06.4
Research Project
Research Project on languages, migration and expatriation
Summary
The purpose of this study is to analyze the psychological and psychoanalytic aspects related the subjective experiences of the use of languages in migration and expatriation. It will enhanse the knowledge and experience of Babelpsy professionals. The project presents the convergence of two scientifically rigorous thematic lines oriented to an interdisciplinary integration. One of them deals with linguistic conceptualizations, especially sociolinguistics and terminology. The other is concerned with psychological, psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic aspects.
In addition, related socio-cultural phenomena, such as the impact of digitality and the high level of mobility of people at the present time, are considered as a contextual framework.
Keywords: cultures and languages in contact; expatriation; institutional research projects; interdisciplinary research projects; migration; psychological impacts.
Project Directors and team
This is an interdisciplinary and institutional research project carried out within the BabelPsy Community of Practice.
The project is coordinated by Mela Bosch, linguist, resident in Italy, former full professor at the University of La Plata, Argentina and postgraduate professor at several universities in that country. Former director of CAICYT-CONICET and consultant in Latin America and Europe for companies and organizations on the use and construction of controlled languages and applications of computational linguistics.
The co-coordination is in charge of Inés Loustalet, psychologist and psychoanalyst in Spanish and French. Literary corrector. Former assistant professor at the University of El Salvador, USAL. Former professor at the University of Buenos Aires and postgraduate professor invited by different Universities and Psychoanalytic Institutions of Buenos Aires. She is a PhD student at the USAL. She lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Both are members of the BabelPsy Community.
The team also includes, as researchers, six professionals with training in psychoanalysis, psychology and psychiatry, members of BabelPsy Community of Practice.
Project methodology
The project is methodologically based on two working instruments. The first tool is the development interactive terminological network that allows the collection and delimitation of the conceptual field of the different terms related to languages in migration and expatriation and their psychological, psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic aspects.
This network is organized with definitions linked to each other and their respective bibliographic sources. It has a normative purpose for the rigorous use of the terms during the work of collaborative construction of knowledge and, at the same time, provides a space of emergence of new or interdisciplinary conceptualizations.
The second one is a methodological tool is the Literature review, study and exchange through virtual meetings where team members can share their progress. Participants also can use and enrich the Terminology Network by making contributions and translations.
Project start date, completed and ongoing tasks
The project began in February 2020, although collecting BabelPsy previous teaching experiences and continues to this day uninterrupted.
So far, bibliographical research and basic documentation has been prepared for the terminological definition of the concepts of: linguistic interference, comparisons between acquired languages and learned languages, also were clarified differentiating elements between inherited languages and linguistic inheritance. The concepts of pluri and multilingualism and aspects of metalinguistic reflection are under study.
We have also considered the relationship of all the concepts studied with personal and social judgments on languages and identified a linguistic terminology to face those prejudices. (See Bosch, 2022, in this Resonantia issue, only in Spanish)
During the review of literature on psychoanalysis in plurilingual people, an article on a case with these characteristics was analyzed in depth. It was also evaluated with vignettes of clinical material provided by the team members the impact of differents languages have on unconscious productions in the psychoanalytic session, where lapsus and dream material were constructed with bilingual associations related to the linguistic profile of the patient and the psychoanalyst, when they use languages that are not the first for any of them.
These conceptual advances are being integrated into the study of symptoms, cases and situations of linguistic anxiety that can also be defined as language anxiety. This is a very rich and useful concept for migrants when they go to a country that uses another language or variants of their language of origin.
We have observed also that communicative competence is transversal to competence on the languages acquired or learned and will allow migrants integrate into informal groups, study, academic and work, but it can be a source of anxiety. Recognizing the presence of language anxiety can be important even for foreign language teachers or local language teachers in multilingual countries.
To complement and complete the conceptual delimitation of language anxiety a tool for recording the linguistic profile for psychotherapeutic use has been developed and is being applied. It is a frame which makes explicit the formal and informal aspects of multilingual skills of a person. This form with a list of items and explanatory instructions for codification and reference parameters, can serve as support in psychotherapeutic work with migrants, expats or people belonging to multilingual communities.
During the meetings of the research team some oral and written successful experiences have been made within this framework.
The production of the project is in Spanish and French at the moment.