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6 - Cross-cultural communication and language issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Pranee Liamputtong
Pranee Liamputtong
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Victoria
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Summary

I lack language you say

No. I lack language.

The language to clarify

my resistance to the literate …

(Cherrie Moraga, cited by Anzaldua 1983: 166)

Different languages construct different ways of seeing social life, which poses methodological and epistemological challenges for the researcher.

(Larkin et al. 2007: 468)

Language and communication are central to qualitative research. Language is a fundamental tool through which qualitative researchers seek to understand human behaviour, social processes and the cultural meanings that inscribe human behaviour.

(Hennink 2008: 21)

In this chapter, I shall point to the importance of language and communication in cross-cultural research. Often, researchers and the participants are from different linguistic backgrounds. But language, as Monique Hennink (2008: 22) contends, ‘represents data in qualitative research and communication’. It is ‘the process through which data are generated between a researcher and study participant’. Often, in carrying out cross-cultural research, the researchers are linguistically and culturally distant from their research participants (Hennink 2008). Differences in the language spoken and the meanings that are conveyed can create problems, and this has implications for the research findings. It is also an ethical issue, as misunderstanding may occur and this may result in the misinterpretation of the research findings (Irvine et al. 2008).

In this chapter, I shall first discuss issues pertaining to language. I then look at bicultural researchers and the need to provide training and support for them in cross-cultural research.

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Performing Qualitative Cross-Cultural Research , pp. 135 - 161
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

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