The potential of ethnographic drama in the representation, interpretation, and democratization of sociolinguistic research

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of an approach to representation, interpretation, and democratization sociolinguistic research, which utilizes tools methods theatre. Taking as example a team ethnographic research project conducted across four cities in UK, process creating drama from material observed social practice. Drawing on observations welfare advice centre Chinese community centre, city-based volleyball team, propose that theatre techniques enable audiences academic researchers see communicative encounters new light. We offers three opportunities particular: (i) it has potential make available outcomes beyond academy; (ii) discover understandings remain latent accounts do not involve performance; (iii) capacity democratize voice, privileging voices participants rather than those researchers. Ethnographic thus considerable research. 本文讨论了戏剧在社会语言学研究中作为一种方式方法的可供性, 即利用戏剧这一工具和方法来表现和解释社会语言学的研究。以一个在英国四个城市所进行的大型团队民族志研究项目为例, 我们讨论了对从社会实践观察中所获得的资料进行戏剧创作的过程。通过对华人社区中心的福利咨询中心和城市排球队的观察, 我们提出, 戏剧这一方式方法能让观众和研究人员以新的眼光看待人际交流。我们认为, 民族志戏剧 有可能让学术界以外的人士有机会接触到研究成果;(ii) 有可能挖掘出对民族志资料其它方面的认知, 这些认知在表演之外, 却潜藏于文字的叙述之中。(iii) 有能力让大家都有表达自己的机会。参与者也有权利表达自己, 让更多人听到他们的声音, 而不仅仅只是研究员的声音。因此, 民族志戏剧在表现, 解释和民主大众化社会语言学研究这些方面蕴藏着巨大的潜力。 What research? The answer perhaps lies apparent paradox: order represent truth practice, aim render ways are neither realistic nor naturalistic. That is, terms recognizable ethnographer, familiar strange. Two recently published dramas take small steps artistic (Blackledge & Creese, 2021a, 2021b). Relying performance more conventional means reporting, these pieces sit at interstices art sociolinguistics. explore some aspects direction travel context will sociolinguistics is 4-year Translation Translanguaging: Investigating Linguistic Cultural Transformations Superdiverse Wards Four U.K. Cities (‘TLANG’). question set out was: 'How people communicate increasingly diverse city settings, what implications for policy practice public, private, third sector organisations?' was concerned with how societies characterised by heightened diversity complexity. linguistic ethnography engaged notions emergence constraint, conviviality, everyday encounters, inequality. Researchers examined interactional translanguaging heteroglossia. multiple sites, communication interaction between different nationalities, ethnicities, languages, cultural modes. collected enabled us understand language practices temporal spatial trajectories, mobility, focusing only language-in-place but also language-in-motion. looked fine grain contexts differential relations power. paid close attention negotiating or seeking common ground shared terrain. institutional, generational, legal, political commonalities intersect dimensions difference, considered difference both constraint resource daily interactions. cities, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, London, use action interacted markets, centres, corner shops, libraries, hubs, sports clubs. At each 16 worked key participant, pair participants, over period 4 months, observing recording their interactions customers, clients, members colleagues, team-mates, friends, family members. Key were almost all migrants UK – China, Hong Kong, Iraq, Malaysia, Mozambique, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sudan. An focus allowed insight into processes shape urban encounters. Ethnographers pay local context, historicity, specificity, non-local, transnational dynamics, connections, relations. Investment time needed create fine-grained, lived experience. Careful, detailed observation diversity. ethnography, interpretive studies actors point view, considers embedded wider structures (Rampton, 2015). Through people, links processes, ideologies, course our wrote field notes, interviews, took photographs, produced films, made audio-recordings video-recordings, media posts. created finely account wide range they went about lives commercial, leisure, domestic settings superdiverse city. After analyzing million words audio-recordings, posts, summarised findings found when linguistic, biographical, historical backgrounds come contact clubs, often translanguage, communicating semiotic repertoires. They borrow other's ‘languages’, try things out, find areas sharing meaning. Our analysis provided evidence goes through bodies well speech. It became clear includes always thought ‘language’, including smiles, shrugs, pointing, mime, pats back, so on. To buy 2 kg chicken's feet, sign hand used. exchange client, library assistant would lightly touch her client arm. offer congratulation winning court, players embraced offered ‘high fives’. saw potentially difficult convivial played around languages. Most depended people's willingness get other despite differences. Time again successful exchanges who did share