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Volume 26, No. 1, Art. 11 – January 2025

Not Lost in Translation: Multi-Perspective Collaborative Analysis With the Listening Guide, Illustrated by a Case of a Woman in Combat

Marie-Luise Springmann, Shir Daphna-Tekoah, Ayelet Harel,
Béatrice Hendrich & Mechthild Kiegelmann

Abstract: The listening guide (LG) is a qualitative methodology developed by GILLIGAN (1982) and colleagues (BROWN et al., 1988), rooted in relational feminist psychology. In this paper, we present the potential of its methods for nuanced analysis of interview data when working together as a multidisciplinary and multinational team. To this end, we describe our collaborative process as Israeli and German scholars analyzing a sample piece of data from an interview with a female combat soldier. We highlight how using LG methods with an explicit focus on the social context of the interview and the data analysis enhanced our understanding of the data. In addition, we outline the ways in which using these methods was helpful in focusing on the collaborative process and promoting a reflexive stance as well as transparency about the analysis process. Since working with translated data is a necessity for a multilingual collaboration, we also discuss how using LG methods draws attention to language, grammar, and embedded meanings. We conclude that the LG methods we used are beneficial to collaborative research processes, especially when researchers use them to attend to different levels of social embeddedness of the narratives in data, data collection, and data analysis.

Key words: listening guide; voice-centered listening; female combatants; personal interview analysis; multidisciplinary research; collaboration; language and translation; feminist research

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Listening Guide

2.1 About the methodology

2.2 Listening guide methods: Analytical steps

3. Analytical Process: Social Embeddedness of Data and Data Analysis

3.1 The social context of the interview

3.2 International perspective, language, and translation

3.3 Not lost in translation—Collaborative analysis of the interview

3.3.1 The interview excerpt

3.3.2 Listening to the voices and positionalities of the researchers

3.3.3 Reading for self in a translated text: listening to the female "you"

3.3.4 Reading for multiple voices: Beyond reading for self

4. Discussion and Conclusions

Notes

References

Authors

Citation

 

1. Introduction

Collaboration is a central aspect of science because it strengthens the development of empirical knowledge as well as the methods used to acquire it. It has particular relevance for qualitative research: Consensus or auditing processes with other researchers can benefit methodological integrity because they foster the articulation of multiple perspectives on the data under study. Interdisciplinary collaboration can be particularly helpful for stimulating explicit articulation about theoretical assumptions, as GRAHAM BERTOLINI, WEBER, STRAND and SMITH (2019) have shown. However, collaboration in qualitative research also poses challenges, such as the formal and informal roles and positionalities of different researchers and the interpretation of translated texts (PAULUS, WOODSIDE & ZIEGLER, 2010; SHAW, 2019; SIRY, ALI-KAHN & ZUSS, 2011). Therefore, scholars need methodological approaches to address these challenges. [1]

Our work as a collaborative team grew out of shared scholarly curiosity about interviewees' voices, silences in narratives and their interpretation, and our appreciation for feminist relational psychology and the LG as resulting research methodology. The team included cisgender women researchers from two countries (Germany and Israel) and a variety of academic disciplines: Psychology, social work, Middle Eastern studies, and political science. Our goal in this project was to explore the collaborative process of applying an extended version of the LG as introduced by KIEGELMANN (2021) to a sample piece of data from previous qualitative research on women's experiences in the military by HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHNA-TEKOAH (2020). The interview excerpt was translated from Hebrew to English as our shared working language. Three of the researchers were experts on female soldiers, whereas two had not worked on this topic before. The analytical work was conducted in 2022. Our collaboration thus took place prior to the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the Fall of 2023, but during a time when Russia expanded its war against Ukraine, a historical political context relevant to the sample data used in this research. [2]

In this paper, we share what we learned from this exploration: We present the efficacy of the expanded LG for nuanced analysis that explicitly incorporates the social context of the data analysis process. We also highlight how the collaboration of scholars from different disciplines and locations helps to foster a reflexive stance for the study of narratives and enables richer insights compared to the work of individual researchers. [3]

