Multilingual Margins: A journal of multilingualism from the periphery

Multilingualism triangulated:

Miriam Weidl — 2025-02-14

In this article we outline a methodology for researching multilingual contexts – the triangulation of analyses. The key point of the methodology is to triangulate analyses carried out by different parties. It is a systematic way of incorporating different perspectives of the same documented communicative event in order to attempt a more holistic understanding of multilingual practices. We propose that the method can be useful to any researcher of multilingualism and applicable in any setting the world over. We describe the method illustrating step-by-step how we use it to investigate multilingual language use in the Casamance, Senegal with examples from our respective research. We conclude discussing how the triangulation method goes hand-in-hand with reflective practice, and thus offer insights into our changed thinking on how to study multilingualism using sociolinguistic, ethnographic-based methods, but most importantly incorporating different points of view.

Linguistically World-Travelling’ and Speaking in a Bifid Tongue:

Gabriela Veronelli — 2025-02-14

This article draws a connection between Latina decolonial feminist reconceptualization of the relational and multiplicitous nature of the self, and the project and possibilities of rethinking the role of multilingualism in promoting epistemic justice and the reconstitution of the communal. In particular, the author dwells into Maria Lugones’s border dwelling ‘world-traveling’ modality (1987) of moving between mutually exclusive selves, and its linguistic possibilities to make room to multiple ontologies of speakers and languages, where the idea of language and speaker move in a process of complex communication. The goal is to extend this Latina decolonial feminist understanding of a new kind of self with an ambiguous, fluid identity, and who experiences a sense of constant in-betweenness that fosters unique modes of meaning-making which can offer a lens to interpret the possibilities for interrupting a modern/colonial ‘bifid tongue’ sense of multilingualism tied to a bordered conceptualization of languages, closed sets of meanings, and an isolated-autonomous self.

Where is the noise?

Luiz Henrique Magnani — 2025-02-14

Background: Autism is commonly understood through the lens of non-autistic experts and their ethnocentric and gendered methods, which can reduce its complexity and make some concerns invisible. Autistic people can have different relationships with language, externally understood as "noisy," "nonsense," or even disregarded as linguistic production when manifested (Yergeau 2013, Rodas 2018). As a tacit practice, there is even an acceptable type of noise in spaces such as schools, assumed to be natural or even un‐ perceived as such: bells, shouts, chair drag. In contrast, some types of manifestations that neurodivergent people produce can be easily perceived as incorrect or inappropriate (Wood 2018). Still, Milton's (2012) proposal about the "double empathy problem" can remind us that sometimes the noisy are the others. Roughly, the author maintains that miscommunication between autistic and non-autistic people is a two-way issue caused by difficulties in understanding on both sides involved.

Editorial

Quentin Williams — 2025-02-14

Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Research:

Tasneem Plato — 2025-02-14

Speaking Subjects in Multilingualism Re‐ search: Biographical and Speaker-centred Approaches, edited by Purkarthofer and Mia-Cha Flubacher, consists of eighteen chapters, divided into three parts, which provide insights on the utilization of bio‐ graphical approaches and why they are crucial for multilingualism research. This book presents an informative methodological and theoretical diversity and can be valuable for researchers looking to explore biographical methods of research and engage with the sociopolitical lives of language users. It takes the reader through an investigation of different groups of language users’ lived experiences and language-related inequalities and opportunities, and encourages a critical rethinking about the existing knowledge of speakers and their languages.

Christopher Stroud — 2025-02-14

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