Crossing Language Boundaries: Qualitative Interviewing in International Business

Zusammenfassung

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In this paper, the researchers explore the use of foreign languages in qualitative interviewing, an issue previously treated as a mere technical consideration and largely neglected in the monolingual, English-dominated environment of international business research. Drawing on literature from linguistic anthropology and qualitative interviewing methodology, they provide a holistic view of foreign language use based on the experiences of 34 scholars from different countries. Their findings show the multiple decisions that researchers make about language use, and their effects on data accuracy and authenticity, rapport-building and the construction of shared understanding.

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Auszug

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Crossing Language Boundaries: Qualitative Interviewing in International Business

Introduction

"I arrived in Berlin, tape recorder in hand. But there was that one problem, !couldn't speak the language ... While I cannot claim that this came as a surprise, I hadn't fully anticipated the ways in which this would impact upon the research. Perhaps that was lucky, for had I known in advance what awaited me, I probably wouldn 't have persevered. And then I might have missed out on one of the most critical experiences of my life. " (Andrews 1995, p. 78)

Recent trends in theory, philosophy and methodology identify language as critical to understanding the qualitative research interview. Postmodern and poststructuralist philosophies alert researchers to the role that language, symbols and discourses play in shaping meaning and power in interviews (Alvesson/Deetz 2000). At the same time, social constructionist conceptualizations of the interview highlight the fact that the interview process is an "active" production of meaning by interviewer and interviewee (Holstein/Gubrium 1995). Once interview data are seen as interpretively "collaborative", language becomes a constitutive act rather than just a medium for information exchange.

Despite theoretical interest in language (see e.g., Brannen 2004), and despite the fact that much research today involves international data collection, methodological texts on qualitative interviewing are typically silent on the topic of foreign language use in interviewing (e.g., Kvale 1996). Instead, a monolingual research environment tends to be assumed, usually implicitly (for exceptions, see Marshall/Rossman 2006, Rossman/Rallis 1998). Particularly in the field of international business (IB), language boundaries are frequently crossed when researching offshore operations. But even in IB the methodological implications of foreign language use are frequently not considered, or limited to translation hurdles when trying to establish equivalence of meaning across cultures - the traditional focus of quantitative research (see e.g., Craig/Douglas 2000, Harpaz 1996).

The purpose of this paper is thus to problematize the issue of foreign languages in interviews conducted by researchers doing cross-border fieldwork. We examine researchers' decisions about which language to use at various stages of an international research project, and the effects of these decisions on the interview process and the data collected. We refer to interviews as ...

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