Sign Language Interpreter-Mediated Qualitative Interview with Deaf Participants in Ghana: Some Methodological Reflections for Practice

Qualitative research is adventurous and creative, and committed to understanding unique human experiences in specific cultural ecologies. Qualitative interviewing with Deaf participants is far more challenging for hearing researchers who do not understand sign language, and for this reason such interactions may require the use of a sign language interpreter to facilitate the interview process. However, the quality of sign language interpreter-mediated interactions is likely to be compromised due to omissions, oversights, misinterpretations or additions that may occur during translation. An unthoughtful and poor interpretation of a communicative event by a sign language interpreter during a qualitative interview with Deaf participants may lead to an imposition of the interpreter’s or the researcher’s realities on Deaf participants’ lived experiences. It is thus important that qualitative researchers who conduct sign language interpreter-mediated interviews with Deaf participants employ practical and flexible ways to enhance such interactions. To understand the everyday realities of Deaf people amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Ghana, and document same to inform policy and practice, we conducted qualitative interviews with Deaf participants in Ghana. In this article, we draw insights from our data collection experiences with Deaf participants in Ghana to offer some useful methodological reflections for minimizing omissions in sign language-mediated qualitative interviews and thereby enhancing qualitative data quality. We particularly discuss how qualitative researchers can use language flexibility and post-interview informal conversations with a sign language interpreter to create a natural non-formal interactional atmosphere that engenders natural conversational flow to minimize interpretation omissions and differential power relations in sign language interpreter-mediated qualitative interviews with Deaf participants.

Voices from the Lagers in Germany

This paper traces the everyday realities of refugees living in camps in certain federal states of Germany during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. It provides a systematic analysis of refugees’ testimonies and demonstrates that they have not received similar levels of care and protection as German citizens, and that their movement has become increasingly regulated. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s notion of ‘necropolitics’, I argue that the German State has treated refugees’ lives as less liveable than those of their own citizens during the pandemic, as was the case before it broke out. Much scholarship has explained the notion of refugee camps in various ways, but there has been less discussion of Lagers (camps) as a site where colonial oppression persists outside the temporal and spatial contexts of former colonies. Data are drawn from archived data sets and testimonies that refugees uploaded to websites of various refugee activist groups.

Out of Place, Out of Mind: Min(d)ing Race in Mad Studies Through a Metaphor of Spatiality

This article examines the racial politics of Mad Studies in Canada through a metaphor of spatiality, underscoring the urgency of an antiracist Mad Studies paradigm. Drawing on critical race scholarship which situates “madness” as reliant on and informed by white supremacist and colonial logics of rationality and reason (Bruce 2017), I foreground claims made by critical race scholars of racialized madness as contingent on and informed by histories of slavery, genocide, and everyday realities of racism and racial violence which an anti-racist Mad Studies project must contend with. By locating the racialization of Mad Studies within a metaphor of spatiality, I heuristically problematize the “space” available for racialized subjects to re/claim madness within contemporary Mad Studies paradigms. I conclude that in failing to rigorously unpack the relations of race which undergird understandings of madness, and to challenge the presence of white supremacy in the Mad Studies discipline, scholars potentially perpetuate a colonial project of “othering” and consequentially maintain the systems of psychiatric violence they seek to undo. Centralizing race in Mad Studies exposes the workings of white supremacy in logics of violence against Mad people more broadly and is thus necessary to an anti-racist and anti- oppressive Mad Studies project.

Ethnic desegregation and ‘resegregation’ in northern English schools

This article discusses findings on inter- and intra-ethnic friendship choices among Pakistani, Bangladeshi and white students within three schools characterised by varying ethnic composition and levels of diversity. Although many participants perceived ethnically diverse schools positively, students commonly described the majority of their friends and, in particular, close friends, as belonging to the same ethnic group. Pakistani and Bangladeshi students, although often homogenised as South Asian within academic studies on school segregation, were far more conscious of their own and the others’ cultural distinction than discussed by literature on ethnic minority – and in particular – Muslim youth. The findings demonstrate how presenting ethnic minority concentrations as self-segregated or resegregated can mask the everyday realities of students, who navigate racism, whether subtle or explicit, and find safe and accepting spaces to express their ethnic identities. Through using students’ own accounts of negotiating such challenges, this article adds to our understanding of young peoples’ experiences of multi-ethnic school settings.

‘Dances with Daffodils’: Life as a Flower-picker in Southwest England

Physically demanding and low-paid, work in the agri-food sector has been described in the literature as equal measures precarious and exploitative. In order to investigate the everyday realities of a flower-picker’s job, we trace Ivan’s journey from a Bulgarian university to the daffodil fields of Cornwall, UK. Following two rounds of successful promotions, Ivan’s work is no longer governed by the seasonal rhythms of the flower-picking industry. However, as a welfare manager, he now faces hidden and open resistance from other migrant pickers whose work he oversees. Speaking to us at the height of the picking season and having worked seven days a week for months, Ivan is struggling. He has no time to complete his application to remain in the UK and is becoming mindful of the gap between the expectations placed on him by his employer, and the recompense offered in return.

