Cross-language Research Research Articles

Language barriers and qualitative nursing research: methodological considerations

This review of the literature synthesizes methodological recommendations for the use of translators and interpreters in cross-language qualitative research. Cross-language qualitative research involves the use of interpreters and translators to mediate a language barrier between researchers and participants. Qualitative nurse researchers successfully address language barriers between themselves and their participants when they systematically plan for how they will use interpreters and translators throughout the research process. Experienced qualitative researchers recognize that translators can generate qualitative data through translation processes and by participating in data analysis. Failure to address language barriers and the methodological challenges they present threatens the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of cross-language qualitative nursing research. Through a synthesis of the cross-language qualitative methods literature, this article reviews the basics of language competence, translator and interpreter qualifications, and roles for each kind of qualitative research approach. Methodological and ethical considerations are also provided. By systematically addressing the methodological challenges cross-language research presents, nurse researchers can produce better evidence for nursing practice and policy making when working across different language groups. Findings from qualitative studies will also accurately represent the experiences of the participants without concern that the meaning was lost in translation.

Narrative analysis of written texts: reflexivity in cross language research

This article examines how researchers address cross language narratives. Research and writing by migrants suggest that a change of language can lead to changes in both how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them. That is, changing language involves more than a simple change of words. However, researchers rarely consider the consequences of moving between languages in analysing and writing up narratives. This is particularly surprising for those who see narratives as contextually produced by researchers and participants and have an interest in the influence of the research process. Reflexivity is not extended to include the move across languages. I focus on some of the methodological and epistemological issues of analysing written texts produced by researchers in a language that participants did not use.

The Search for Emerging Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research

Many non-Western and non-English-speaking scholars express the need for supporting a methodological approach that foregrounds the voices of nationals and locals (or indigenous peoples). Supporting this stance, Western scholars will reach out in democratic and liberatory ways that effect research collaboration, helping to foster social justice and locally desired change. This article supports this search via presenting some methodological strategies culled from six different cases of cross-cultural and cross-language research in which both Western and non-Western scholars were involved and/or collaborated. A comparative study of the inquiries themselves, with follow-up interviews with their U.S.-based authors, is the strategy that has been chosen to respond to this search for additional, emerging methodological and narrative approaches to cross-cultural/cross-national research that is useful to both local and Western scholars equally.

Double Vision Uncertainty

Translation is a significant factor in cross-language research and can make an overarching impact on research outcomes and ethical adequacy. In this article, the author examines ethical considerations of language translation and interpretation in human science research. The focus is narrowed to ethical aspects of research design in which a bilingual researcher assumes a double role, as an interpreter and translator in his or her inquiry with monolingual, non-English-speaking research participants. The bilingual researcher has a great advantage of expertise and clear vision in the cross-cultural ethical environment. However, such clarity of the ethical vision can cause many reasonable doubts, because it might not fully fit into the framework of standardized, rational ethics. The author shows that the dualism of the bilingual researcher's position can either induce caution or carry solutions, but both aspects of this role contribute to its essential significance for good cross-cultural knowledge exchange.

Representation across languages: biographical sociology meets translation and interpretation studies

Biographical approaches are increasingly being used with people who speak and write a range of languages. Even when an account is originally spoken, the final version usually ends up written in the language used by the majority of the population. Researchers have shown that adopting a language that is not the one an account was given in may change how someone is perceived. Yet little has been written by sociologists using biographical approaches about the implications of moving accounts across languages. Researchers within translation and interpretation studies are increasingly tackling issues of representation across languages and developing concepts that can usefully be applied in biographical research. They question the assumption that accounts can be unproblematically transferred across languages and argue for strategies and concepts that “foreignise” texts and challenge the baseline of the target, usually for these writers, English language. However, these concepts bring issues of their own. In this article I examine these developments and give an example from my own cross language research that show that these concepts can begin to open up debates about meaning and representation.

Using monkeys to explore perceptual “loss” versus “learning” models in English and Spanish voice-onset-time perception

Cross-language research using synthetic voice-onset-time series over the past 40 years suggests that the Spanish lead contrast is acoustically less salient than the English lag contrast. This study examined monkey identification of a labial consonant-vowel voice-onset-time (CV VOT) series (-60 to +70 ms) in order to obtain a linguistically unbiased estimate of lead versus lag salience. Comparisons were made with both English and Spanish adult human listeners. In a classic two-choice identification test, monkey and Spanish functions were quite variable and showed evidence of sensitivity to three types of voicing cues (lead versus simultaneous versus lag). In contrast, English functions were highly categorical and showed sensitivity to only two types of cues (combined lead/simultaneous versus lag). Next, listeners were explicitly trained via feedback to differentiate stimuli crossing lead and lag boundaries. Here, monkey and Spanish performance was initially more symmetrical than English performance, with the latter showing reduced sensitivity to the lead boundary, but group differences disappeared after extended training. These results provide evidence for perceptual loss in English listeners for aspects of Spanish voicing lead perception.

