounds are not respected by researchers. Hence, researchers are encouraged to be more aware of the potential issues associated with naming practices in studies that involve participants from diverse backgrounds.

Table 3. Ethnolinguistic backgrounds (in alphabetical order) of participants in studies using names that match their backgrounds.

Participants’ Ethnolinguistic Background	Distribution	Proportion (%)
Arabic	1	1.6
Armenian	1	1.6
Chinese	10	16.4
French	3	4.9
Indigenous	2	3.3
Indonesian	1	1.6
Irish	1	1.6
Japanese	5	8.2
Korean	1	1.6
Persian	4	6.6
Spanish	9	14.8
Malaysian	1	1.6
Mixed	22	36.2
Total	61	100

Other articles that used names from participants’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds either were conducted in countries that speak the participants’ languages or recruited participants from specific backgrounds. Among these studies, Chinese (16.4%) and Spanish (14.8%) names were the most prevalent. This could be related to the large number of Chinese and Spanish native speakers in language learning research (see Guo et al., 2021).

English names

Twelve of the 45 articles using English pseudonyms involved participants from multiple ethnolinguistic backgrounds (see Table 4). For example, Ross and Rivers (2018) recruited Brazilian, Chinese, Chilean, Japanese, and Spanish participants, among others. The pseudonyms assigned to the Chinese and Japanese participants were Anna, Ellie, Emma, and Michelle, which are far removed from Chinese and Japanese naming traditions. Ten of the articles using English pseudonyms focused on native speakers of English. However, the authors of 13 studies assigned English names to native speakers of Asian languages. Ten additional articles (22.2%) did not indicate the ethnolinguistic backgrounds of the participants, and the use of English names obscured the identities of those who were from non-Anglo ethnolinguistic backgrounds.

Table 4. Ethnolinguistic backgrounds (in alphabetical order) of participants in studies using English pseudonyms.

Participants’ Ethnolinguistic Backgrounds	Distribution	Proportion (%)
Chinese	9	2.0
English	10	22.2
Indian	1	2.2
Indonesian	1	2.2
Japanese	1	2.2
Korean	1	2.2
Mixed	12	26.7
Unknown	10	22.2
Total	45	1.0

The use of English names might be a result of the dominance of English in academic publishing. In response to institutional requirements to produce English-medium publications, which are regarded as having higher status and value, scholars must adapt their writing styles to academic publishing in international publication outlets (Curry & Lillis, 2004). This includes translating their data from languages other than English into English and choosing pseudonyms that are easily pronounced and remembered by English-speaking readers, that is, English names. Given the dominance of English as the medium for academic publishing, such practices are understandable, but it is necessary for researchers to reflect on the power relations associated with the act and process of naming participants, especially when including participants from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The adoption of English names might be seen as a form of linguistic imperialism related to the structural demands of globalization (Weekly & Picucci-Huang, 2022). Assigning English names to participants from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds risks being an act to invalidate and erase the participants’ ethnolinguistic characteristics, which may further marginalize equity-seeking participants. While this may not be necessarily the case with the studies we reviewed, we contend that researchers need to consider this issue as naming practices can, for better or worse, signify researchers’ degree of respect for the groups they are studying. Consequently, good naming practices can signify that researchers are paying due respect to equity-seeking groups.

Other naming strategies

After the practice of giving English names or names from participants’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds, the next three most common ways of de-identifying participants are (a) Letter + Number; (b) Title + Number; and (c) Omission of names. The “Letter + Number” strategy was seen in 27 articles (14.9%) and most commonly involved one or two letters used with a number. Sometimes, the letter(s) served to signal that participants belonged to specific groups being compared. For instance, An and Zheng (2021) used the letters P, E, and I to represent people with power, expertise, and interest, naming the participants P1, E1, I1, etc. Nineteen articles (10.5%) named participants using a title and a number, as in “Participant 1,” “Student 1,” or “Supervisor 1.” When participants have different identities or roles, such as teacher or student, the use of titles effectively indicates the group to which each participant belongs. Sixteen articles (8.8%) did not assign pseudonyms to their participants either in the body of the article. Authors often used phrases such as “ one participant mentioned ...” or “ for example, one student stated ...” (e.g., van der Walt & Dornbrack, 2011). This approach omits all information about the participants. Other less commonly used methods included numbering (4, 2.2%) and alphabetizing participants (4, 2.2%), which appeared to be a sorting technique allowing authors to locate the original interview and identify the corresponding participants. However, readers garner little information about participants from numbers or letters. Four articles (2.2%) adopted more than one method to identify participants. Some authors (e.g., Arnó-Macià, 2010) used letters or titles for conversational excerpts that involved more than one person and pseudonyms for quotations from the narratives of particular participants. While numbering, titling, or alphabetizing participants successfully conceals participants’ identities and confers anonymity, the personhood of the participants is removed from view, and the participants’ contributions are obscured. Only one article used the actual surnames of participants. We do not find the finding surprising since most research ethics committees do not permit using participants’ real names. Authors of this exceptional article stated, “[W]e have been given permission to use the actual surnames of teacher-researchers who participated in this study” (Kristmanson et al., 2011, p. 60). This raises the question of whether all research participants even want their identities to be kept confidential. In other words, the macro-ethical principles on naming may contradict the actual circumstances of reporting research in specific circumstances, restricting researchers from accommodating participants’ willingness to disclose their identity.