We begin with an overview of the LG methodology and its theoretical background (Section 2.1), and then propose how the extended version of the LG is appropriate for our collaborative qualitative research (Section 2.2). We then describe the context of our collaboration and the empirical context of the sample data used in this paper (Section 3.1). We also discuss the importance of sensitivity to linguistic perspectives in different sociopolitical contexts (3.2). We then present an analysis of a small piece of data drawn from a larger study conducted by two members of our research team in 2018 (HAREL-SHALEV & DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2020) (Section 3.3). Finally, we discuss additional nuances in the small data excerpt, our methodological insights, and the benefits of collaborative research processes (Section 4). [4]

2. The Listening Guide

2.1 About the methodology

The LG (also known as voice-centered listening) was developed in the 1980s by GILLIGAN and her colleagues (BROWN & GILLIGAN, 1992; BROWN et al., 1988; GILLIGAN, SPENCER, WEINBERG & BERTSCH, 2003; TAYLOR, GILLIGAN & SULLIVAN, 1995). The methodology is rooted in the framework of feminist relational psychology (GILLIGAN, 1982, 2015; KIEGELMANN, 2009) which is characterized by a focus on the social embeddedness of psychological experience. Against the background of androcentristic perspectives that dominated psychological research, GILLIGAN (1982) focused on the experiences of girls and women and found that identifying relational aspects in data enhanced the quality of her research. She showed how connecting and listening to research participants could uncover previously overheard and silenced voices, which can be important for psychological theory building (see also BROWN & GILLIGAN, 1992). [5]

GILLIGAN's concept of voice was then developed into a new research methodology, the LG (BEAUBOEUF-LAFONTANT, 2008; BROWN et al., 1988; DAWANI & LOOTS, 2021; GILLIGAN, 2015; GILLIGAN & EDDY, 2017; KIEGELMANN, 2000; LUGO & GILLIGAN 2021). LG scholars proposed a set of methods based on several subsequent "listenings" or "readings" of the data (see Section 2.2). It was designed to systematically incorporate the relational dimension of psychology into data analyses, along with cognition, emotion, and behavior. The LG is based on a multifaceted feminist concept of identity allowing room for internal contradictions and of rejecting one-dimensional notions of identity. Thus, when analyzing qualitative data, there is more than a logical understanding of a unified narrative. Within the data, using LG methods enables researchers to detect and analyze how research participants experience contradictions, make spontaneous associations, and construct meaning in the process of speaking. In this way, people express themselves in multiple "voices" (DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2021; GILLIGAN & EDDY, 2021; HAREL-SHALEV, 2000a; LEVI-HAZAN & HAREL-SHALEV, 2019). [6]

A revised understanding of voice in qualitative research requires a revised understanding of listening. This brings into focus the complex relational aspects of data collection. People respond to being listened to while speaking (e.g., in an interview) in many different ways, such as elaborating, adjusting, or self-censoring in response to a perceived or assumed response from the interviewer. Researchers have published work focusing on research relationships during data collection (e.g., LOKOT, 2022; RILEY, SCHOUTEN & CAHILL, 2003). In our paper, we shift the focus to the social context and research relationships in the data analysis and report-writing phase. With this in mind, the LG methods have been extended in this paper to include a further analytical step, a consideration of the social context, as will be discussed below. [7]

We argue that this social context of researchers analyzing the data is just as relevant as the social context of the interviewee and the interviewer (JOSSELSON, 2013; KIEGELMANN, 2021). While the qualitative data we use are already influenced by the social context of the interview setting, the process of analysis is a new relational situation into which we bring our own backgrounds and contexts. We emphasize that an analytical process undertaken in collaborative research with an international team is particularly challenged by the social embeddedness of both the interview situation and the data analysis process. [8]

