“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”Lord Kelvin 1883

Linguistic Incompetence

How Competent is Competent Enough?Researching multilingually with or without the language

“What happens when social science tries to describe things that are complex, diffuse and messy. The answer, […] is that it tends to make a mess of it.”

John Law, 2004

Giving an account of myself…Competent?Incompetent?Heroic?Foolhardy?Professional?Unprofessional?

Risks = ‘language / communication’Avalanches, food poisoning, sleeping sickness, HIV, civil unrest, muggings, robbery, kidnap…I quickly learned:

Greetings, food names, Prayer language (Insha'allah), to trust my hosts

Gestures and some aggression/suspicion that translation maybe incorrect

Linguistic Incompetence and Accountability

Researching without the language

Ethnographic notes:Difficulty and struggle to hear and make meaningThe jouiscence of making progressResource to common language (German and English) for rest and reflection and writingNotes full of new words and phrases – mulitlingual research notes

Interpellation“We start to give an account only because we are interpellated as beings who are rendered accountable by a system of justice and punishment. This system is not there from the start, but becomes instituted over time at great cost to the human instincts.” (Butler, 2005: 11)

Personal experience of being aware of complexities?Found wanting ....either way.Not competent enough.Punishment and/or Remedy.

Mother Tongue: A Mother’s IncompetenceBlen & TigrinyaNew scriptTonality

Linguistic exhaustion and pain – auto-didacticismPaucity of resource and opportunity.

Ritual LearningSensory awareness heightened: incense, cloth, scarf, coffee beans, skin and hair oil; spices, textureEthics: Linguistic power remains with powerlessTsada: expections of whiteness

Lifelong Learning in PalestineArabic - tenderness of lack:BordersWelcomes

SecurityResearch interviewsNGO/academic English

Words Fail MeSo, what is my experience of becoming aware of the complexities of researching multilingually?

“Is there an ethical valence to my unknowingness?” (Butler, 2005: 84)

The Value in “Incompetence”

Time to observePractice of researcher patience and humilityExperience of frustration and powerlessness which enables empathyNoticing of greetings, rituals, sensory dimensionsValuable stage, but not status quo

Anthropology

“My main difficulty at this early stage was inability to converse freely with the Nuer. I had no interpreter. None of the Nuer spoke Arabic, There was no adequate grammar of the language, and apart from three short Nuer-English vocabularies, no dictionary. Consequently the whole of my first and a large part of my second expedition were taken up with trying to master the language sufficiently to make inquiries (my emphasis) through it, and only those who have tried to learn a very difficult tongue without the aid of an interpreter and adequate literary guidance will fully appreciate the magnitude of the task.”

(Evans-Pritchard, 1940: 10)

From Competence to Capabilitiesto be a beginnerfor relationshipsfor hospitality

of attentivenessof sensory awarenessto de-centre

To “rest” capability

“to risk ourselves precisely at moments of unknowingness....constitutes our chance of becoming human”

(Butler: ibid)