Rationale for naming participants

In examining the rationales given for the naming practices chosen in the reviewed articles, we found that only seven articles provided explanations for their choices, while the remaining 174 did not address the issue or simply gave a brief statement that all names used were pseudonyms. Such omissions and brevity are understandable given the limited space that journals afford authors to present their research accounts. Nevertheless, the seven articles that did explain their rationales provided opportunities for us to examine language learning researchers’ practices in naming research participants. Among the seven articles, the naming practices used were the result of (a) negotiations with the participants and (b) consideration of participants’ ethnolinguistic naming traditions. The following subsections elaborate on these two aspects.

Negotiation with participants

Five articles pseudonymized participants by negotiating with them and allowing them to choose their fictitious names. For example, Kinginger and Carnine (2019) asked participants for their opinions about naming, and two participants preferred to use Amelia (uncertain ethnicity) and Irène (White) as their pseudonyms. While these names may have cultural connotations, we do not know why the participants chose them. Likewise, in their study of language learners’ experiences of learning Chinese through contextualized language practices, Kinginger and Wu (2018) allowed participants to choose their own pseudonyms. While the participants were from various ethnolinguistic backgrounds, their choice of names did not necessarily reflect their backgrounds. For instance, a Jewish American chose the pseudonym David Wang, using a Chinese surname. A participant from Taiwan named herself Kiki, while an African American woman named herself Puppies. López (2015) similarly asked participants to choose their own pseudonyms in their study of the emotional experiences of Mexican language learners in an English language learning program. Students were asked to use fictitious names to represent themselves and to anonymize peers or teachers when mentioning them in their experiences. Some students used typical English names such as Jimmy and Jane, while others used Spanish names such as Ricardo and Luis. Thus, the participants did not always follow their ethnolinguistic naming traditions when choosing their aliases. A similar naming practice was adopted by Peñaloza (2020) and Ramezanzadeh et al. (2021) in studies conducted respectively in Colombian and Iranian contexts. The researchers regarded giving the choice to participants as an effective way to maintain anonymity while showing respect to their participants. Since the participants chose their own pseudonyms for the articles, their pseudonyms may indicate the ways in which they wished to be seen by others and thus deserve attention in research.

Consideration of participants’ ethnolinguistic naming traditions

Two studies took participants’ cultural backgrounds into consideration when assigning pseudonyms. In a study of EFL teachers’ knowledge base in Nicaragua, Dávila and Jarquín (2020) employed fictitious first names for the participants, such as Roder, Andres, Diego, Carmen, Josseling, and Esther. The authors stated that in the context where they conducted research, people were used to being addressed by their given names rather than their surnames. In a study that investigated perceptions of learning Spanish as a heritage language among students in North Florida, Torres and Turner (2017) pseudonymized participants according to their ethnolinguistic naming habits. For example, a Colombian was named Adriana, a Costa Rican participant was named Bianca, a Cuban participant was named Eduardo, and a Puerto Rican was named Daniela. These researchers claimed that they adopted such naming practices to show their respect for participants and their ethnolinguistic groups.

Ethical awareness of naming participants in qualitative language learning research

We have reviewed 181 qualitative studies to examine practices for naming participants in qualitative language learning research. The review identified nine practices employed to name participants, among which the most common were choosing names from each participant’s culture, using English names, and using a letter-number combination. Analysis of these articles revealed that only seven studies provided explanations for the participant-naming practices they reported. The researchers who conducted these studies negotiated with the participants and considered their ethnolinguistic backgrounds when naming them. These findings provide valuable insights into common and normative practices for naming participants in qualitative language learning research, which have received scant attention in previous research. At the same time, the findings also reveal three key issues around naming research participants that are worth reflecting on.

