Konrad Gunesch
6. Empirical research: methodology, analysis, and synthesis
An overall sample of 48 international, post-graduate students at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, pre-selected for their multi-linguistic competence, was narrowed to the 11 most multilingual students, via a self-assessment questionnaire to their language learning histories and abilities, determined along the quantitative and qualitative criteria outlined earlier. Hence each of the interviewees had an advanced working knowledge of between three and five foreign languages in the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. With these 11 students, the relationship between cosmopolitanism and multilingualism was explored as to how they revealed themselves in terms of cosmopolitan cultural identity against the matrix of cosmopolitanism. The interviews were exploratory, in-depth, semi-structured, open-ended, and covert in that the topic was not known to the interviewees, so that the relationship between multilingualism and cosmopolitanism could be explored and expressed in a non-guiding manner to ensure full validity of the results. The matrix categories were treated as interpretive and flexible tools rather than fixed categories, which allowed a pattern of three broad ideal types of interviewee profiles to emerge, which I labelled “Advanced Tourist,” “Transitional Cosmopolitan,” and “Interactive Cosmopolitan:”
1) The Advanced Tourist is not the “simple” tourist” of the literature (as a counter-example to the cosmopolitan) any more. However, some interviewees revealed mere functional mastery concerns, consumerist “taking” attitudes, and/or national identities to varying degrees, which limited their willingness to engage with the diversity of target cultures.
2) The Transitional Cosmopolitan is somewhere between the tourist and the cosmopolitan on the continuum, but moving towards the third type, namely the interactive cosmopolitan.
3) The Interactive Cosmopolitan reveals advanced forms of interactive and integrative behavior and mindset, as would befit the ideal-typical literature cosmopolitan individual, especially by displaying an open-minded, flexible, self-critical, as well as giving and sharing attitude.
These three ideal profile types are compared below in an empirical synthesis, in which each quote below corresponds to an interviewee; assembled interview statements highlight the synthesis.
The advanced tourist
The advanced tourist’s identity centres on the local, regional, or national. While rational stances are adopted, such as in declarations of being an open and worldly person, the emotional inner world reveals rather parochial or local limits with respect to the matrix issues of “identity” as well as “home:”
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“First I’m Basque, and afterwards a European. I don’t know; my European feelings haven’t been very developed yet.”
The advanced tourist stresses the professional usefulness of language learning, which suggest that the advanced tourist is a prototype of the literature concept of “transnational occupational cultures”
(Hannerz 1990: 243, 246 and 1996: 108; similarly Robbins 1998: 254):
“I chose Spanish [to study] is especially because…Latin America is for Political Scientists a very interesting field of study…This was more utilitarian, to have more possibilities afterwards with the language…to find a job, in the now uniting Europe or in a job market that is getting more international every time.”
The transitional cosmopolitan
Transitional cosmopolitans move along the continuum between the advanced tourist and the interactive cosmopolitan. They might for instance have a profile more of an advanced tourist regarding certain matrix issues, such as the question of home, where national and even local attachments prevail, with wider attachments only established exceptionally:
“I tend to live wherever I go…It’s where you are brought up, where you had your first friends, and where you live, where your parents’ house is…But then, you have other parts of the world where you feel very comfortable as well…Madrid…became my second home…It usually doesn’t happen…but when it happens, it’s something exceptional.”
On the other hand, transitional cosmopolitans have very cosmopolitan attitudes towards nation-states, with expressions of sympathy for cultures abroad triggering criticism from compatriots:
“The nation-state makes you homogeneous, and makes you patriotic, and gives you myths, gives you symbols, and gives you a whole set of ideas which are not very helpful if you want to live as a global person, and not as an ethnocentric person.”
“I have been treated as a xenomaniac [sic] by my friends sometimes… The fact that I can criticise Greece, it means that for them I am a little bit of a foreigner.”
The interactive cosmopolitan
The interactive cosmopolitan reveals the most open-minded, flexible, holistic and giving attitude, substantiating and contributing to cosmopolitan core literature. Languages also pervade interactive cosmopolitans’ identities much more, as they personalize the link between multilingualism and cosmopolitanism by rephrasing and substantiating the key aspect of “effort” in the advanced literary concept of cosmopolitanism, namely Bruckner’s “finding joy and strength in overcoming habitual limits” (1996: 247) when overcoming linguistic insecurities and learning stages:
“[Learning and keeping up Dutch] was always kind of like a struggle, it was always hard to maintain, somehow. But…I could find out something that was beyond my limits…Through improving your language…you always go a step further.”
“I would really look forward to that [being in a culturally completely unfamiliar environment], if I could. When I went to Morocco…I was just so amazed…it was just totally different…a bit uncomfortable, but because I couldn’t speak the language.”
“I would be curious [in culturally unfamiliar environments], nosy, would like to get to know…and would look for the keys…Keys being…language as a main source…of course it’s also again feeling insecure, feeling incapable…but I think the feeling, or the eagerness of wanting to cope would be higher, or weigh more.”
For the interactive cosmopolitan, language mastery allows for highly open and interactive two-way cultural access and engagement, culminating in critical self-reflection about one’s own country and culture. This enables a highly interactive and “giving” travel:
“[Languages] mean the opportunity of learning…Not only learning about people…It also would inspire your personal view of things. It makes you more open…It makes me feel more that I know where I’m going, and getting to know people better.”
Konrad Gunesch
“If I travel, I like to talk with people, and to learn something about their country…Language learning…it’s a way of education, it’s a way of learning not only more about other cultures but also about yourself…You can anticipate to give something.”