2.2 Listening guide methods: Analytical steps

Using LG methods provides researchers with systematic analytical steps to deal with the complexities outlined above. The original LG methods comprise three analytical steps that have been further developed internationally and implemented in different disciplines (BEAUBOEUF-LAFONTANT, 2008; GILLIGAN & EDDY, 2021; JACK & ALI, 2010; KOELSCH, 2016; RAIDER-ROTH & HOLZER, 2009; TOLMAN & HEAD, 2021; WAY, ALI, GILLIGAN & NOGUERA, 2018). Specific aspects of the LG can be highlighted by introducing sub-steps into the analytical process, as others have previously demonstrated (e.g.,TOLMAN & HEAD, 2021). In our collaborative work, we used an extended version of the original methods as previously proposed by KIEGELMANN (2021). This version is characterized by an emphasis on social context analysis and reflexivity and involves five steps of analysis:

The first step, reading for plot, entails analyzing the general storyline of what has been said; the focus is on the overt meaning of the content. The second step, the reader's response, is a self-reflexive step: All researchers pay attention to their own resonance with the material in order to focus on more subtle meanings. Although combined with reading for plot in the original set of methods, this step appears separately in the extended version. In the third step, reading for social context, researchers direct their attention to how the social context of the interviewee, the interviewer, and the interview situation was documented in the data (ZILBER, TUVAL-MASHIACH & LIEBLICH, 2008). Both the interviewer and the interviewee bring their own experiences into the process of co-constructing the interview material and draw on specific social discourses when choosing their words and phrases. Attention to the social context has always been a part of the LG, but KIEGELMANN (2021) added this step to the original listening guide to ensure that context would be explicitly considered. [10]

In the fourth step, reading for self, researchers focus on the way interviewees express their sense of self. This can be done by extracting all parts of the text that use first-person pronouns (e.g., "I") and arranging them into an "I-poem." Some authors include not only the I-voice, but also other forms of pronouns and language that respondents might use when referring to themselves such as "we," "one," or sometimes "you" (e.g., DAVIS, 2015). These text fragments are then arranged into a "self-poem." Through these poems, observations about how a speaker engages in narrative come into focus. Shifts in the voice of the self can indicate shifts in how the speaker relates to what is being said. Our research team used different versions of this step (see the discussion of an example of a self-poem in Section 3.3.3). Finally, the fifth step of the analysis, reading for multiple voices, is a way of tracing different layers within the voice in the data. Individual speakers often reveal multilayered approaches to what they are discussing, and talk about the different ways in which they relate to these issues. [11]

The steps of this analysis build upon each other, resulting in an analysis that begins with attention to overt information and meaning but then continues systematically to document how more subtle meanings with personal connotations, as well as resonances from specific social discourses and circumstances, may emerge. [12]

3. Analytical Process: Social Embeddedness of Data and Data Analysis

3.1 The social context of the interview

The interview excerpt analyzed in this paper is part of a larger project that included interviews with 100 Israeli female combatants (HAREL-SHALEV & DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2020). Since its establishment in 1948, the State of Israel has been involved in several armed conflicts, and there has been constant tension in Israeli society over national security. The Holocaust and the historical threat of the extermination of the Jewish people accompany the Israeli national ethos. In addition, the ongoing and intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli-Arab conflict, as well as the occupation of the West Bank and the tense and violent front with the Gaza Strip—even before the escalation since October 2023—play a dominant role in Israeli society. In this context, Israeli society perceives war and preparations for war as inevitable social processes (BEN-ELIEZER, 1995; HAREL-SHALEV, 2000b; HAREL, 2023; LEVY, 2020). Military service became mandatory for most citizens soon after the establishment of the State of Israel. [13]

