Working with/beyond ‘language’: insights from a listening walk with young men from asylum-seeking backgrounds in a rural treescape

Badwan, Khawla ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1808-724X, Pahl, Kate ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8840-1121 and Nunn, Caitlin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3145-3099 (2024) Working with/beyond ‘language’: insights from a listening walk with young men from asylum-seeking backgrounds in a rural treescape. Language and Intercultural Communication, 24 (5). pp. 497-510. ISSN 1470-8477

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Abstract

This article articulates the affordances and challenges of researching with and beyond language on a listening walk with young men from asylum-seeking backgrounds in a rural treescape. Offering methodological and conceptual provocations for creative multilingual research, the article does not (re)present a traditional research encounter with fixed methodologies and confident findings. Rather, it stories a research encounter, anchored in participatory practice and developed conceptually through post-research puzzlement that critically unpacks and embraces vulnerabilities associated with the roles of language, feelings and understanding in social research.