Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research

Learning and Using Languages in Ethnographic Research breaks the silence that still surrounds learning a language for ethnographic research and in the process demystifies some of the multilingual aspects of contemporary ethnographic work. It promotes a wider debate among researchers about how they themselves learn and use different languages in their work, and helps future fieldworkers make more informed choices when carrying out ethnographic research using other languages. The book explores how researchers' experiences of learning and using other languages in fieldwork contexts relate to wider structures of power, hierarchy and inequality. The volume offers a set of engaging and accessible accounts of language learning and use written by ethnographers who are at different stages of their academic career, from PhD students to researchers already on their second or even third fieldwork sites.