Languages of Research
Drawing on encounters from our research with migrant families in Poland, Elżbieta Goździak and Katarzyna Byłów reflect on how language choices shape ethnographic conversations—and how people communicate even without a shared language.
Which language are we speaking?
Our project involves families from different countries of origin, families who have lived in multiple locations around the world, and families who speak different languages. Sometimes they converse in more than one language, switching back and forth.
While we conducted many of our interviews in Polish, English, or Ukrainian, Elżbieta recalls her first meeting with a Belarusian family living in Poznań. They started their conversation in Polish, but at some point the mother struggled to find a Polish word and asked her daughters for help in Russian. Both the daughters and Elżbieta supplied the appropriate Polish phrase. Once the mother discovered that Elżbieta understood some Russian, she relaxed. Whenever she couldn't express something in Polish, she switched to Russian, hoping Elżbieta would understand. Her daughters, on the other hand, continued the conversation proudly in Polish. Their younger brother, who struggled with Polish, switched entirely to Russian once he realized Elżbieta could understand him.
On another occasion, Elżbieta met with a Polish mother and her two teenage children. The mother specifically requested that Elżbieta interview them in English, although they both spoke good Polish. "English is their native language," she explained, "and they will be much more analytical if you speak English." Once the children left, Elżbieta and their mother also continued in English. You might expect two Polish women to communicate in their native language, but both concluded that after years of living in English-speaking countries, they felt more comfortable speaking English.
Beyond translation
On July 27, 2024, Katarzyna visited a family who had agreed to participate in our research project. She was supposed to interview the parents and their two teenage sons. Instead, the whole family gathered around the dining room table, including the baby, with a voice recorder placed between cups of sweet cardamom tea and a plate of cake and strawberries.
There was one complication: no single language was shared by everyone. Mr. A. spoke English but not Polish. Mrs. A. spoke Arabic but neither English nor Polish. Their teenage sons spoke Arabic and Polish but had not yet learned English. Katarzyna spoke Polish, English, but no Arabic.
Yet this became one of the most illuminating conversations Katarzyna recorded during our fieldwork.
Mrs. A. and Katarzyna did not share a language, but they communicated directly. Mrs. A. showed Katarzyna family conversations on her phone, pointed out an address on a map, and took her on a tour of the apartment. They communicated through gestures, facial expressions, and the context of what Mrs. A. was showing her.
Katarzyna learned about the extended family who remained involved in the children's upbringing through daily FaceTime conversations. She also learned about frightening neighbors and Mrs. A.'s dread of passing their door, and about her loneliness when everyone except the baby had left for work or school. Mrs. A. even showed Katarzyna where to find a good butcher.
None of this required translation.
The concept of translanguaging helps us think about encounters like this one. Rather than treating languages as separate, self-contained systems, it draws attention to the range of communicative resources people use to make meaning together. As Li Wei argues, communication involves the dynamic use of resources available to speakers in particular situations. These may include different languages, but also gestures, images, objects, and the physical environment.
Not every instance of switching between languages necessarily requires a translanguaging interpretation. What matters in this encounter is that communication was not confined to a single named language—or even to spoken language. Mrs. A. drew on the resources available to her to share experiences that mattered to her, and Katarzyna drew on hers to understand them.
For researchers, this raises an important question: what might we fail to learn if we assume that meaningful communication requires fluency in the same language?
Listening across languages
Our encounters remind us that language is not simply a neutral instrument for collecting information. It is part of the relationship between researcher and participant and shapes the process through which ethnographic knowledge is produced.
In multilingual fieldwork, communication is often negotiated as the encounter unfolds. Participants and researchers discover which languages they can share, when to switch between them, and when words alone are insufficient. Gestures, facial expressions, photographs, and everyday objects can become just as important in making ourselves understood.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that meaningful communication does not always require a shared language. It requires a willingness to listen, observe, and recognize the many ways people make their experiences known.
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