Word-Dancing Together Towards Noble Outcomes

  | In memory of Professor Jan Blommaert |  This is an account of how Jan Blommaert made me stop saying that I sell hot air. It happened when my doctoral advisory committee met in December 2018. It was an exciting meeting in which all the professors got acquainted who had agreed to accompany me on the long road to a doctorate. Jan was one of them. We soon shared perspectives on the research topic and discovered the alluringly diverse interests of the committee members. It was a refreshing dive into academic talk, especially for me because I had just stepped out of a career as a free-lance business communication trainer. When I humbly linked the subject of my PhD research with my professional experience, I claimed that this research may well show that I had been selling hot air for years, “ dat ik al jaren gebakken lucht verkoop .” Jan promptly replied that I must not say that. He eloquently explained that if participants of a business communication train...

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 ar...