Approaches to resisting linguistic hegemony in critical and participatory qualitative research: community-based translation and translanguaging

In this methodological paper, we explore the interplay between language shift and research practice in critical and participatory qualitative inquiry. We begin by observing that performing qualitative research frequently requires a shift to English, the hegemonic academic lingua franca–a process often rooted in extractive colonial logics. We argue that critical and participatory qualitative methodologies can play an important role in resisting linguistic hegemony, and to achieve this goal, researchers need to develop a good understanding of a community’s distinctive languaging practice and linguistic repertoire. Theories in critical applied linguistics, in particular, an ecological perspective on language and distributed linguistic repertoire, offer valuable insights for qualitative researchers to approach languaging as profoundly embedded in and shaped by a community’s place and history. Using examples from our empirical work, we highlighted two practical approaches that researchers can adopt to disrupt linguistic hegemony in qualitative research practice: community-based translation and translanguaging.