I hadn't reflected on what I had written for a while. What struck me re-reading it today is the strength of my feeling that accounts of emancipatory research are often inaccessible to those outside academic life, and that this is problematic.
In part, this is a problem shared with all critical qualitative social research. We want our research to create change, or we wouldn't be doing it. But we want our research to be validated as research, so we need to conform to the rules of the game. We end up needing to publish different accounts for different audiences, if we want our research to create change and be validated as research.
Is there evidence of this conundrum in emancipatory research? Yes, I think so.
How fundamental is the issue? I'm not sure.
For emancipatory research, it would be an issue if you only publish an academic account of your research and your research findings, unless the research is about/for emancipating academics.
Equally, it would be an issue if you publish something that could be earth-shattering but in a format that means it is never found (or, if found, misunderstood or dismissed) by those academics who could have wrestled with your ideas and the finding, and could have taken your work forward.
I'm not in the 'camp' that think 'academicese' (aka academic jargon) is bad. Learning 'academicese' can be valuable. Sometimes it is important to categorise and distinguish 50 different types of snow - in which case it is advisable to learn the vocabulary from a culture where types of snow are sufficiently important that they have developed the language needed to identify with precision each type of snow. Similarly in sociology and social research, it can be important to categorise and define far more precisely than in everyday life. Without technical language, it is very challenging to do this, and even more challenging to communicate your thoughts to others.
Bottom line is that we need to develop bilingualism between everyday types of speech and 'academicese'. We need to build a bilingual community, and to build translation/interpretation skills so that monoglots can participate in a bilingual environment.
All I can dream is that we learn how to be a strong academic/non-academic emancipatory community that holds together bilinguals and monoglots within one community. From my experience of living in Wales as a Welsh learner I am all too aware that this is an almost impossible challenge.