Greek perception and production of an English vowel contrast: A preliminary study

This study focused on language-independent principles functioning in acquisition of second language (L2) contrasts. Specifically, it tested Bohn’s Desensitization Hypothesis [in Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in Cross Language Research, edited by W. Strange (York Press, Baltimore, 1995)] which predicted that Greek speakers of English as an L2 would base their perceptual identification of English /i/ and /I/ on durational differences. Synthetic vowels differing orthogonally in duration and spectrum between the /i/ and /I/ endpoints served as stimuli for a forced-choice identification test. To assess L2 proficiency and to evaluate the possibility of cross-language category assimilation, productions of English /i/, /I/, and /ε/ and of Greek /i/ and /e/ were elicited and analyzed acoustically. The L2 utterances were also rated for the degree of foreign accent. Two native speakers of Modern Greek with low and 2 with intermediate experience in English participated. Six native English (NE) listeners and 6 NE speakers tested in an earlier study constituted the control groups. Heterogeneous perceptual behavior was observed for the L2 subjects. It is concluded that until acquisition in completely naturalistic settings is tested, possible interference of formally induced meta-linguistic differentiation between a ‘‘short’’ and a ‘‘long’’ vowel cannot be eliminated.

Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning: the case of Japanese /r/ and English /l/ and /r/

Previous research has demonstrated that English /r/ is perceptually more dissimilar from Japanese /r/ than English /l/ is for native Japanese (NJ) speakers. It has been proposed by the Speech Learning Model that the more distant an L2 sound (phonetic segment) is from the closest L1 speech sound, the more learnable the L2 sound will be (in: W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research, York Press, Timonium, MD, 1995, p. 233). This hypothesis was evaluated in this study by investigating whether NJ speakers will have more success acquiring English /r/ than /l/. A longitudinal study examined the perception (Experiment 1) and production (Experiment 2) of English /l/, /r/, and/w/ by NJ adults and children who were living in the US at the time of testing. The results suggested that there was greater improvement for English /r/ than English /l/ among the NJ children. The NJ children's discrimination of /l/-/r/ and /r/-/w/ was significantly better at the second testing (T2) than 1 year earlier (T1). The NJ children also showed greater improvement from T1 to T2 in producing /r/ than /l/. The results are taken as support for a hypothesis of the Speech Learning Model (in: W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research, York Press, Timonium, MD, 1995, p. 233) that degree of perceived phonetic dissimilarity influences L2 learners’ success in acquiring L2 phonetic segments.

Crossed wires: interpreters, translators, and bilingual workers in cross-language research.

Increasingly, researchers are undertaking studies involving people who do not speak the same language as they do. Sociologists have long argued that language constructs the social world at the same time as it describes it. However, the implications of this for cross-language research are rarely considered. Employing interpreters/translators and "cultural brokers" in research raises methodological issues around the meanings of concepts and how to convey difference. Using a project that employed two Asian mental health workers, the author teases out some of the implications for research of language difference. She focuses both on the value of a biographical approach and on the problems such an approach presents.

Crossed Wires: Interpreters, Translators, and Bilingual Workers in Cross-Language Research

Crossed Wires: Interpreters, Translators, and Bilingual Workers in Cross-Language Research

Interpreters/Translators and Cross-Language Research: Reflexivity and Border Crossings

In this article, the authors examine the implications of extending calls for reflexivity in qualitative research generally to cross-language research with interpreters. Drawing on the concept of ‘borders’, they present two research projects to demonstrate the need to locate the interpreter as active in producing research accounts. They extend the concept of ‘border crossing’, relating this to identity politics and the benefits of making the interpreter visible in research.

Effect of linguistic background on accuracy of discrimination task and reaction time

This study examines how American English (AE) speakers categorize Hindi laryngeal and place of articulation contrasts. These results are interpreted with respect to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) [Best, ‘‘A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception,’’ in Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross Language Research (York Press, Inc., 1995), pp. 171–204]. Accuracy and reaction time data were obtained for discrimination and identification of Hindi bilabial and dental phonation contrasts and the retroflex-dental place contrast. Subjects included both AE speakers and a control Hindi speaker group. Discrimination accuracy averaged across the subjects for the phonation contrasts was nativelike while accuracy for the retroflex-dental contrast was significantly lower but above chance. Overall, the reaction time was inversely proportional to discrimination accuracy. For some subjects discrimination performance for the retroflex-dental contrast was nativelike. However, the reaction time for those subjects was significantly higher than that of other speakers. In general, the reaction time was higher for the retroflex-dental contrast than for the other contrasts.