The more interactive persons are, the more they see professional and private aspects of language learning and using as indissolubly intertwined. The reasons for such personal learning and use are also in development, from function or profession to mind-set, worldview, and up to aesthetics:
“in contrast with European languages, you see that there are other systems, other ways of indicating things…My first inclination [to the Arabic language] was because of the artistic way of writing. It’s really like a piece of art…It’s a beautiful language.”
Interactive cosmopolitans concede a “foreign identity” but refuse to substantiate it linguistically.
Some would be taken into “another sphere” when using certain languages. This resembles “strata,”
“layers” or “onions” dimensions described by (just) two authors on the identity of multilingual persons (Bassnett 2000: 66-67 and Steiner 1998: 120-125):
“I act differently when I speak Spanish. I’m more in the Spanish way of life. A bit more open, I’m more eager to say personal things…in my Spanish identity. Spanish identity, of course is an exaggeration…I have several identities, but you can’t stick to the languages.”
“Speaking with a Dutch person carries me into another sphere. So, kind of this cake [of my identity dimensions] changes and shifts, like from context to context…But a piece of it is always Dutch…It’s another way of seeing, of perceiving, I think…of being aware of yourself and of other people.”
For an interactive cosmopolitan, language knowledge is an indispensable factor for feeling at home, and a matter of global identity, where languages serve as a passport or qualifier to access and cope in foreign environments:
“Knowing the language well doesn’t make you feel at home. But you cannot feel at home unless you know the language.”
“The language that is necessary to cope in the [everyday] situations is a basic factor of feeling [at] home.”
Finally, the interactive cosmopolitan’s “home” is differentiated and multi-dimensional, reflecting Hannerz’s “privileged site of nostalgia” or “comfortable place of familiar faces, where…there is some risk of boredom” (1990: 248; 1996: 110), or depending on context, dynamic interactions, or involving multi-sensory experiences, all while embraced with an open attitude:
“[Home:] How boring, at first. But of course, it’s more than that…The word ‘home’ is
‘stick to the same place’, and I would like to move a lot…I would like to say that it is an uninteresting concept, but I still have some nostalgia towards home.”
“It [home] means people I relate to…It is also where you’re born, but other home places accumulate… It captures all of your senses, it’s what you see, it’s also what you smell…Then again it depends on the context…I would say that “a home” is a place where I can live any mood, a range of different situations.”
Theoretical and practical contributions
This research a blueprint and catalogue summary for comparing and evaluating (both male and female) film appearances for their communicative (especially multi-linguistic) facilities and skills, and how they relate to personal identity and intercultural understanding (especially in the form of cosmopolitanism). Any film’s individual protagonist deemed relevant can now be analyzed as to the degree they reveal themselves (similarly to our students) as linguistically competent, culturally interactive and engaging, or educationally inspiring. Beyond that, every reader of this paper has a personal stock of preferred or remembered hero(in)es, which can now be examined as to their multilingual ability, cosmopolitan identity, or educational value, in a scientific, detailed and transparent manner. Characters can now also be evaluated as for their intercultural communication (as when linguistic and cultural skills are not only profitable but also inspiring, as in the 1997 Dutch
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Oscar-winning movie Karakter (Character), or in the 2010 movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), or within international education institutions (for example, within international school curricula and syllabi). The insights from this paper can now also be furthered within the field of media and art itself, especially in film studies. Beyond that, they can be transferred to other areas and fields such as global business, international education, world politics or leadership. to prepare the ground and with a view to such transfer, these insights shall be summarized once more below.
Comparative gender perspective: further questions and actions
Our examples suggest that film leading ladies regularly communicate and culturally interact better than their male counterparts, in areas such as:
1) Women’s cultural and communicative power and ability, compared to male heroes; in the 2) Adventure and action genre, despite this archetypically male domain; having the
3) Educational edge in intellectual, linguistic, social and cultural competence; culminating in 4) Life Wisdom, for simplicity summarized here as “when all is said and done”.
One could ask for example these further questions to students and practitioners of film studies:
1) Why are not more movies female heroines represented, produced or focused on, in Hollywood, Bollywood or elsewhere?
2) Why are not more of them demanded or paid for by the public, the media, or the woman and man in the streets?
3) Why is not more female linguistic, cultural, artistic and educational power invoked in families, homes, playgrounds, schools, universities, colleges and conferences?
We do not need to be ardent and declared feminists, or advancing single-minded feminist causes or frameworks, to be able and called upon to ask immediate follow-up questions such as these:
1) What values do we want to postulate and publish for our societies and the next generations?
2) Why should it be, of all academic areas and departments, mostly be business, management or institutional studies to monopolize discussions about “soft power”, or to conduct gender comparisons as in Geert Hofstede’s “masculinity/femininity index” (2001: 279-350)?
3) Why does sex, speed and crime (as in six movies with Nicole Kidman leading, for instance Dead Calm, Days of Thunder, and to Die For) still sell better than any of these:
a) Linguistic and cultural sensitivity (as for example in The Interpreter), b) Scientific and political competence (as for example in The Peacemaker), or c) Literary conflict and communication (as for example in The Hours)?
If life indeed imitates art, one could think about these questions to be posed, and appropriate results to be taken, on the levels of global integration, immigration, education, politics, or leadership, thereby of course enabling and empowering men and women alike. Adopting Jaques’ famous monologue in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, that “all world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, each of us can be a director calling “action” at the start of each relevant scene in our daily social lives and interactions. This could make the resulting production an inspiring non-zero-sum-game with a local and global win-win sceanrio, for men, women and children alike, whether within movie theaters, classrooms environments, or circles of families and friends.
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