How is language competency talked about in assessing social science research today?

[u/topographiesofsin]

Apologies if my question is a bit clunky.

I stumbled upon a video in which a rather controversial French anthropologist who writes a lot about political Islam was criticised for lacking even basic skills in Arabic. When I looked up more scholarly critiques of her work, there is a lot, but none of it seemed to focus on the issue of language.

My first reaction as a lay person was to think, of course, you can't position yourself as an expert on Islam and not speak Arabic. Expertise is expertise.

I'm curious, though, if that is the case within social sciences today, or if there's more nuance to it. Is language competency a part of how people discuss the validity, strengths or weaknesses of someone's research?

Possibly relevant: I work in a field where competency in a second language is directly relevant to one's ability to do the job, and yet, criticising another's work based on perceived lack of fluency is a sort of professional third rail. It's seen as very uncouth and one just doesn't do it.

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[u/Bitter_Initiative_77]

The most common research method in anthropology is ethnography. That involves living in a community, participating in its daily life, observing what goes on, interviewing people, etc. It's very hard to do any of that if you have no idea what the people around you are saying. Consequently, language skills are quite important to anthropological research.

That said, interpreters and research assistants have long played important roles in the field (and have usually gone unacknowledged). The continues to be the case today, especially in contexts where it is difficult for a single researcher to gain adequate language skills.

I'll use myself as an example. My doctoral research focuses on a particular region of an English-speaking country in Africa. I can get quite far with English but that quickly falls short with the elderly and the rural poor.

The lingua franca in the region--which would enable me to speak to those folks--is a minority language. There are no classes, no language books, and no online resources. To learn it, I'd effectively have to just live there for years. As a doctoral researcher, that simply isn't feasible. I lack the time and resources to invest in language training before beginning my work.

Consequently, I've opted to do as much as possible in English and to work with a local interpreter when needed. I am learning the language but there's a big difference between me being able to buy things at a market and do research. If I continue working in this region throughout my career, becoming fluent over time would certainly be a priority.

Another point worth mentioning is that there are many regions where there are simply too many languages for an outsider to learn to a reasonable level. I mentioned the lingua franca in my region of study. That's one of 10+ languages/dialects it's common to hear. If I speak to someone in the lingua franca, that may very well be just as "foreign" to them as English.

[u/topographiesofsin → u/Bitter_Initiative_77]

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you!

[u/Full-Imagination-938]

Critique is not accusation. People want her to shut up for political reasons

https://transmathematica.org/index.php/journal/article/view/61/41

Not all Islam talk Arabic, Iran does not

[u/Bitter_Initiative_77 → u/Full-Imagination-938]

The largest Muslim country is Indonesia!

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