Keywords

Introduction

Post-monolingual research methodology refers to (a) the use of the divergences between two or more languages to undertake theorizing (b) in coexistence with the tensions posed by English-only monolingualism (Singh 2013). In other words, the emphasis is on exploring the divergence between languages to open up new paths for theorizing, rather than focusing on solely concerns about testing existing theories (Jullien 2014). Despite their internationalization, or because of it, Anglophone universities continue to be informed by monolingual ideologies that marginalize multilingual postgraduates’ capabilities for exploring divergence in theorizing (Bondy 2016). Working with this tension, this chapter addresses the work of post-monolingual research methodology in deepening multilingual postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing and to create scholarly spaces that extends divergence in theorizing. In doing so, this chapter contributes to changing postgraduate education with multidirectional shifts in transnational knowledge production (Singh et al. 2013).

Much attention is given to building a range of capabilities in postgraduate researchers (Akuffo et al. 2014; Colenbrander et al. 2015; Kabiru et al. 2014). However, little attention is given to building their capabilities for theorizing (Biesta et al. 2011; Swedberg 2016). Moreover, considerably much less attention was given to building postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for theorizing using the concepts, metaphors, and images available in their full linguistic repertoire (Singh 2011a, 2013). Post-monolingual research methodology deals with the challenges of multilingual postgraduate researchers making meaning of phenomena in interculturally divergent ways (Jullien 2014). The multilingual postgraduates that drive the research reviewed in this chapter are those characterized as having postimperial, postcolonial, or post-cold war characteristics.

Over the decades, scholars from the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) have been reassessing the work of theorizing in relation to the rising generation of multilingual postgraduates (Keim et al. 2016). Critiques of HASS have questioned its homogenizing reproduction English language theories (Akena 2012; Canagarajah 2002; Grosfoguel 2013; Harper 2011; Preece 2011; Singh 2013). Post-monolingual research methodology directs attention to what is theorized in English and what is not theorized through postgraduate researchers’ other languages. Postgraduate researchers’ multiple languages contain concepts, metaphors, and images that bear meanings developed through theorizing. Through a review of the literature, this chapter provides a guide for multilingual postgraduate researchers and academics seeking an introduction to post-monolingual research methodology and divergence in theorizing.

Several caveats are worth noting here. First, the aim of post-monolingual research methodology is to verify the presupposition that all human languages are equally capable of being used for theorizing. However, divergence in theorizing does not mean the “negation or denial of Euro-American [theorising] but rather it allows us to treat this Western body of knowledge” (Anderson 2014: 448) as one intellectual resource to be developed and tested along with many others. In other words, this is not a matter of Euro-American education “reducing the claims of its own values or by moderating its commitment to the, or even by ‘relativising’ its positions” (Jullien 2014: 140). Second, this methodology embraces intellectual innovations made possible by divergences in the expression of concepts, metaphors, and images across intellectual cultures. It is not the “origin” of these ideas in one or other intellectual culture that is at issue here. Nor is the focus is on why knowledge developed in one culture is not elaborated therein but advanced by another (Belting 2011). Third, as part of learning to theorize across languages, multilingual postgraduates have to struggle against ethno-relativism and nativism. Sinocentrism is not the answer to Eurocentrism in postgraduate education (Prazniak 2010). It is misguided to assume that all efforts at divergence in theorizing will necessarily generate theoretic-linguistic tools that are as helpful as existing theories (Makarychev and Morozov 2013). Fourth, this methodology is not concerned with capturing the “voice” of postgraduate researchers as such (Helms-Park and Stapleton 2003; Moore and Muller 1999; Young 2000). Voice is not as important as is the capabilities multilingual postgraduates have for theorizing in their scholarly arguments (Fielding 2007; Fulford 2009; Young 2009).

Theory, Theorizing, and Divergence in Theorizing

To begin, there is need to consider the roles theory and theorizing can play in the education of postgraduate researchers. Accordingly, this section gives a brief overview of theory and theorizing, providing initial definition of both. As will be seen, the relationship between theory and theorizing can be approached from various perspectives. By establishing what theory and theorizing might be regarded as, consideration then turns divergence in theorizing.

Theory

The meaning of theory is contested, with rational disagreements about what a theory is supposed to be or ought to do. Definitions of theory vary across HASS disciplines and among researchers (Biesta et al. 2011; Clegg 2012). For Lemert (1993), a theory is a critically mindful, plausible, and coherent description of an important social phenomenon, which provides a persuasive explanation of how and why it might be dealt with. The independent thinking it requires is made possible by academic freedom. Theory can include a summary of observations, mathematical formulae, references to what the classics say, and new speculations (Markovsky 2008). Further, conceptual frameworks, principles, and models are among the various tools used by researchers to express theory (Weick 1995). Rather than validating what they already believe, theory provides researchers a lens through which the study of phenomenon may reveal significant, unexpected, or surprising advances in knowledge (Swedberg 2016). Practically, theories provide “vital insights that … make sense of the world … and serve as a guide to action” (Sears 2005: 10). Theories are indispensable in daily life as they are for research.

A theory subtly explains why acts, events, structures, and thoughts happen in the ways the available evidence indicates that they might. In this sense, theory is used to answer to queries about the why of phenomenon. By delving into underlying processes, theory provides a way “to understand the systematic reasons for a particular occurrence or non-occurrence” (Sutton and Staw 1995: 378). As part of a systematic investigation, theory provides explanations and justifications about the associations among phenomena.

While there is perhaps less scholarly disputation about what is not theory, there is no consensus about what theory is (Sutton and Staw 1995). For instance, Weick (1995: 385) contends that theory is not something added to a study; it is not created by using diagrams, tables, and references, most importantly is not “feigned by a flashy conceptual performance” (also see Reay 2015). Theory requires the explicit clarification of contested concepts using data and the generation of propositions to explain this evidence. Table 1 highlights key resources used in theory.

