Moment as method

Abstract

This report corroborates Jerry Lee’s argument that “approaching methodology from an orientation guided by the logics of translanguaging will enable us to revisit a range of methodological questions that might arise in a study of translanguaging”. My use of anecdotes recuperates the personal, autobiographical dimension in research; in foregrounding the subjective and the singular, it offers a corrective to the compulsive obsession toward objectivity and representability in the language sciences. As Jerry Lee has correctly pointed out, parameters like sample size are not necessarily congruent with “the realities of translanguaging as an individualized, and therefore oftentimes idiosyncratic, phenomenon”. In this regard, moment analysis through anecdotal stories and autobiographical perspectives, such as I have demonstrated above, could be an experimental answer to Lee’s call for “increased openness” to alternative ways of approaching language in practice.