While allocating pseudonyms to participants is a well-established practice to guarantee participants’ confidentiality and anonymity, the use of pseudonyms is not merely a practical methodological decision but also an important act of research, influenced by power and voice (Allen & Wiles, 2016). Furthermore, pseudonyms have psychological meaning to participants and the content of the research (Allen & Wiles, 2016), and inappropriate pseudonyms may further marginalize participants of equity-seeking groups; thus, assigning pseudonyms should not be seen as a random technical procedure in conducting research. Therefore, it is essential for researchers to bear in mind the inherent power imbalance between researchers and participants and the potential issues resulting from pseudonymization. Our findings call attention to several significant issues that language learning researchers should address when de-identifying participants in publications while granting them due respect.

Issue 1: Assigned pseudonyms, preferred pseudonyms, or real names?

Only one paper included in our review used participants’ actual names, while others all de-identified participants using fictitious names or aliases. While we do not know the reason for the use of participants’ real names, this article raises the question of whether using pseudonyms should be a universal and normative principle. Anonymizing participants protects them from harm and guarantees their privacy, allowing them to express their opinions and experiences without concerns about potential consequences (Creswell, 2013). However, previous research (e.g., Berkhout, 2013; Gordon, 2019; Mukungu, 2017) has shown that some participants, particularly feminist activists, reject the idea of anonymity. For them, anonymization is a form of delegitimization of their voices and an embodiment of paternalism (Berkhout, 2013; Mukungu, 2017). They prefer to disclose their identities so that their authorship and ownership of their own words can be maintained, and their names can contribute to a powerful calling for their groups and communities to work on social change and eliminate social injustice (Gordon, 2019). Pseudonymizing indigenous groups can also be inappropriate as it may erase their voices and personhood and reinforce a cultural hierarchy into which they are unknowingly and unwillingly placed (Allen & Wiles, 2016).

This problematizes the macro-ethical assumption that de-identifying participants best suits their interests and encourages researchers to rethink the universality of the standard ethical requirement of anonymity. It may be a good idea for language learning researchers to advocate a mixed approach to naming participants, as scholars in other fields do (see Mukungu, 2017; Roberts, 2015). Researchers should offer participants the chance to decide whether their accounts are presented under their own names or aliases, while informing participants of the potential risks associated with disclosing their identities. Participants themselves may have varying preferences about their fictitious names, wishing either to indicate or to conceal their ethnolinguistic backgrounds, as shown in the five articles discussed above. Hence, negotiating with participants and letting them choose preferred names is good practice. In doing so, participants’ agency in participating in the research can be best acknowledged.

Issue 2: Numbers, names from native culture, or English names?

Another issue arising from the findings is whether the cultural and ethnolinguistic backgrounds of participants should be reflected in their pseudonyms. As codes closely associated with identity, names index race, gender, ethnicity, and even age, class, and family history (Patel, 2017). Therefore, the names that researchers assign to participants may affect the way readers picture them and interpret their accounts. A significant proportion of the studies included in this review number participants, referring to them as “P1,” “Teacher 1,” “Student 1,” and so on. While these markers successfully obscure participants’ identities and prevent re-identification, they fail to indicate participants’ ethnolinguistic identities, yet this information is essential for readers to make sense of their accounts, especially in cases where individuals’ ethnolinguistic backgrounds play a key role in their experiences, as in international students’ language learning experiences or immigrants’ cultural adaption to life in a new country. More importantly, using numbers or letters might be perceived as an act of objectification and dehumanization, rendering it difficult to relate to participants and articulate their contributions as an essential part of the research. Likewise, we have found it common for participants to be allocated names from a culture different from their own—for example, for participants from China to be given typical English names such as Mary and Mike. In cities like Hong Kong, it is common for people to address each other by their English names. Nevertheless, people in mainland Chinese cities are more likely to use Chinese names. In research involving disadvantaged, minoritized groups, naming participants by the names of dominant cultures regardless their ethnolinguistic backgrounds can invalidate and erase their distinctive cultural identity. Hence, researchers should make efforts to explore and understand the naming traditions in research participants’ contexts before naming them. These efforts and concerns can, at least, imply that researchers care about their participants and pay due respect to the groups they are working with.