Table 1 What theory might and might not be
Full size table

Theory provides reasoned and justifiable explanations of the relations between data and actions, and between symptoms and recommended prescriptions. A theory without evidence is no more helpful than evidence without a reasoned and reasonable explanatory theory. Empiricists claim “that ‘data speak for themselves’ without the benefit of … perspectives, orientations, metatheories, frameworks, or other such quasi-theoretical forms” (Markovsky 2008: 426). However, no amount of sophisticated empirical work can substitute for the lack of theory needed to make meaning of the evidence. Without theories, researchers do not have the concepts to collect evidence let alone to interpret it. Of course, the phenomena that theories are used to investigate, analyze, and explain are complex. Moreover, the solutions that theories give rise to are just as complicated, if not contradictory.

Theory produced in English in the Anglosphere either weakly aspires to universal relevance or is strongly presumed to have universal application. Such theory is claimed to have applicability beyond a particular time, and place, supposedly being relevant to every time and place and applicable under all conditions.

There is, however, a problem here for postgraduate research education. Unfortunately, little attention is given to developing postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for theorizing (Biesta et al. 2011). The problem is that they are “primarily exposed to finished theories and are not aware of the process that goes into the production and design of a theory” (Swedberg 2016: 5). Postgraduate “training” sees received theories being distilled, packaged, and transmitted across generations of researchers (Markovsky 2008). Postgraduates come to associate “theory” with the finished products they are expected to use. However, explanations and justifications about how theory is generated are usually missing from publications presenting theory as product.

Postgraduates are trained to use existing theory to collect and analyze data. Rather than also learn how theories might be developed, they only get “to know theory once it has been discovered and turned into its publishable version” (Swedberg 2016: 8). They learn little about how and why major theorists actually produced their theories. As Sutton and Staw (1995: 380) observe, “reading major theorists and writing literature review papers is often passed off as training in theory building, even though such assignments really don't teach one how to craft conceptual arguments.” Moreover, little attention is given to understanding the role of languages and their translation in developing theory (Montgomery 2000). The next section considers the trial-and-error process of theorizing, the work that comes prior to presenting a finalized theory.

Theorizing

The relationship between theory and theorizing is usefully thought of as operating along a continuum rather than as a dichotomy. It is difficult to establish where theorizing ends and a theory begins (Clegg 2012). Theorizing is the intellectual work that precedes the realization of a theory (Swedberg 2012, 2016). Theory and theorizing are inextricably bound together (Weick 1995). Theorizing proceeds and is practiced with the guidance of existing theory. Theorizing builds on existing theories in a given field.

Theorizing is the creative intellectual work of making an original contribution to knowledge. The work of theorizing consists of “activities like abstracting, generalizing, relating, selecting, explaining, synthesizing, and idealizing” (Weick 1995: 389). Theorizing itself may start with speculations and progress through a nonlinear process of trial-and-error to concepts, typologies, models, and explanations (Sutton and Staw 1995). Through the exercise of a “disciplined imagination” (Weick 1989), theorizing makes sense of evidence using concepts and reasoning which offer a credible way to recommend interventions that are likely to make a desirable difference. Theorizing is the practical process by which “a theory is put together; how it is handled in empirical research – and how it can be taught in an effective manner” (Swedberg 2016: 6).

Research investigating ways to theorize emerged in the 1950s, waxing and waning over the decades (Zhao 1996). Renewed interest in developing postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for theorizing now focuses on them learning to generate and use novel conceptual tools (Swedberg 2012). The development of postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing means learning how to formulate theoretical tools during the course of their research (Biesta et al. 2011). As concepts are developed, ordered, and entwined, theorizing moves to setting forth propositions through an evidence-driven, reasoned argument (Weick 1995). Emergent theoretical products are spun out through the research process: citations are elaborated upon; references are engaged to make meaning of data; evidence is categorized using typologies; and figures, diagrams, and tables are used to stretch propositions. These actions indicate progress and give direction to theory development. Through using counterevidence and exploring counterarguments nuanced, original claims on knowledge may be advanced. If graduate researchers continue with the challenges of theorizing for a decade or two, they are likely to acquire a very solid understanding of the challenges of producing a theory (Swedberg 2016).

Because theorizing involves intellectual struggles, it is a humbling experience. All theorizing is a struggle to make meaning. The scholarly work of building theory is fraught with conflicts and contradictions which make it time-consuming (Swedberg 2016). A key struggle involves unraveling of the concepts which are pertinent to forming a proposition that explains and justifies the mechanisms that can reasonably be claimed to be at work in the evidence (Sutton and Staw 1995). Another area of struggle concerns the role of languages in theorizing. A key struggle is to generate theoretical tools from multiple languages in the face of the boundaries imposed by English-only monolingualism (Choy et al. 2015). Multilingual postgraduate researchers’ interpretations and translation of a metaphor from an African language into English are mediated by struggles over Anglo-African understandings of theory (Horton 1971). In today’s postcolonial, neocolonial, post-cold war world, the conditions for theorizing are no longer restricted to English-speaking intellectual elites (Lemert 1993).

Divergence in Theorizing

Language is important for theorizing. Post-monolingual research methodology signifies the pedagogical possibilities for extending postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for making original contributions to knowledge through them using their full linguistic repertoire for theorizing (Singh 2009, 2010). The focus here is on multilingual postgraduates’ exploring how the divergences in their full linguistic repertoire can be brought to bear in their research as resources for theorizing (Jullien 2014). Post-monolingual research methodology sees multilingual postgraduates working through collaborative studies to claim the power to produce novel theoretic-linguistic tools. Monolingual English-speaking academics benefit from such collaborative studies, gaining knowledge of unfamiliar theoretical tools from those who speak other languages – whether it be Arabic, Farsi, Yoruba or another language. Mutual learning occurs through co-constructing theory based on intellectual/racial equality (Tran and Nguyen 2015).