While military service in Israel is compulsory for both women and men, women's service in combat roles is voluntary. Women had to fight for the right to join combat units and/or serve in combat roles, a struggle that continues. Combat service for women is considered more prestigious than traditionally "feminine" military roles, such as administrative duties (LOMSKY-FEDER & SASSON-LEVY, 2018; SASSON-LEVY, 2003). Women serve two years of compulsory military service. After that, some women continue to serve in officer positions, which require more months of service in addition to reserve duty, which in practice means 21-45 days of annual active duty during their civilian life until the age of 44. Although women have served in the Israeli military since its establishment, Israel lags behind other nations in that women rarely serve in combat roles and not all units are open to women. The number of women serving in combat positions in the Israel Defense Forces (henceforth abbreviated: IDF) is small but growing (ERAN-JONA & PADAN, 2018). In 2022, women made up 17% of the combat force. A decade earlier, this figure was less than 5% (SHARVIT-BARUCH, 2022). [14]

Feminist narrative research, which is at the heart of the LG's paradigmatic position, seeks to uncover previously neglected or misunderstood worlds of experience (PARPART & PARASHAR, 2019). Analyses of female soldiers' voices and narratives make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the multiple and multifaceted struggles women face in the masculine space of war (EAGER, 2014; HAREL, 2024; HAREL-SHALEV & DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2021). Also, the inclusion of women in combat roles raises questions about the body, war, violence, moral dilemmas, and gender subordination. The study of relationships and power is central to the LG as a feminist methodology. By following its principles, scholars can become more familiar with the ways in which research participants, including combatants, cope with the gap between their own sense of self and the particular forms of ethnic, national, and political identities with which they are associated and with which others expect them to be associated (HAREL-SHALEV & DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2016). [15]

In the larger study mentioned here, the interviews were designed to uncover different potential framings of the combatants' perspectives; the use of semi-structured interviews facilitated an in-depth analysis. The interview protocol included questions about the interviewees' experiences during their military service and allowed respondents to reflect on their experiences, including their integration into military units, their perceptions of their roles in the military, their living conditions during deployment, their difficulties and successes, and their adjustment to civilian life after discharge from full-time military service. In line with recent research on the importance of uncovering parallel narratives with multiple meanings in critical security studies and international relations (SHEPHERD, 2012), and identifying different parallel struggles faced by women, the disaggregation of voices and texts allowed HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHNA-TEKOAH (2020) to uncover the perspectives and doubts of female combatants, even when these issues were not directly expressed in words. Overall, the entire project came out as a book about women's experiences in combat roles in the IDF. [16]

At the time of the interviews, all of the interviewees had completed their mandatory service, but some, such as the woman whose interview excerpt appears here, were still serving in the reserve forces. The interviews took place in the context of a sociopolitical situation in which women are struggling to gain access to more combat positions and to integrate into the male-dominated organization (BEN-SHALOM, LEWIN & ENGEL, 2019). At the same time, the conflict with the Palestinians was pressing, and the borders were very tense. HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHNA-TEKOAH (2020) found that women often felt ambivalent about their place in the military, because of serving in predominantly male roles, and being in conflictual situations with other military personnel and, often, with civilians. [17]

For the preparation of the present paper, the entire research team read several transcripts of interviews conducted during the above-mentioned project; the particular interview excerpt selected was specifically chosen by consensus of the team to highlight the complexity and intensity of being a woman in combat in the IDF. The respondent was interviewed during her undergraduate studies. She was drafted into the IDF at approximately 18 years of age and had volunteered for her combat role. [18]

3.2 International perspective, language, and translation

This paper has five authors. SPRINGMANN, HENDRICH, and KIEGELMANN are in Germany, and DAPHNA-TEKOAH and HAREL are in Israel. GILLIGAN made the initial contact between the researchers regarding a special issue of Qualitative Psychology, published in 2021, on the various applications of the listening guide methodology (GILLIGAN & EDDY, 2021). HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHA-TEKOAH (2020, 2021) contributed their work on breaking the binaries between voice and silence in research. In their ongoing decade-long research on women combatants, they have explored the effectiveness of the LG in studying women in combat and have also implemented it as a novel research tool in political science and trauma studies. KIEGELMANN (2021) contributed work on listening and reading for social context. SPRINGMANN contributed her expertise on LG and gender (MÜLLER, ROSARI, HÖHN, SPRINGMANN & KIEGELMANN, 2023; SPRINGMANN, SVALDI & KIEGELMANN, 2022), and HENDRICH (2005, 2008, 2023) brought her academic experience in Middle Eastern studies, her expertise in research on women in the military, and her knowledge of narrative and linguistic approaches to (interview) texts. Working during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and 2022, we were encouraged to use online communication tools and to cultivate a culture of long-distance digital communication. Using these tools enabled the group to collaborate in extensive online meetings across borders and a small time zone difference. [19]