common. achieved because prepared accept appropriating resource. Increased asset deficiency. On court horsed around, pretending fight, intimate physical contact. A raised apology, shrug shoulders, ritual clapping, punch air, forms communication. true life: bodies. Communicative multilingual involved translanguaging, translation. If suggests without keeping languages separate, translation implies Like can be creative transformative. interpreters advisors limited transfer meaning translated explained world minoritised clients. Performing crucial roles hidden spaces, acted mediators dominant otherwise disenfranchised going, giving access rights, explaining complex processes. overlapped, co-existed, integral other. sense. Analysis led articles peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, edited volumes, briefing papers, working reports. However, there still further go had encountered observed. pursue travel, came drama. follows, exemplify possibilities Not first time, anthropology themselves crossroads. already 35 years since James Clifford (1986) questioned monophonic authority pervasive authorial voice ethnography. Pierre Bourdieu (1999), too, single, central, dominant, quasi-divine view voice. Instead, argued Bourdieu, must work perspectives correspond multiplicity co-existing, sometimes directly competing, points view. now-traditional monograph struggles limit power Notwithstanding imperative perspective universally narrates position Flattening hierarchy proves difficult. drama, however, medium foreground background ethnographer. may speak themselves. For sure, ethnographer/playwright does disappear completely. curation recreation characters ideological perspective. But authoritative no longer need loudest allow themselves, stand own feet were, pull back duty explain lives. accounts, sense perspective, analyse write. (if before), collides, rubs up against, integrates study. When have completed analysis, provide explanations link study theoretical ideas practices. explanation seeks transparent culture others inevitably becomes diminution. Underlying urge desire transparency. understanding cultures, comparisons and, perhaps, judgements. distil them, diminish them. depreciation inevitable representation Instead endow meaning, could resist trying reduce human behaviour simple explanation. Rather transparent, might them opaque. remains opaque, if grasp other, seek solidarity. This suggest are, become, ‘opaque’, therefore unknowable, exotic others. principal task life participant terms. Opacity force drives every community, thing bring together. Édouard Glissant, consent opacity equivalent non-barbarism: 'we clamor right everyone' (Glissant, 1997, p. 194). impetus cultures opposite accepting difference. differences are. towards exegesis, overriding purpose principle Contemporary gang rivalry London New York invocation gods Iban longhouse Sarawak, opposed generation knowledge participation in, of, But, willing too readily inclined show enables lay before audience life, enact seen heard, invite engage critical reflection. endowing others’ even believe perceived dramatic opportunity visible mundane contemporary lives, (Saldaña, 2011). Live heighten (Teman Saldaña, 2019). performative turn been taken equally case Playwrights Alecky Blythe co-workers (Blythe, 2008, 2014; Blyth Cork, 2011), Anna Deavere Smith (1994, 1997), David Hare (1976, 2003) adapted monographs, interview transcripts, re-presented Denzin (1997) argues powerful way recover yet interrogate meanings Constructed dramatised digital messages, employs present live participants’ experiences researchers’ interpretations. refocus gaze open seeing presented stage (Denzin, 2003, 2018). challenges existing knowing representing (Denzin Lincoln, 2000). capture document participating Goldstein (2012) having crossroads, literary turn. Guiding change ethnographers invent truths. anthropology's guided recognition representations crafted, fictional. Ethnography aims evoke experience using craft materials observation, fieldnotes, photographs compelling story (Jacobson Larsen, 2014). many conducting writing bilingual school used construct play read aloud discussed student teachers. Her journal books written academics interested multilingualism schooling. play, teachers cultural, racial classrooms schools. playwriting productive responding dilemmas postmodern anthropologists, Goldstein's performed continues hugely influential making discussion evaluation, Out School (2021), based interviews 37 LGBTQ families, Harriet's House (2012), adoption lesbian family, Zero Tolerance (2013), adapts 595-page report shooting death boy hallway his Toronto school. theatre, combination artistry method reaped rich rewards huge future. tension ethical aesthetic responsibilities. dramatist, arises obligation recreate authentic same producing interpretation Dialogue plausible reconstruction data. Characters approximate versions