The term of theoretic-linguistic tools refers to the concepts, metaphors, and images expressed in a given language that can be turned to analytical purposes. For example, the concept of “Vietnamese theoretic-linguistic tools” designates metaphors expressed in the Vietnamese language that can be used as analytical concepts in research reported in English. It does not refer to some particular essence of Vietnamese-ness. Rather the divergences between the ideas expressed in Vietnamese and English are used to open up novel possibilities for theorizing. Thus, the notion of Vietnamese theoretic-linguistic tools means bringing into play the divergence between concepts expressed in Vietnamese and English for the purpose of innovative theorizing. This is similar to the notion of “Chinese thought,” which Jullien (2014: 147) uses to designate “the thought which has been expressed in Chinese … in the same way ‘Greek thought’ is that which is expressed in Greek.” Thus, the generation of theoretic-linguistic tools is not a matter of teaching postgraduates’ existing southern theory (Arjomand 2008) or Confucian theory (Spickard 1998).

Multilingual postgraduates’ research education focuses on developing their capabilities for theorizing through exploring the divergences that arise from doing so in two or more languages (Singh and Huang 2013). To enhance their capabilities for theorizing, they establish a relationship between the concepts, metaphors, or images they know or can access in one language and new knowledge they are producing in another language (Singh and Shrestha 2008). Through post-monolingual research methodology, multilingual postgraduate researchers produce divergence in theorizing that can make changes in their field of inquiry (Tran and Nguyen 2015). Postgraduates are not required “to marginalise earlier acquired theoretical and methodological knowledge when they arrive at a new university” (Tange and Kastberg 2013: 4).

Recent research conceptualizes multilingual postgraduate researchers as epistemic agents capable of theorizing and generating critiques (Singh 2012), rather than empirical objects framed as difficulties, uncertainties, and deficiencies (Ryan 2011). Multilingual postgraduates are recognized as epistemic agents who produce original theoretical knowledge in their field of study (Ng 2012. Informed by an understanding of metaphors as concepts (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), researchers have investigated the possibilities for developing Anglo-Chinese modes of theorizing and critique (Singh and Han 2009; Singh and Huang 2013; Singh and Meng 2013). This research contrasts with English-only research education which marginalizes postgraduates’ use of other languages to produce novel theoretical tools, thereby constraining efforts to realize needed innovations (Choy et al. 2015; Ryan 2011).

Postgraduates attracted to post-monolingual research methodology are intellectual agents who resist the academic dependency that sees their minds being held captive to English-only pedagogies and theories (Alatas 2001, 2006; Andrews and Okpanachi 2012; Beigel 2011; In 2006; Sabir and Sabir 2010; Vukovich 2010). Such postgraduate researchers engage with postcolonial theory (Carvalho and Flórez-Flórez 2014; Manathunga 2010, 2011); debate the geopolitics of knowledge production, circulation, and consumption (Agnew 2015; Agrawal 1995; Akena 2012; Grosfoguel 2013; Mignolo 2003); and investigate theorizing by post-monolingual scholars from around the world (Keim et al. 2016; Marker 2004; Mayuzumi 2006; Yildiz 2011). The deepening of postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for theorizing are important steps toward reconfiguring Anglophone universities as multilingual learning spaces (Friedenberg 2002; Holmen 2015; Singh 2011; Van der Walt 2013).

In sum, how theory is generated and the languages used for theorizing are important but are long neglected aspects of postgraduate research education (Sutton and Staw 1995; Swedberg 2016). Post-monolingual research methodology opens up to exploration the question of building multilingual postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for divergence in theorizing, thereby extending their aptitude for making an original contribution to knowledge (Singh 2013). Their multilingual repertoire of concepts, metaphors, and images constitutes a potential reservoir of analytical tools. Making their multilingual repertoire constitutive of the work of theorizing makes it possible for them to shape their research practices and contributions to knowledge using post-monolingual analyses. Thus, post-monolingual research methodology provides a way of doing postgraduate research education that activates trans-lingual dialogues and develops more representative approaches to theorizing (Keim et al. 2016). The next section explores the rationale for developing multilingual postgraduates’ researchers’ capabilities for generating divergence in theorizing.

Divergence in Theorizing and Multilingual Postgraduates’ Research Education

Anglophone universities recruit domestic and international postgraduate researchers who speak languages from throughout the world. Not surprisingly, there is a rising appreciation of multilingualism as the norm in otherwise Anglophone universities (Horner et al. 2011; Flores and Schissel 2014). Post-monolingual research methodology is oriented to adding value to the knowledge generated through multiple languages. The facilitation of such a methodology opens up divergences in theorizing. The question is whether there are reasonable educational grounds for doing so. Here consideration is given to the reasons that might make this methodology worth considering.

Trans-languaging

For multilingual postgraduates, academic literacy developed in their first language can, with appropriate pedagogical interventions, enhance their conceptual development in English (Feinauer et al. 2013; Madiba 2014). Research indicates that proficiency in one language facilitates concept development in the new language through skill transfer between languages (Duarte 2015). For instance, Adamson and Coulson (2015) found that for Japanese-speaking students of English, trans-languaging improved their learning in academic English. Moreover, the transfer of specific academic concepts from one language to another leads to the development of both languages (Goodrich et al. 2013; Giambo and Szecsi 2015). Trans-languaging is an advantage, contributing important cognitive benefits to students (Prah and Brock-Utne 2009). Multilingual students who use their first language with English demonstrate better academic performance than do those students who are given English-only instruction (Paradowski 2011). Prioritizing students’ multilingualism in their education develops their academic literacy in their first language, transfers literacy skills to English, and improves their English literacy skills (Li and Zhu 2013).

Due to a growing number of multilingual postgraduate researchers in Anglophone universities, understanding the importance of trans-languaging is necessary for academics and university managers (Canagarajah 2011; García and Wei 2014). Those who understand the educational benefits of trans-languaging and the negative effects of language loss implement strategies and policies to extend students’ multilingual skills (Hornberger and Link 2012). Moreover, monolingual English-speaking academics who appreciate the value of trans-languaging for multilingual students’ learning use pedagogies that strengthen these skills (Schwarzer and Fuchs 2014). Understanding the educational benefits and skills required for trans-languaging pedagogy academics uses students’ languages scaffolding their learning (de Oliveira et al. 2016; Gort 2015). Those who recognize the educational value of trans-languaging deepen their students’ skills for doing so by:

  1. 1.