In terms of power relations in research (LEVITT, IPEKCI, MORRILL & RIZO, 2021), the team worked collaboratively with an awareness of possible power dynamics in academia and possible silencing in research. The team also worked to ensure that all members felt comfortable and valued for their expertise, regardless of academic rank or location. We felt fully valued and encouraged to express our opinions, concerns, ideas, and disagreements throughout this collaboration with both junior and senior researchers. Besides the fact that the sample data were taken from the research of HAREL and DAPHNA-TEKOAH, the entire team was involved in every step of the research and writing process. These discussions led to a fruitful analysis. [20]

Within our heterogeneous team, we took the approach of intensive listening in accordance with the LG methods and following the tenets of relational psychology, as we elaborated on each other's analyses. During this intensive process, we encouraged each other to talk about our own assumptions and to articulate background information, often presumed, about meaning-making processes, while analyzing the data. As we documented our collaborative work in extensive logs, we also got to know each other. [21]

During the process of research analysis, we focused more closely on the social connotations of the language used within the research data. Conducting the analysis within a group of researchers from different social contexts pushed us to be more explicit about social context. Passages of the interviews that had previously seemed self-evident and not worth a second look became the subject of detailed analysis when "outsiders" (here, the German colleagues) failed to understand the references and concrete circumstances of what was said. While one strength of the LG is its systematic attention to voice and silence, the need to explain content to outsiders revealed an additional layer of implicit material and silences that can be traced and documented. [22]

In the same sense, the interpretation of the data is closely linked to the language used. The basis—the tool and the medium—of qualitative social and cultural research is language, an observation so obvious that it can easily be overlooked. The way in which language works, and the way in which the use of certain expressions or grammatical forms can be interpreted, varies greatly in different languages, in their sociolects or regional varieties. In Japanese, for example, there are various first-person pronouns that convey different connotations according to gender, social status and context, but sentences can also be formed without using first-person pronouns at all. Thus, the reading of the "I" or the "I-poem" would have to use a modified approach. Of course, linguistic peculiarities must be taken into account in the analytical process. This is even more the case when the original interview material consists of translated texts (STERN PEREZ & TOBIN, 2009). [23]

Among other components, this research is critically affected by the need to translate the original interviews in order to make them available to each member of the research group and to the international academic world. The interviews were conducted in Hebrew, the first language of the interviewees and the interviewers. However, three of the five authors of this study do not speak Hebrew. Therefore, the interviews had to be translated into English, the working language of the research group. The original interview transcript and its translation did not include pauses, silences, or any reference to nonverbal language. [24]

This research arrangement may raise the question of whether working with translations, without direct access to the "original meaning" of the interviews by some of the group members, is an obstacle to producing rigorous results (TEMPLE, EDWARDS & ALEXANDER, 2006), even calling the entire process into question. ROTH (2013) has addressed the issue of translation in qualitative social research in a comprehensive manner. Acknowledging that the globalized nature of contemporary (social) research necessitates a common working language, and that this language is in many cases English, Roth explored the meaning of translation, the ubiquity of translation in any case of making sense of communication, and the impact of translation on interview analysis. Roth summarized his findings as follows: "[T]ranslation, the possible impossible, is the human condition" (§47). [25]

