OCE Workshop | Hussein NASSER | Thursday, June 27th | 13h-14h

We will have the great pleasure of welcoming Hussein Nasser. Hussein is an PhD student at emlyon. He’ll be giving a talk entitled:

« SPEAKING SHOUTING WITH THE EYES: Language Barriers and Emotional Work in Ethnographic Fieldwork, A Personal Experience »

Ethnographic studies are often multilingual (Holmes et al., 2013) and often necessitate learning a new language (Gibb & Danero Iglesias, 2017) in which, researchers are likely to remain “less-than-fluent” (Tremlett, 2009, p. 65). To compensate, an ethnographer ought to “learn to be a credible actor” (Alan Fine & Hallett, 2014, p. 190). However, a significant gap persists in addressing how language learning and proficiency affect ethnographers’ fieldwork experiences (Rosales, 2021). The few exceptions to this permanence rarely discuss the role of emotions and emotional work. This methodological piece addresses the question: “How do emotions arise and how are they managed in ethnographic academic research where a language barrier exists between the researcher and the subjects?”. I present several ethnographic vignettes from past and ongoing multilingual research projects where language barriers imposed significant emotional work (e.g., acting and emotional policing) on both me and my study subjects. In doing so, I aim to contribute to the theory of emotional work by showing how the assumption that deeper human connections entail more unconscious emotional work (Hochschild, 1983) does not hold when language barriers exist and individuals resort to the most basic feeling rules to maintain ephemeral trust. I also contribute to the methodology by joining the few ethnographers who have started disclosing challenges experienced in fieldwork (Suarez Delucchi, 2018; Vincett, 2018) and responding to calls for accounts of lived experiences (Anteby, 2013; Yanow, 2012) in a less sanitized and more humanized manner (Warden, 2013).

The event takes place in emlyon business school, at Lyon on the NEW CAMPUS and on Zoom.

Here is the link to register you, to be completed by June 24 th:
https://forms.office.com/e/qmVUpq6y5w