Modern everyday realities in neo-phraseological locutions

This article examines the ability of the language to include new everyday realities in neologisms, namely in recently formed phraseological locutions in the German language. The Russian phraseological units (primarily idioms) are involved for comparative purposes. It is demonstrated that the process of creating phraseological units is not left far back in the past, but remains to the present day. The article considers one of the aspects of figurative reflection of reality by means of phraseological neologisms that emerged in the XIX and XX centuries. Phraseological locutions, and idioms in particular, which designate everyday realities, incorporate valuable information on the historical and cultural life of the country of the studied language. The conclusion is made on the degree of reflection of everyday realities in phraseology, as well as on possibility of using phraseology for reconstruction of representations on the life of people of a particular generation. Most of the time, neo-phraseological locutions occur in the language through the metaphor based on figurative reinterpretation of the phenomenon, or relevant situation. Restoration of the resemblance of situation may contribute to using phraseology for reconstructing the representations on the life of people of a particular generation. However, restoration of the image of the past is not always accurate. The emergence of certain phraseological units correlates with a particular historical situation or event.

The Life of a Foreign Traveler in Russia According to Johann Arnold Brand’s Dictionary-Phrasebook, 1673

The article provides for an overview of foreigners’ encounter with the Russian language in the 16th — early 18th centuries; it analyzes, for this purpose, the German-Russian dictionary-phrasebook from the diary “Journey through Brandenburg, Prussia, Courland, Livonia, Pskov, Veliky Novgorod, Tver and Moscow” by Johann Arnold Brand. The phrasebook “Some Muscovite words and expressions that may be useful to travelers”, compiled by Brand on the way from Pskov to Moscow, contains the names of body parts, clothing, household accessories, dishes and drinks, food products, interior items, transport, utensils, writing tools in Russian transliteration with the translation into German. It also includes ready-made speech structures for communicating with fellow travelers, coachmen, owners and staff of the inns, for disposing of servants and property. The analysis of the phrasebook made it possible to recreate the everyday realities of the life of the Brandenburg Embassy on the road, and situations of lexical exchange. The authors provide a commented version of the literal reading of words and expressions in Russian. The independent study of the local language in Russia by foreign travelers was the most effective way to overcome the communication barrier and improve living conditions when traveling to the borderlands. The source under study may be of interest to both historians of the frontier and specialists in material culture and linguistics.

Building empathy through a comparative study of popular cultures in Caracas, Venezuela, and Albany, United States

During our six-week Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) module (Oct.-Nov. 2019), 58 students jointly developed task-based projects on expressions of popular culture in Albany (USA) and Caracas (Venezuela). In teams of seven to eight participants, learners from both countries reflected on variations of popular culture through assignments to be resolved in teams that included summaries and critical assessments of readings, contextualization of theoretical concepts, the drafting of a joint video script, and finally creation of a ten-minute video that focused on popular expressions in both cities. All learners were native, fluent, or near-native speakers of Spanish. We experienced the topic of popular culture to be exceptionally well poised to help students engage with each other from the beginning, represent everyday realities and build empathy and transcultural understanding through written reflections and joint creative final projects in the form of documentaries that included slices of life from the two different realities. The small-scale, everyday popular cultural productions allowed for a connection beyond cultural divides, helped students discover novel terrain within their own contexts, and vice versa, find common ground in the new context, thus fostering empathy toward transcultural awareness and equitable collaboration. In their exchange students actively created a shared ‘third’ culture of collaboration.

Pragmatism and Dialectics in a Mixed Methods Study with Visual Netnography, Interviews, Participant-generated Data and Survey

<p><i>A dialectic pragmatist stance provides ways of meaningful engagement with differences encountered in the context of study, in terms of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and other forms of diversity. The issues and challenges in the delivery of a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional curriculum as well possible solutions and enablers were also reviewed. The consolidated findings from the study reveal that teachers often use a hybrid pedagogical approach, blending both local and international practices and values in the delivery of the enacted curriculum. The potential and possibilities of culturally responsive, place-conscious pedagogical practices, rethinking the roles of teacher and learner, as well as the need for collaborative partnerships and relationships within communities of practice so as to enable the delivery of a future-oriented curriculum that address issues of equity, sustainability and social justice is reviewed and affirmed. </i><i>The pragmatist research paradigm engages everyday realities and allow practical methods to elucidate issues from multiple viewpoints and contexts. A dialectical stance comprising of a constructive- interpretivist worldview facilitated the analysis of findings across the data sets.</i></p>

Pragmatism and Dialectics in a Mixed Methods Study with Visual Netnography, Interviews, Participant-generated Data and Survey

<p><i>A dialectic pragmatist stance provides ways of meaningful engagement with differences encountered in the context of study, in terms of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and other forms of diversity. The issues and challenges in the delivery of a multi-faceted and multi-dimensional curriculum as well possible solutions and enablers were also reviewed. The consolidated findings from the study reveal that teachers often use a hybrid pedagogical approach, blending both local and international practices and values in the delivery of the enacted curriculum. The potential and possibilities of culturally responsive, place-conscious pedagogical practices, rethinking the roles of teacher and learner, as well as the need for collaborative partnerships and relationships within communities of practice so as to enable the delivery of a future-oriented curriculum that address issues of equity, sustainability and social justice is reviewed and affirmed. </i><i>The pragmatist research paradigm engages everyday realities and allow practical methods to elucidate issues from multiple viewpoints and contexts. A dialectical stance comprising of a constructive- interpretivist worldview facilitated the analysis of findings across the data sets.</i></p>