A researcher’s positionality affects how the research is conducted
and the findings interpreted. For my doctoral research project on
aikido-embodied intercultural business communication training, it was
important to keep my positions as an aikidoist and an intercultural
business communication trainer in mind. Putting the advice of Blommaert
and Dong in simple words, reflecting on positionality helps to gain
clarity and awareness on the one hand and understand what I can do
better and worse on the other hand (2020, p. vii). In the following, I
will share my reflections on the insider-outsider positions, or more
precisely, on the emic and etic positions of the research respondents and
myself.
If research needs to be conducted in such a way that it can be
replicated: how would a researcher who is not an aikidoist go about it?
How would another martial artist turned researcher proceed? How would
another aikidoist turned researcher go about it? Interviewing experts
from around the world was a crucial step for me as a researcher to
strike a balance between subjectivity and objectivity, between the emic
(insider) and etic (outsider) perspectives (Agar, 1996, p. 238). I
learnt to understand that the interviews pulled me out of my emic view
of aikido into an etic position and allowed me to immerse myself in the
emic world of each expert (Gibbs & Flick, 2018, pp. 128–139; Haskell
et al., 1992, p. 131). The process was mutually enhancing: the more I
heard experts talk about their aikido, the more I became an outsider who
merely spoke the native aikido language and listened deeply. One day,
in the middle of the interviewing period, I was on a video conference
call with an international group of aikidoists. When they asked, “So
Greet, what are the core principles of aikido?” I could not answer, much
to my surprise. My mind was blank; I had no words, just the feeling of
being an observer, not an aikidoist. Apparently, I had put myself so
much in the observer’s position that my personal ideas about aikido had
vanished temporarily. It was the embodiment of what Blommaert and Dong
wrote (2020, p. 27): once I turned into a researcher and entered the
field for research, I stopped being an aikidoist. It was a necessary
position to call into question much of what I understood and took for
granted (Blommaert & Dong, 2020, p. 27). The position shifts were a
process of identity construction. The interviews with experts
constructed an identity that did not reside in me as an individual but
in “intersubjective relations of sameness and difference, realness and
fakeness, power and disempowerment” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 608).
While identity emerges in interaction, it draws on resources developed
in earlier interactions and in larger contexts (Bucholtz & Hall,
2005, p. 588). The way I came into the interviews consciously and
unconsciously produced new identities of the interviewing researcher and
the interviewed expert. The way I left the interviews led to new
identities in the following interactions.
Indeed,
the researcher position and identity influenced me greatly during the
first three years of my research. When I attended aikido gatherings all
over Belgium and in neighbouring countries, I shrank myself on and off
the mat. I wanted to keep a low profile and avoid situations where I had
to show my understanding of aikido or talk about aikido and research.
Alice Goffman calls it social shrinkage, to become so small a presence
as possible (A. Goffman, 2015, p. 235). I needed to avoid people who
easily declared themselves experts in aikido, experts in research,
experts in applied aikido, and gatekeepers. I needed to gain access to
knowledge and people on my own terms and safeguard the conditions of
research design, access, and dissemination of research findings (Maryns
& Jacobs, 2021, p. 150). Everyone I met was surely an asset and I
enjoyed being around them, observing and absorbing whatever they did.
However, they were not the researcher in this project. The balancing act
between the emic and etic perspectives had many conscious — and surely
also unconscious — moments and impact. I learnt to appreciate that a
blend of emic and etic is always present in the research process (Agar,
1996, p. 238). Shrinking made me see my horizon and look beyond it to
discover the horizons of others. In the last part of my doctoral
project, I outgrew shrinking and found out how balance helped me
navigate the opportunities and constraints of research.
||| Slightly adapted excerpt from the author’s doctoral dissertation. Originally published on the MULTIPLES Research Centre's Blog. ||| References
Agar, M. (1996). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography, 2nd edition. Academic Press.
Blommaert, J., & Dong, J. (2020). Ethnographic fieldwork: A beginner’s guide (2nd edition). Multilingual Matters.
Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A
sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407
Gibbs, G., & Flick, U. (2018). Analyzing qualitative data (2nd edn.). SAGE.
Goffman, A. (2015). On the run: Fugitive life in an American city (First Picador edition). Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Haskell, G. H., Headland, T. N., Pike, K. L., & Harris, M.
(1992). Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate. The Journal of
American Folklore, 105(418), 489. https://doi.org/10.2307/541632
Maryns, K., & Jacobs, M. (2021). Data constitution and engagement
with the field of asylum and migration. Journal of Pragmatics, 178,
146–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.008