Social researchers, then, can be reassured that working with translation between languages does not render research worthless. In qualitative interviewing, "translation is an opportunity [...] to creatively transform our condition" rather than merely represent it (§40). A stable meaning that can be translated (transferred) from one language to another does not exist. There are, of course, false translations—a myriad of them—but neither is there a perfect translation or transcription (§43). At the same time, other scholars have dealt with the implications of translations at different steps of the research and outlined ways to deal with translations systematically and transparently (ABFALTER, MUELLER-SEEGER & RAICH, 2020; SANTOS, BLACK & SANDELOWSKI, 2015). Moreover, qualitative research based on translated data requires that one or more members of the research team have access to the original language, as alternating reading and discussing of the original and possible translations is essential. [26]

This became clear to us early in our process of collaborative analysis when German researchers failed to grasp some of the meaning that was evident for the Israeli researchers who knew the original interview. Thus, they translated the interview a second time with more attention (and sometimes clarifications) to grammatical peculiarities like gendered pronouns or terms and names that would be unintelligible to the non-Israeli researchers. For example, a sentence from this transcript reads: "Interviewee: During the day, it's like, okay, things go smoothly, you [female] feel comfortable, and there's no problem, but like at night, you [single / a woman] doesn't want to be alone." Moreover, we started using documents that displayed the original Hebrew text together with the English translation in order to make it easier to refer to the original whenever needed. [27]

SANTOS et al. (2015, p.144) discussed translation in an international multilingual team as something that is "introduced into the research process to mitigate this cultural textual gap." They stated that researchers do not only need language skills, but also knowledge of the specific vocabulary of the topic under study. We argue that researchers also need knowledge of the social context which is not necessarily explicit in the data. The LG step of "listening for social context" prompted us to discuss layers of meaning implicit in translations with attention to local customs and sociopolitical situations and to document these discussions. [28]

MACHT noted that a diverse research group benefits from its greater openness to "intercultural sensitivity," while "representatives from the same culture attribute each other discursive positions in dialogue wherein assumptions usually remain unquestioned" (2018, §29). Similar to ROTH, MACHT emphasized here the problem of the unspoken, the unconsciously taken-for-granted aspects of meaning when interlocutors purportedly use the same language. The research literature indicates that translation occurs in all instances of qualitative social research and should be addressed rather than concealed. Using appropriate analytical strategies, the alleged loss caused by translation can be turned into added value. The logs of our early discussions on a first interview excerpt document this process: One of the German researchers articulated the impression that the interviewer was changing topics quickly, like she was working through a questionnaire—an impression that was not shared by the Israeli researchers who knew the original interview. They explained the way the interviewer and interviewee talked back and forth all the time. This led the German researcher to state that it "sounds as if there was a lot of unspoken understanding, they discussed and understood each other without elaborating—hard to understand from the outside" (cited from discussion log of January 6, 2022). In turn, one of the Israeli researchers stated that by discussing the translation she can actually "see more of what is assumed." [29]

The various steps of the LG in the extended version can be read in relation to the translational challenges of qualitative social research. When using this method, the social relations and circumstances, perspectives and positionalities of all those involved in the research process are clearly documented. Rather than obscuring and silencing the production of meaning, the method makes all steps of the research process more transparent, adding another layer to the process of translation and reception. [30]

3.3 Not lost in translation—Collaborative analysis of the interview

3.3.1 The interview excerpt

The text we examined came from an interview with a woman named Nessya1). Nessya is a 25-year-old military combat veteran who was interviewed six years after her release from compulsory military service. Since then, she has often served in the reserves. The following is an excerpt from Nessya's interview in which she referred to her service on the border between Israel and the West Bank. Nessya described an IDF blockade of certain Palestinian areas following a terrorist attack in which an Israeli girl was seriously injured. She discussed the complex and difficult tasks she had to perform as a combat soldier and her empathy for the Palestinians.

