This chapter focuses ethical and theoretical risks involved in performing multilingual research interviews where an interpreter is involved. The data explored here consist of excerpts from a multilingual cross-cultural research interview where an interpreter was brought in as a mediator because the interviewee and the researcher did not speak the same language. The interviews were performed in the context of a small-scale ethnographic study, researching the digital and multilingual literacy practices of adult L2 learners taking part in the language programme Swedish for immigrants. The L2 learners participating in the study lack or have very limited formal schooling.
Goffman's (1981) participation framework is used in the exploration of how the interaction between the researcher, interpreter and interviewee affects the construction of meaning in the interviews. For the analysis of the consequences of the interpreter's involvement in the research process, interview excerpts have been selected where the interaction between interviewee, interpreter, and researcher is somehow problematic, e.g. in that it results in misunderstandings or other types of miscommunications. These miscommunications are partly caused by the power asymmetry between the researcher, interpreter and interviewee and risk to have a detrimental influence on the researcher's possibilities for understanding the literacy practices of the interviewee.
The chapter will also suggest ways of coming to terms with the ethical and theoretical risks involved in using an interpreter in multilingual research interviews in applied linguistics. Several researchers have recommended that interpreters should be involved as co-researchers given their central position in co-constructing meaning. Is this a viable solution also in smaller multilingual studies with limited funding?
References
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.