    Promoting academic reading and writing in their languages

  2. 2.

    Sharing their reading/writing with peers in multiple languages

  3. 3.

    Explaining cognates in academic vocabulary relating to their field of study

  4. 4.

    Creating multi-language research papers using translations

Creativity

Any postgraduate researcher may contribute to the creative work of theorizing by using concepts, metaphors, or images from any of their languages. Theorizing is a “creative accomplishment that benefit[s] from … unrestricted diversity [and] open mindedness … with ideas for new theories, or for improving existing theories, coming literally from anywhere and anyone” (Markovsky 2008: 425). Creativity in research benefits by employing the intellectual resources available in the world’s multiplicity of languages (Maingueneau 2015). Language mixing engenders creativity (Bhatia and Ritchie 2016). Creativity comes through multilingual play which involves bending, breaking, and blending ideas from two or more languages (Zhang 2015). Original contributions to knowledge can be generated by postgraduates exploring divergences in theorizing using their languages.

Conducting research in one language or another cannot be avoided. However, the press for dominance of English in research tends toward “the impoverishment of scientific creation, than to originality” (Maingueneau 2015: 116). The press is to marry intellectual prestige in research with English-only monolingualism, despite this not necessarily guaranteeing intellectual innovation (Scarino 2014). Multilingual production and circulation of knowledge open fields of research to intellectual currents other than those which have international dominance. Given the role of languages in intellectual creativity, this might be preferable to producing research only globalized English (Kharkhurin and Wei 2015; Lvovich and Kellman 2015). In working to produce original knowledge, postgraduate researchers may bring forward their multilingual intellectual repertoire, demonstrating that languages are integral to all research.

Multilingual postgraduate researchers have a positive impact on the generation of creative ideas in Anglophone nations (Black and Stephan 2007; Larivière 2011; Stephan and Levin 2001). For instance, such postgraduates have a significant input into developing new patent applications for the USA (Chellaraj et al. 2005). This gives the USA a significant advantage in marketing its postgraduate education around the world. However, Asian countries are struggling to improve their offerings in postgraduate education and encouraging graduates to stay on after completing their studies (Marginson 2008). In turn, this is impacting on the competitiveness of the USA. In response, US universities are moving research abroad by collaborating with universities in Asian countries and by locating research campuses there.

Education

If postgraduate candidates have multilingual skills, how might their research education capitalize on, extend, and deepen their knowledge in these languages? Post-monolingual pedagogies are being used to move beyond English-only medium instruction in postgraduate education (Friedenberg 2002; Van der Walt 2013). The Danish strategy of “More Languages for More Students” (Holmen 2015) uses student’s multilingualism as an intellectual resource in their academic studies, mobility education, and preparation for future employment. Multilingual postgraduate education gains support from the multiple languages being used to theorize (Kemper 2007; Winchester 2013; Woolworth and Thirumurthy 2012). For instance, the Japanese concept of ba is employed by Fayard (2003) to theorize knowledge creation. Similarly, Grant (2010) provides an approach to doctoral education which engages mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). Further, Singh et al. (2016) use the Samoan concept of vā to explore the transcultural mobilization of postgraduates’ production of theoretic-linguistic tools.

Researchers are addressing the challenge of removing the exoticism of using concepts from other languages than English. Trowler et al. (2005) use the Chinese concept of chi (qi) to study blockages to change in British universities. Three blockages include the incoherent and incomplete levels of analysis; the poorly thought-out, contested theories of change; and the incompatible and incoherent bundling of policies. Trowler et al. (2005: 439) conclude that university policies “block the chi of change” because they are “not joined up” but “developed in isolation from each other they proceed in parallel lines, only linking where they obstruct.” The separation among initiatives meant to change universities achieves little in the way of harmony and the flexible intermingling of reform efforts.

Pioneering curriculum ventures encourage multilingual postgraduates to question English-only concepts governing their education as they investigate alternatives available in other languages. Haigh (2009) charts students’ reactions to the use of Indian philosophical concepts in a British university course. Specifically, these included the Hindi concepts of “sattva, which creates purity and serenity and controls by contentment; rajas, which inspires passion, movement, creativity, and destructiveness and controls by desire; and tamas, which stifles with negativity, ignorance, and dullness and controls by indolence” (Haigh 2009: 274). Using these concepts stimulated students’ learning transformations as they explored the reconceptualization of their relationships with the places they inhabit.

Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is a variable and contested practice. Constituted through the obligation to speak or write as a public intellectual, academic freedom is based on the notion that democracy is constituted diversity (Chatterjee and Maira 2014; Marginson 2014). Everywhere around the world, practices of academic freedom governing the work of knowledge production and dissemination are limited and controlled by the political economy of universities (Garnett and Butler 2009). Because it challenges the prevailing socioeconomic order in the USA, the academic freedom to investigate racial, gender, ethnic, and economic equality has been targeted, stigmatized, and penalized (Anderson 2014; Price 2004). Academics whose research demonstrates intellectual/racial equality confront constraints on their academic freedom. They are constrained by Anglophone universities where they are “required to raise money and often to tailor their research and teaching to the needs of clients” (Marginson 2014: 38). However, when academic freedom is discussed, postgraduates’ multilingual skills tend to be overlooked, as if the language for exercising academic freedom is irrelevant (Bowden 2010; Macfarlane 2012; Lee 2005; Schaller 2007).

