This presentation investigates the dialogical relationship between poetic transcriptions and analysis of interviews with two teachers of Vietnamese in a community language school in Australia. It is suggested that the use of poetic transcription can simultaneously highlight, validate and valorize the often marginalized voices of community language teachers.
This presentation aims to highlight and discuss the dialogical relationship between poetic transcriptions (Ahlgren, 2021) and analysis of narrative interviews. The data comprises interviews with two teachers of Vietnamese in a community language (CL) school in Australia conducted in a larger linguistic ethnographic project (Reath Warren, 2017). Qualitative content and positioning analysis of interviews offer compelling insights into the teachers' migration journeys and linguistic repertoires. Moreover, the analysis reveals their reasons for teaching Vietnamese, and how their professional teacher identities are expressed in different contexts. However, representing and analyzing the teachers' thoughtful, sometimes non-standard, and emotional utterances, also involves methodological challenges (Reath Warren & Ahlgren, forthcoming). In this case, decisions made in the process of transcription relate directly to the researchers' epistemological assumptions about language and reflect and shape the theories and purposes of the research project in question. In this presentation, we will illustrate how poetic transcriptions can create a space for representing existential experience and emotion, as well as highlighting the resourcefulness of language use rather than deviance from a monolingual norm (Ahlgren, 2021). In a relation to an ideological environment, where monolingual norms emerge as a powerful factor impacting on CL teacher identity, the use of poetic transcriptions can be a way to not only highlight the seldom-heard perspectives of CL teachers but also to validate and even valorize their voices – reflecting struggle as well as proudness and hope for the future.
Ahlgren, K. (2021). Poetic representations of migration narratives: A process of writing nearby. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2021;00:1– 20. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12493
Reath Warren, A. (2017). Developing multilingual literacies in Sweden and Australia: Opportunities and challenges in mother tongue instruction and multilingual study guidance in Sweden and community language education in Australia. Ph.d. thesis. Stockholm university. Retrieved from http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1116085&dswid=8210
Reath Warren, A. & Ahlgren, K. Connection, culture, and communication: Teacher trajectories and motivations for teaching in a Vietnamese community language school, In: Cruickshank, K. (forthcoming). Community Language Schools in Australia (preliminary title). Multilingual Matters.