It is undeniable that disguising identity is crucial in research addressing sensitive topics and involving marginalized participants. Therefore, it is important for researchers to think about how to protect participants’ privacy and ensure an abundance of data (Kaiser, 2009) while respecting participants’ ethnolinguistic customs and traditions. We thus suggest engaging participants in the decision-making process regarding naming, providing them with alternative options for names, and allowing them space to negotiate the names by which they wish to be represented.

Issue 3: Making the rationale for naming practices explicit

As the findings reveal, even though a brief statement that all names are pseudonyms was found as a common confidentiality-ensuring feature in the reviewed articles, very few studies explained how and why the researchers decided to name the participants in the way they did. As a result, readers cannot know the intentions behind the choice of names, nor can they know what assumptions about participants’ age, gender, ethnicity, etc., they should make based on the names. This may lead to readers’ misinterpreting participants’ accounts, especially in cases where participants’ ethnolinguistic and cultural identities play a crucial role in understanding their experiences and perceptions. Furthermore, the lack of explanation for the naming practices in research outputs may give participants the impression that their personhood and contributions to the research have not been well acknowledged. Therefore, we call on future studies in language learning to provide detailed accounts of how pseudonyms are chosen and whether they represent relevant sociocultural images, in addition to illuminating their methodological process. Although the tight word limits imposed by publishers inhibit the inclusion of such detailed explanations, we encourage researchers to develop their critical awareness of the issue. We believe that it is much more important for researchers to internalize awareness of such micro-ethical issues as a guide in their day-to-day research practices than to satisfy some external regulatory bodies’ requirements in their research.

Conclusion

This research examined the naming strategies used by researchers in qualitative language learning research by reviewing 181 journal articles focusing on language learners in universities. The results of this review call attention to the power differentials between researchers and participants in the act of naming the participants and the potential consequences of these naming practices. We encourage researchers in applied linguistics to proactively engage participants in choosing the names they prefer to be used in the research output so as to better acknowledge participants’ agency and contributions to the research. We also suggest that researchers inform readers of the rationale for the naming practices being used alongside other methodological considerations.

This research was limited by the fact that it utilized only three databases and focused solely on studies of language learners in universities. It should be noted that we used the terms “qualitative research” and “qualitative study” in our search for studies for review and for this reason, the search might have missed studies employing qualitative-featured instruments, such as interviews, if they do not mention the term “qualitative.” This should be acknowledged as another potential limitation, which is, to some extent, unavoidable, as it is impractical to include every qualitative data collection method in the search. Nevertheless, our search did identify 181 studies to capture the practices of naming research participants in language learning research. In addition, although we attempted to determine whether the authors’ choices of naming practice were influenced by their own ethnolinguistic backgrounds, it was often difficult to tell solely from the authors” names and institutions whether they shared backgrounds with their participants. It would be interesting for future research to examine to what extent authors’ backgrounds contribute to their naming practices. It would also be important to examine factors impacting researchers’ choice of name, such as their research contexts. For example, it is more likely for those conducting research in a North American language classroom to name their participants with Anglophone names than those who conduct similar research in Japan or China.

Despite the limitations, this review provides an opportunity for us to reflect on the current ethical practices surrounding anonymity and reminds researchers to work to minimize the power imbalance between researchers and participants by giving choices to participants instead of allocating names autocratically. As argued by Allen and Wiles (2016), the participant is “not simply another ‘Mary’ or ‘P3’ but someone who has participated in their naming and will know themselves in the works that their words have helped to produce” (p. 162). And we need to show that we do care about our participants by paying attention to the easily overlooked ethical issues such as naming while making our best intellectual contributions to the academic field.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sixuan Wang

Sixuan Wang is a postdoctoral fellow at College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Fudan University, China. She obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, multilingualism, language maintenance and shift, language policy and planning, and educational linguistics.

Junjun Muhamad Ramdani

Junjun Muhamad Ramdani is a faculty member of the English Education Department of Universitas Siliwangi, Indonesia. He recently completed his PhD studies at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests are language teacher professional development, teaching English speaking, Technology enhanced language learning (TELL), and qualitative research in English language teaching.

Shuting (Alice) Sun

Shuting (Alice) Sun is a PhD candidate at the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research focuses on assessment and feedback practices, higher education, and international students’ educational experiences.

Priyanka Bose

Priyanka Bose is a PhD candidate at the School of Education, University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on family language policy, migration and systematic reviews.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is a language teacher educator at the School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, University of New South Wales, Australia. His research interests include international students’ educational experiences, language learner agency, language and literacy education, language education policy, and language teacher education.