Arguably, multilingual postgraduates’ academic freedom is affected by the relations between Anglophone universities and (1) their multilingual students, (2) the multilingual societies they serve, and (3) state policies governing languages education (Holmen 2015; Van der Walt 2013). The separation between the multilingualism within society and the controlled English-only monolingual intellectual space of universities constrains the academic freedom of multilingual postgraduate researchers. The prevailing norms of Anglophone universities, requiring academic work to be conducted only in English, separates postgraduate education and academic freedom from multilingual societal relations and state policies. However, because academic freedom is a relevant principle and practice for postgraduate researchers, then its multilingual component warrants recognition.

Employability

The multilingual skills of postgraduate researchers are important for ensuring they can compete in the larger world of mathematics, engineering, technology, arts, languages, and science (METALS). Languages name people’s living relationships with diverse ecosystems. People use the arts to give these diverse ecosystems meaning in their daily lives. Languages are necessary to name “medical and scientific innovations, new crops and new markets, and especially the management of unique bio-ecology spheres,” (Lo Bianco 2010: 41). The feasibility for addressing these issues is enhanced through the meaning making systems provided by the arts. Logically, the mathematics of weather, the engineering of sustainable land and water management, the technology of plant cultivation, and the science of animal husbandry are necessarily constituted through languages and the arts in a “mutually reinforcing matrix” (Lo Bianco 2010: 41).

There is mounting research indicating the need for postgraduates to demonstrate multilingual employability capabilities (Golovushkina and Milligan 2012, 2013; Jones and Warnock 2015; Parada and Peacock 2015). For instance, multilingual white-collar workers actively use resources from their multiple languages to develop the multimodal functions of digital technologies (You 2011). Likewise, multilingual health professionals explore the contested uses of concepts expressed in different languages, while dealing with situations where no appropriate equivalent can be found across languages (Jagosh and Boudreau 2009). However, the $100 billion-a-year US intelligence business is limited by its use of narrowly circumscribed concepts drawn from the Anglosphere (Aldrich and Kasuku 2012). Similarly, because interior design education is dominated by Eurocentric theories, it devalues non-Western creativity leading to a loss of economic opportunities for graduate designers (Sohoni 2009). In contrast, trans-languaging strategies support the learning necessary for building employability attributes required of multilingual professionals (Marriott 2013; Van der Walt 2013).

In terms of employability, an important function of education is to offer postgraduates options that allow them to imagine and position themselves as legitimately professional members of multilingual communities. Pavlenko (2003) found that professional legitimacy differs depending on what community their postgraduate education frames their projected membership. Anglophone universities may position multilingual postgraduates for an (a) English-only monolingual community, (b) an English language learning community, or (c) a multilingual community. Readings and discussions which offer postgraduates imagines of professional employment in multilingual communities generate learning transformations that legitimate their multilingual skills.

How postgraduates’ multilingual skills are deployed in their research education enables and/or restricts their recognition as members of particular professional communities. Graduates can use two or more languages to participate in multiple, varied, and overlapping professional communities (Granados 2015). Achugar (2009) indicates the importance of postgraduate education in the USA in defining, recognizing the use value, and adding value to professionals’ multilingual skills. Multilingual postgraduates benefit from institutionalized validation of their trans-languaging expertise as integral to their professional work through education.

Importantly, academics, both monolingual and multilingual alike, can use research education to enhance postgraduates’ work in multilingual communities. Such research raises the professional awareness of postgraduates’ own practices and enables improvements in them (Nevárez-La Torre 1999). The resulting learning transformations changed these postgraduates’ conceptions of multilingualism, their practices, and their interpretations of policies. Such research recognizes that professionals use multiple languages to realize their work, indicating that their languages have a legitimate place in postgraduate education.

History

When Muslims and Christians exchange artistic, scientific, and political knowledge, the learning transformations change their ways of viewing the world. For instance, Belting (2011) argues that the pictorial theory of perspective which allowed Florentine artists to depict the scenes from a spectator’s point of view is an elaboration of the visual geometry theory of light devised by an Islamic mathematician born in eleventh-century Basra. European philosophers opposed Alhazen’s theory on optics, which was translated from Kitab al-Manazir into Latin in Spain, under the title Perspectiva. However, in 1420 in Florence, Brunelleschi began applying Alhazen’s perspectival geometry to painting. Belting’s (2011) study provides multilingual postgraduate researchers’ insights into how innovations are possible and enhanced to the extent to which different intellectual cultures are transformed by their encounters with each other’s’ knowledge.

Knowledge is a highly mobile constituent of the world’s diverse intellectual cultures. Important ideas flowing from language to language create a continuous flux in knowledge production. The production and transmission of scientific knowledge is a complex multilingual process whose intermingling provides a focus for scholarly disputation (Beckwith 2012). However, the parochialism and universalistic claims of theories in English is evident in the lack of acknowledgment of the ways in which knowledge from the world’s multiple languages has mutated to inform many of these ideas (Bilgin 2008). Over the centuries the movement of peoples, goods, and objects from around the world has altered the ways knowledge is understood, produced, and disseminated. Cook (2007) studied how commercial values drove the generation, accumulation, and exchange of knowledge. Through such processes the ways of discovering new knowledge, determining truth, and assigning worth to research-based knowledge continue to be reshaped.

Today’s research often draws on theories formulated over the centuries through multiple languages. For instance, advances in astronomical, mathematical, and medical sciences came through the historical inter-referencing and translation of knowledge across diverse languages including Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Pahlavi (Persian), Sanskrit, and Syriac (a form of Aramaic) (Montgomery 2000). The European Renaissance relied on Sanskrit compilers of Babylonian astronomy, Syriac-speaking scholars of Greek in Persia, and Arabic- and Pahlavi-speaking scholars of Syriac. Thus, English-only postgraduate education is likely to be suffused with concepts and theories from many of the world’s languages (Sen 2006). The historical intellectual relations and interconnections between English and other languages have fed the emergence of mutually constituted ideas (Shen 2014).

