Reflexivity

Abstract

This chapter addresses reflexivity as a central aspect of research in the situated study of language, a stance taken by linguistic ethnography (LE) and shared with other perspectives on communication, such as linguistic anthropology (Duranti 1997) and critical sociolinguistics (Heller 1996/2006, Martín Rojo 2010). Broadly speaking, “ethnography aims to describe the sometimes chaotic, contradictory, polymorph character of human behaviour in concrete settings” (Blommaert 2007). Since researchers are likely to follow threads, tie them together, categorise and identify patterns, and bring their own particular perspective against a background of previous research in the area to the table, such indeterminacy finds some order when researchers acknowledge joint responsibility for the knowledge production process in which they participate when doing ethnography. Since the term “reflexivity” can refer to epistemological positioning in research as well as decisions taken regarding research practices (in fact Foley (2002: 473) defines it as “a slippery term”), when I speak of “methodological reflexivity” in the research context I take it to encompass reflexive practices stemming from a variety of perspectives, whether they be epistemological considerations or the researcher’s questioning of his or her own socio-political, cultural, ideological or other forms of personal subjectivity. The need to recognise the essential role that the researcher’s subjectivity plays throughout the process of language research, and the ways in which it imbues the research produced, is part of the poststructuralist stance in the social sciences that was initiated in the 1960s.

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ORCID for Adriana Patino: orcid.org/0000-0003-1950-3954

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