How multilingual is LTE's doctoral community?

Here is an email message I sent to all LTE’s doctoral students recently to find out more about the multilingual possibilities and actualities of their research.

 

Introduction

I am sending this message to recent, current, and likely doctoral students with supervisors in the LTE group. Some of you will have heard – e.g. via the main LTE blog and/or the Doctoral Community blogs about my interest in our Doctoral students undertaking their research bi-/multilingually. For example, arising from this interest, there will be a seminar on this theme at the University of Durham in early July.

Prior to that, with Xiaowei Zhou and Tzu-hsuan Liu, I will be presenting a paper on this theme at the Narrative Matters conference in late May. It would help us greatly if we could be more certain what the situation is regarding this theme in relation to your Doctoral studies.

 

The Deal

I would therefore be grateful if you could answer the following questions for me (some tense changes may be necessary for you to interpret them depending on whether you are a former, current or likely doctoral student with us).

I will, in return, a) circulate what I learn from this process, b) circulate the paper and c) continue to raise this issue in our blogs and elsewhere.

I hope the Qs below are clear. Many thanks in advance. R.

 

Your linguistic resources

Q1. In what languages are you fluent (or have some fluency)?

(please list in order beginning with your most fluent languages, i.e. your first language(s))

 

Linguistics possibilities in your research

Q2. Which of the languages you list for Q1 could you conceivably use* in your research activities, e.g. to read the literature, to generate and analyse data, to write research texts / reports, etc?

* Or, for former students, “could you have conceivably used” / or, for likely students, “might you conceivably use”, etc

Your actual research design vis-a-vis your language resources

Q3, Which of the languages you list for Q1 above are you actually using+ in your doctoral research?

+ or, for former students, “did you actually use” / or, for likely students, “do you plan to use”, etc

 Would you be willing for me to follow up on your above responses (e.g. with a further email asking questions about how you are using each of these languages in your research)? Many thanks once more.

Richard