The long-term exchange of knowledge from language to language has alternated with the dominance of one, followed by the dominance of the other (Gordin 2015). On the basis of this historical understanding, Goody (2010) argues that the current period of intellectual supremacy and associated Anglophone sense of superiority may come to an end with a new alternation in favor of knowledge produced in other languages. English is not the exclusive source of intellectual innovations. Ceaseless travel has produced the to-and-fro movement of knowledge. This has generated new knowledge and fostered new ways of looking for knowledge and given knowledge with new meanings. Post-monolingual research methodology aims to extend awareness of the history of knowledge exchange, translation, and inter-referencing by drawing out the intellectual contributions made in other languages (Singh 2011).

Democracy

Democracy holds that those who have the right to govern are “the people.” The demos consists of those who have “no other title than the very absence of superiority” no other claim than to be part of “the people” govern a democracy (Rancière 2009: 41). Democracy stands against claims that those who should govern are those who can claim superiority on the grounds of intellect, race, wealth, or breeding. For democratic postgraduate education, there are no noble or ignoble students, no noble or ignoble languages, and no noble or ignoble places from which original theories cannot be produced (Hilliard 2006). Theorizing is democratic in the sense that postgraduates should “not let anyone theorize for you” (Swedberg 2016: 21). For multilingual postgraduate researchers, theorizing is democratic insofar as they use intellectual resources from their full linguistic repertoire.

Democratic postgraduate education continues the struggle for intellectual/racial equality by those consigned to being unequal (Choy et al. 2015; Price 2004). Accordingly, multilingual postgraduate researchers are presumed to capable of being equally reasonable and reasoning beings in any of the languages they use (Singh and Chen 2012). For Rancière (1991: 138), democratic education takes intellectual/racial equality as “a point of departure, a supposition to maintain in every circumstance … not [as] an end to attain.” This is not a matter trying to prove that everyone is equal. Pedagogically, the task is to find out where efforts to verify the presupposition of intellectual/racial equality might lead, with postgraduates realizing unexpected and unanticipated outcomes in their capabilities for theorizing (Croizet 2013; Price 2014; Singh 2012; Singh and Meng 2013).

Theorizing is a collective endeavor requiring input and interactions of many people. The endeavor to produce theoretical tools employs shared conventions and is improved “through critical feedback from readers other than their authors” (Markovsky 2008: 424). Thus, it is a mistake to view the world’s knowledge production as divided between “head nations,” such as the USA and the UK producing theory, and “body nations,” such as China, India, and Vietnam generating data for analysis by the former (Brown et al. 2010: 3). Over time such ventures result in collaborating researchers becoming more skilled. The work required to institutionalize post-monolingual research methodology and build postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for divergence in theorizing requires collective effort.

In sum, this section canvassed a range of research indicating plausible educational grounds for building multilingual postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for investigating divergence in theorizing. This extends postgraduate research education beyond using extant theory, mostly in English. Having considered the rationale for post-monolingual research methodology, the next section explains strategies for building postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing in Anglophone universities.

Multilingual Postgraduates’ Capabilities for Divergence in Theorizing

Post-monolingual research methodology and divergence in theorizing involve processes of interrogation, refinement, and elaboration. Divergence among concepts in languages opens up other paths for theorizing, diverging from expectations governing the use of extant theories in English (Jullien 2014). Here the process of developing postgraduates’ theorizing capabilities is configured pedagogically (Swedberg 2016). Through recurring practice, more nuanced explorations enhance the prospects for innovative knowledge production. A first step involves attending to the criteria for gaining acceptance of divergence in theorizing within a particular scholarly community.

Criteria for Community Acceptance

The products of multilingual postgraduates’ theorizing have to gain acceptance among a community of researchers. Collective evaluation processes include thesis examination, peer review of research publications, and the assessment of grant applications. Through these processes, the standards used to evaluate their theorizing become explicit, extending awareness of what is required to deepen their capabilities. Their theorizing “has to be translated into a different language [that shows they] know how to construct a theory according to the rules that are accepted in the profession” (Swedberg 2016: 8). Postgraduate researchers can critically reflect on their theorizing capabilities using three criteria.

First, theorizing explores the underlying mechanisms of reality, knowledge, and existence. A key requirement for theorizing is that it breaches the restraints of the “taken-for-granted common-sense assumptions that generally frame our vision of the world” (Sears 2005: 28). Postgraduate researchers use theorizing to reconsider what is taken to be self-evident by questioning familiar, accepted ideas, policies, and practices. Theorizing generates penetrating, explanatory insights (Horton 1971).

Second, postgraduate researchers theorize on the basis of previous research, working to transcend the limitations of existing theories. The demonstration of any cause/effect relationship requires reasoned analysis to explore multiple causes and effects and to question which is which (Swedberg 2012). Theorizing is involved, in every phase of a research project. Constructing a research problem through deciding what are the “right” question(s) to investigate, to deconstructing and reconstructing the problem as the data are analyzed, involves theorizing (Biesta et al. 2011; Clegg 2012).

Third, fitting concepts together in a tidy package to achieve consistency and coherence is a key standard for judging research. Theorizing is based on systematic empirical investigation, moving beyond loose speculations (Sears 2005). Situated within real-world milieu, theorizing requires rigorous testing. Explanations, inferences, propositions, and concepts deduced through theorizing have to be demonstrated rather than asserted. Theorizing is elaborated through detailed data analysis and logical reasoning. Given these evaluative criteria, a variety of strategies can be used by multilingual postgraduates to develop their capabilities for divergence in theorizing. The following strategies should not be read as a prescriptive procedure but as a guide to be explored.

Creative Impetus

A creative impetus is warranted for employing post-monolingual research methodology. Having postgraduate researchers draw up a proposal based on testing existing theory available in English leads “to more of the same rather than to new insights” (Swedberg 2016: 9). A creative impetus is necessary to build postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for divergence in theorizing and for generating an original contribution to knowledge. This may be done by conducting preliminary observations that focus on finding sources of new concepts, metaphors, and images. To open up one’s imagination for theorizing, there is broad range of ideas to be tapped into, such as available in movies, poetry, graffiti, and newspaper articles. Lemert (1993) notes that creative moments in theorizing have come from those who are poor, dislocated, suffering rather than just from privileged intellectuals. For instance, a creative impetus for an investigation into global service learning might begin with viewing the film, Noble (Bradley 2014), which represents the life history of Christina Noble, a children’s rights campaigner in in post-Cold War Vietnam.