The Writing Center as Site for Cross-Language Research

The Writing Center as Site for Cross-Language Research

The status of the syllable in the perception of spanish and englisb

Abstract A series of monitoring studies is reported, in replication of the cross-language research of Cutler, Mehler, Norris and Segui (1983; 1986), which found evidence of language-specific perceptual routines. Monolingual speakers of Spanish and English detected CV and CVC target sequences in native and non-native materials. The replication succeeded only in the case of Spanish speakers and Spanish materials, where a cross-over interaction of target (CV vs CVC sequences) and carrier types (CV- vs CVC-syllabitied words) gave evidence of a sensitivity to the input's syllabification; no such pattern emerged for Spanish speakers and English materials, nor for English speakers and materials in either language. For English speakers, the consistent finding was for faster performance with CVC targets, regardless of the structure of the carrier word. Whether or not this is to be interpreted as evidence of syllabified input representations is not clear. Analyses of English syllabification that arc alternatives to...

Cross language studies from a perspective of aphasia research

This is an overview of cross language research on agrammatism in aphasics 1982–1992. The traditional description of agrammatism, based on English, was questioned by researchers from other countries. This initiated the project Cross Language Aphasia Study (CLAS), which aimed to describe and explain agrammatism from a database collected from 14 different languages. The project showed that agrammatism as characterized by short phrase length, slow speech, and reduced variation in phrase structure could be distinguished, while omission of grammatical morphemes was not consistently found, since bound grammatical morphemes were more often substituted. Agrammatism was described, explanations in terms of grammatical overload and other alternatives were discussed, and a number of follow-up projects started.

Characterizing the influence of native language experience on adult speech perception.

Previous cross-language research has indicated that some speech contrasts present greater perceptual difficulty for adult non-native listeners than others do. It has been hypothesized that phonemic, phonetic, and acoustic factors contribute to this variability. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate systematically the role of phonemic status and phonetic familiarity in the perception of non-native speech contrasts and to test predictions derived from a model proposed by Best, McRoberts, and Sithole (1988). Experiment 1 showed that perception of an unfamiliar phonetic contrast was not less difficult for subjects who had experience with an analogous phonemic distinction in their native language than for subjects without such analogous experience. These results suggest that substantive phonetic experience influences the perception of non-native contrasts, and thus should contribute to a conceptualization of native language-processing skills. In Experiment 2, English listeners' perception of two related nonphonemic place contrasts was not consistently different as had been expected on the basis of phonetic familiarity. A clear order effect in the perceptual data suggests that interactions between different perceptual assimilation patterns or acoustic properties of the two contrasts, or interactions involving both of these factors, underlie the perception of the two contrasts in this experiment. It was concluded that both phonetic familiarity and acoustic factors are potentially important to the explanation of variability in perception of nonphonemic contrasts. The explanation of how linguistic experience shapes speech perception will require characterizing the relative contribution of these factors, as well as other factors, including individual differences and variables that influence a listener's orientation to speech stimuli.

More on Folk Zoological Life-Forms

This note serves two purposes: (1) to revise details of the folk zoological life-form encoding sequence (Brown 1979) in light of recent crosslanguage research, and (2) to respond to Thomas Riley's (1980) comments concerning the relationship of ecological factors and biological life-form growth. Since publication of the study treating animal life-form growth (Brown 1979) I have substantially augmented the number of Type A language cases bearing on the proposed encoding sequence.' Of the original sample of 112 language cases, the vast majority (78) are from dictionaries (i.e., Type B cases) and the remainder (34) from nondictionary sources (Type A) such as reports of firsthand field investigation of folk zoological classification. To date, I have added approximately 110 Type A cases. For the most part these additional cases support the broad outline of encoding regularities described earlier. They do indicate, however, that constraints on zoological life-form encoding are not quite as severe as originally reported. In the original formulation of the encoding sequence WUG (fourth to be encoded) precedes MAMMAL (last to be encoded). WUG and MAMMAL are residual life-form categories encompassing creatures left over after encoding the distinct discontinuities BIRD, FISH, and SNAKE. Furthermore, they partition residual creatures by size creating the binary contrast small residual creature (WUG)/large residual creature (MAMMAL). The additional Type A cases indicate that nei her of these residual classes is more likely than the other to be encoded immediately aft r the triad FISH, BIRD, and SNAKE. In other words, there are no reasons for postulating that WUG precedes MAMMAL or vice versa. However, the new evidence adds further strong support to the bservation that both residual categories are r gularly encoded after FISH, BIRD, and SNAKE.