participants. validity, authenticity, integrity, scope report. rigorous aesthetic. dramatists balance creativity accuracy, credibility, trustworthiness. maintain fidelity transcripts notes oppositional thinking imaginatively performance. empirical source necessary detail dialogue. There times author's imagination data provides discourse events portrayed playwrights wholly compose voices, creatively strategically edit 2005). much ‘write’ adapt content theatricality. scripts traditional sense, reformatted displays. lends reductive exponential quality. researchers, artists, examine moments forms. audible informant. two texts TLANG project. sites club advocacy service centre. Volleyball Drama, Interpretations Drama. Before ever book-length reports, articles, reports Commons committees, newspaper ‘verbatim’ going world, reach writing. Little Revolution, Blythe, riots 2011. interviewed scene recordings. stage, wore headsets, delivered lines just heard original accent, intonation, delivery, speech pattern interviewees. causes riots, happened. Almeida Theatre whether complexity life. powerful, convincing why able online communication, interviews? work, reading script find. verbatim tribunal scripts. partly evidence, loose connection evidence. re-read complete plays Beckett, Brecht, Churchill, Hare. attended productions evidence-based until Covid-19 restrictions arrived. During project, company devise produce piece Now, dramaturgs trusted resources. starting-point entirely alien ethnographers, involving recontextualisation, recreation, next section, analysed part Al: ‘Right, stop. All balls please’. side put basket. ‘So drill blocking drill, wing blockers. Felix, you know step block?’ Felix says yes. ‘Demonstrate demonstrates, Ollie joins in. practise pairs. ‘You should jumping together’. so, pairs then fours, turns. something balletic activity, very co-ordinated heavily elegant, fingers meeting above net, touching, trainers unison landing wooden floor. (AB, notes) starts. jump block pairs, move together along while downwards room Then keep moving way. hands touching Al watches side, arms folded front chest. “Stop, stop, block, timing key, doesn't matter high jump, your timing, okay!” (RH exercise lovely! fours. It's nice, quiet rhythmic. I think dance. wrong quite lot though. Men one another. Markus finds off ground. Graham calls ironically, ‘how Good natured, telling-off, nonetheless. (AC, excerpts typical moment routine: rehearsing technique, during competitive match deploy prevent opposition scoring. coach, Al, originally Kong. Almost elsewhere: France, Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Philippines, Romania, Rwanda, Spain, Taiwan, player UK. Three video-cameras positioned record action. wears recorder microphone. following excerpt Act II, Scene drama: throughout action, speaking presenting audience. embodied coach synchrony coach. physically shadow once commentators upon it. None simultaneous naturalistic realistic. draws attitudes spirit, mutual endeavour, scene, demonstrates movement he requires net. run training drills. become dancers, Broadway musical chorus line, ballet company. dancer, times. comparison athletic agility elegant grace reveals metaphoric engine metonymically remakes itself stated performed. One idea turns another, reflect expression. reaches enhanced expanded understanding, complements constructing attitude convey volleyball, dance, realistically naturalistically, metaphorically, metonymically. IV Drama pushes noise matches. volume, tempo team's motivational chant indexical progress. stylized ritual, significance clear. II 4, asks rotation positions points. performance, players, style Keystone Cops, turns, hesitate, grow confused, collide, fall, collapse chaos, recovering support collective endeavour. described words, corporeal dynamic, trajectory Both scenes exaggeration, entertainment And scenes, comes goal. Such appreciated Smith, pioneer United States, focuses external characters, building connections approximation inflection, gesture. She attempt relate character exploration internal naturalise text psychologically plausible. Largely witnesses violent events, performances enacted oral history (Richards, 1993). Smith's strategy takes fragmented partial speeches constitute representative emblematic moments, pretend build whole (Lyons Lyons, 1994). radical Bertolt Brecht (1964/2020), sought redefine role escape transported another place, questioning analytical. Brecht's critique theatrical simply ‘reproduce’ reality neutral self-evident manner. ‘Epic theatre’ insists swept away it, persuaded empathise stage. illusion being real world. Performance showing, strange ordinary introduced distance These spectator constructively criticise showing performing viewed ‘fly wall’. distance, estrangement, maintained audience, allowing observer represented alienation players’ movement, emphasising evaluation constant awareness watched tur