Contextualizing

A list of concepts, metaphors, and images which names the phenomenon under investigation provides a useful outcome of pursuing a creative impetus. The meaning of these concepts benefits from being understood in the context of history, culture, and institutions. In sourcing these concepts from languages other than English, it is important to explain the context from where they were chosen, the reasons for their selection, and the grounds any conscious exclusion of things that have not been named. Contextualization helps in understanding how their meanings are shaped, maintained, and contested through their production, propagation, and consumption among certain social groups operating within complex societal structures (Jepson 2010). The interpretation of the concepts is explained in terms of such contextual characteristics. Within a given sociohistorical context, the mechanisms of struggles see these concepts in a constant flux of meaning and reinterpretation that warrants explanation.

Connecting

A trans-lingual typology can be created to categorize patterns or themes in the evidence relating to the phenomenon under investigation. The specification, clarification, and definition of trans-lingual categories establish the interrelationships among analytical concepts and evidence. A trans-lingual typology can be used to explore the relationship between evidence and concepts, practice, and theory. For Swedberg (2016: 11) “a skilful use of a typology can make it easier to see what elements a phenomenon is made up of and also how these vary.” Making connections between the actions represented in the evidence and concepts is important for the practicality of theorizing. Practical theorizing plays an important mediating role in the uptake of meaningful insights.

Conceptualizing

Theorizing is a process for generating conceptual tools to provide analyses of phenomenon being investigated. Because any given phenomenon has already been conceptualized by those involved in its practice this requires openness to questioning the conceptual tools used by participants and researchers themselves. Moreover, the ways in which postgraduate researchers conceptualize the phenomenon are not above and beyond question. Key questions concern what concepts needs to be the focus of research, what is not part of the research, what data warrants collecting, and what conceptual tools might be used to analyze this data (Jepson 2010). A figure or diagram can help use the concepts to make meaning of the phenomenon under investigation. While “diagrams are not theory” (Weick 1995: 388), figures may be used to specify, explain, and justify concepts and their interrelationships.

Contesting

A concept both describes a phenomenon and ascribes value to it. Much research arises out of adherence to one particular use or value of a concept. However, any particular concept is likely to be contested. Scholarly disputation may focus on whether the meaning and/or use of these theoretical tools should be continued or changed. Conceptual contestation is “not resolvable by argument of any kind, [and] are nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence” (Gallie 1955: 169). Recognizing concepts as being contested means acknowledging the rival uses to which they are put. Appreciating the value of opposing uses of contested concepts is integral to raising of the level and quality of research-based argument.

Challenging

The mechanisms postgraduates study when investigating a particular phenomenon may be explained through evidence-based propositions detailing the interrelationship between key concepts. Challenging explanations require propositions grounded in evidence and informed by explorations of alternative interpretations and counterevidence. A challenge entails checking the plausibility of researchers’ evidence, reasoning, and arguments favoring a given proposition and then doing likewise with the counterevidence and counterarguments. Imagination can inform researchers’ capabilities for logical, reasoned, and reasonable scholarly argumentation. Swedberg (2016: 17) contends that postgraduates “need to know what imagination is; you need to cultivate it; and if you have to turn it into a kind of habit.” Imagination allows postgraduates to get a sense of that which does and does not exist.

In sum, these strategies provide a vehicle for exploring post-monolingual research methodology. However, building multilingual postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing faces substantial challenges from English-only postgraduate education. The next section suggests the value of employing scholarly skepticism to mitigate or otherwise mediate the tensions posed by English-only monolingual education.

Interrupting English-Only Postgraduate Research Education

Post-monolingual research methodology uses the conceptual divergences made possible by two or more languages for theorizing to make original contributions to knowledge (Singh 2013). The exploration of theoretic-linguistic divergences brings into play the flux in conceptualization between English and other languages (Jullien 2014). However, this work of theorizing is undertaken in the face of tensions posed by English-only monolingualism and the insistence on using extant theories available in English (Ives 2009). For instance, when he drew on Hindi concepts, Amartya Sen (2009) knew his book, The Idea of Justice, would be vulnerable to resistance from at least some Anglophone scholars. Sen (2009: xiii–xiv), a Nobel Laureate, slipped in a caveat that laid bare his awareness of the reluctance among Anglophone theorists to engage concepts in non-Western languages: “one of the unusual – some will probably say eccentric – features of this book compared with others writing on the theory of justice is the extensive use that I have made of ideas from non-Western societies.” Pursuing divergence in theorizing in Anglophone universities which privilege English-only education is a challenge that gives grounds for caution (Flores and Schissel 2014; Scarino 2014).

There are problems with English-only postgraduate research education. The concern is that more than a few Anglophone academics and students are only interested in the curatorial, exotic, or magisterial features of Asia, rather than Asian intellectual cultures theoretic-linguistic assets and modes of critical thinking (Mayuzumi et al. 2007; Sen 2006). This interest reinforces the prevailing binary which privileges the English language as the source of theory and positions non-Western languages as a source of data (Alatas 2006). The “lack of interest” in multilingual postgraduate researchers’ capability for theorizing sees their theoretic-linguistic assets being deemed “second class” (Zhou et al. 2005: 299). However, English-only theory drives multilingual postgraduates’ concerns about the “linguistic and cultural disparity in knowledge production, dissemination and validation” (Zhou et al. 2005: 304). Some postgraduates expect intellectual reciprocity, especially given the global significance of Asia’s revival that began with its colonial liberation last century.

However, it is not surprising that postgraduate research education in Anglophone universities tends to use of English-only pedagogies and theories (Moore 2016). By default, English is the language of international education (Gordin 2015). Against the need for innovation that only comes through intellectual diversity, the internationalization of Anglophone universities has generated the press for English-only uniformity in postgraduates’ education (Choi 2010; Rayner et al. 2016; Wihlborg and Teelken 2014). Common sense dictates that education is conducted in English everywhere. Students, academics, university managers, and education policy-makers around the world know that a high standard of English is now required for postgraduate education. Along with immersion in the everyday life of Anglophone universities, multilingual postgraduates are sold fee-paying English courses. Anglophone universities require multilingual students to demonstrate knowledge of theories in English (Alatas 2001, 2006); the academic uses of their other languages is abandoned (Friedenberg 2002).

Reforms to standardize or harmonize education across Anglophone universities are informed by English-only monolingual ideologies. Such reforms do not address the multilingual educational potential of many students. They marginalize postgraduates’ multilingual skills and their capabilities for theorizing from across their linguistic repertoire (Flores and Schissel 2014). Learning through the medium of English-only instruction is taken-for-granted in Anglophone universities’ postgraduate education. The long-held policy of unidirectional English monolingualism of Anglophone universities articulates with the assumptions underlying English-only workplaces and associated legislation (Ainsworth 2010; Horner and Trimbur 2002).

Multilingual postgraduate researchers are labeled as “non-English-speaking background” (NESB) (Mestan and Harvey 2014; Oliver et al. 2012). “NESB” postgraduates are characterized as being problems (Hopewell and Escamilla 2014; Oliver et al. 2012). However, the amorphous category of “NESB” is contentious. Determining learning outcomes for multilingual postgraduates from particular subgroups which are underrepresented in Anglophone universities is difficult. Those underrepresented subgroups of so-called NESB postgraduates who underachieve face relatively poor employment outcomes (Mestan and Harvey 2014; Ozdemir 2014). In Anglophone universities monolingual English-speaking postgraduates are advantaged over NESB students because they have a preexisting efficacy in academic English (Gordin 2015).

English-only practices have significant substantial drawbacks for multilingual postgraduate researchers and their production of original knowledge. Misconceptions about the educational value of postgraduate researchers’ multilingual skills are evident in Anglophone universities that hold that these skills interfere with their learning through English (Horner et al. 2011). Postgraduates’ use of their full linguistic repertoire in their research is discouraged. The imposition of English-only monolingualism is evident in the submission of theses and journal articles by multilingual postgraduates and the infrequent uses of references and concepts from languages (Singh and Meng 2013). This deficit approach jeopardizes postgraduate researchers’ development of their linguistic skills and theorizing capabilities (Harper 2011).

An important question is whether the intercultural, global, and international education of Anglophone universities can be adequately explained by making exclusive use of theories produced only in English (Jepson 2010). Post-monolingual research methodology builds postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for opening these fields up to exploration and understanding through divergence in theorizing. Concepts, metaphors, and images from languages marginalized by English are being used to analyze policies and practices in these fields (Fayard 2003; Grant 2010; Haigh 2009; Kemper 2007; Singh et al. 2016; Trowler et al. 2005; Winchester 2013; Woolworth and Thirumurthy 2012).

Many Anglophone universities are multilingual to some extent (Preece 2011; Van der Walt 2013). Moreover, there is a mistaken perception that a good command of English is enough to be successful as a result of postgraduate education (Ozdemir 2014). This hides the complexity of learning and working in multilingual communities (Aldrich and Kasuku 2012; Golovushkina and Milligan 2012, 2013; Granados 2015; Jones and Warnock 2015; Lo Bianco 2010; Parada and Peacock 2015). To network, collaborate, and thrive in the world’s multilingual knowledge economy, the world’s knowledge workers require multiple language skills (You 2011). Despite not being officially sanctioned, multilingual postgraduates use their full linguistic repertoire to overcome obstacles in learning and developing subject expertise (Moore 2016). The trans-languaging practices of multilingual postgraduates are more beneficial to their learning and employment than Anglophone universities’ privileging of English-only pedagogies.

The educational importance of postgraduate researchers’ multilingual skills warrants official university recognition. In the USA there are moves to recognize students’ proficiency in an additional language to that of English on their diploma (DeLeon 2014). Developing standards that affirm and build on postgraduates’ multilingual skills is now a possibility (Flores and Schissel 2014). Anglophone universities can promote the institutionalization of multilingualism, give added value to postgraduates’ multilingual skills by certifying them, and provide employers a means to identify multilingual employees (Van der Walt 2013). So too is the creation and implementation of post-monolingual pedagogies (García and Wei 2014). Of course, this research is being undertaken in the face of and undermined through the tensions created by the dominance of English-only monolingualism in postgraduate research education.

Conclusion

This chapter has contributed to advancing knowledge regarding post-monolingual research methodology as a vehicle for building multilingual postgraduate researchers’ capabilities for divergence in theorizing. Some characteristics of theory and theorizing in postgraduate research education have been mapped. Of course, it is not an exhaustive account. However, the literature reviewed in this chapter provides a basis for building multilingual postgraduates capabilities for divergence in theorizing.

The rationale for post-monolingual research methodology finds support in research concerning multilingual postgraduates’ employability, creativity, and trans-languaging capabilities. Further the history of intercultural knowledge exchange, the centrality of intellectual/racial equality to democracy, and already existing instances of multilingual postgraduate education lend further support to further investigations into this methodology. A theoretic-pedagogical framework, including criteria for community acceptance and strategies, is provided for exploring ways to build multilingual postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing.

This is a field where little knowledge currently exists. The breadth and depth of what is known about multilingual postgraduates’ capabilities for theorizing are limited; acting beyond English-only postgraduate education is a challenge. Further inquiries into the intellectual agency of multilingual postgraduates in the production of trans-linguistic theoretical tools may enable post-monolingual research and education to flourish. Postgraduate researchers who investigate to this methodology will play an important role in educating future generations of scholars to do likewise.