"Look, in reserve duty as well, okay? Like, I was in the reserves and there was, in the area next to us, they threw a Molotov cocktail on a car and it was a big deal and the girl there was moderately burned, half of her body was burned and that. So, as soon as that happens to you, they close off from you, like, half of the villages there in the area, no one leaves, no one comes in. So, we went to close off the village. Now, first of all, this village, that's a euphemism, its 60,000 people, yes? It's not, like, a village. You can't call Givatayim2) a village, like. It's a huge city with 60,000 residents. And then people come to you, like, and they need to leave, and they need to enter, and it's work and that, you know, their life, like, what's this closure? So, here, like, there are always dilemmas, and it's a question of how you behave, fair, legitimate, not in a legitimate way, you agree with this, occupation, all of the politics, okay, like, one second, a moment on the side. Now, it's important how you talk with the person, you, like, there's empathy, if you see him as a person, how you act there, it matters, it really matters, like." [31]

Carrying out the analytical steps of the extended version of the LG as a collaborative team proved to be a complex and enlightening process. We often discussed the meaning of words or passages of text; these discussions helped us to understand how many "layers of translation" are necessary to create a shared understanding in a team with different social and disciplinary backgrounds. In addition to the translation of the text from Hebrew to English, there was the "translation" of the context (which the German researchers did not always immediately understand), and the "translation" of terms and discourses that team members from one discipline used with team members from other disciplines. [32]

For example, a misunderstanding arose around Nessya's explanation that Givatayim cannot be called a village. As documented in our logs, the German researchers first thought Givatayim was the area that was closed off. When the Israeli researchers explained that it is a city close to Tel Aviv which the interviewee used as a comparison to describe the size of the closed-off area, this evoked a deeper discussion about the conflicting ways Nessya positioned herself as a soldier and as a human being with empathy (see also Section 3.3.4). We discussed if, by choosing an area familiar to the interviewer as an example, Nessya evoked the idea of a close-off happening in their own home region, thus evoking empathy with the Palestinian civilians. We also discussed the way that Nessya used the word "village" herself to refer to the closed-off area, but then criticizes this wording—does this reflect conflicting positions towards a military discourse that uses euphemisms when it comes to restrictions imposed on civilians? This led us to taking a closer look at the original two words milim mechubasot in Hebrew, that were translated as "euphemism," but could be more literally described as "laundry of words" or "laundered words"—which might evoke associations such as money laundry, purposeful deception or fraud. This example illustrates how the need to explain certain aspects or words deepened our analysis. [33]

A rather cyclical process developed between the different steps: Discussions about team members' personal reactions often led to discussions about the social context and understanding of the plot. Although this process may sound tedious, we found that these translations often advanced and deepened the analysis, as it was necessary to specify what was otherwise presumed, and to question what is normal and taken for granted. Therefore, rather than presenting a step-by-step account of the analysis, in this article we discuss some of the most interesting findings of our collaborative analysis process and how the collaborative use of the LG led to them. [34]

3.3.2 Listening to the voices and positionalities of the researchers

Narrative analysis, and in particular the LG methodology, is a tool for researchers to disaggregate the different voices of interviewees and reveal their different positionalities (HAREL-SHALEV & DAPHNA-TEKOAH, 2021). Indeed, in the interview with Nessya, we were able to trace her different positionalities, as we will discuss in Sections 3.3.3 and 3.3.4. In addition to the positionality of the interviewee, it is of utmost importance that the scholars themselves acknowledge their positionalities and different voices according to the steps of the listening guide (GILLIGAN, 2015). During the collaborative analysis, the step of the reader's response to the interview and the process of listening to one's own resonances was important, even necessary. We felt that Nessya was able to move between different positionalities and express the ways in which she simultaneously held multiple positionalities as a combat soldier, a woman, a human being, and an intelligent person in a very disturbing situation. We felt that this journey together also located us as researchers in different simultaneous positionalities. For example, for HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHNA-TEKOAH (2021), these were positionalities as women, as Israelis, as peace activists, and as critical scholars. In this way, the different but interwoven social contexts of the interview situation and the collaborative work of analysis resonated with each other (KIEGELMANN, 2021). [35]

Within the team, some researchers were familiar with the interviewee's social context and some were not; some team members had less experience with militarism and less exposure to military conflict than others. These different backgrounds led to questions about the militarized context, which was far removed from the everyday realities of the researchers living in Germany. In discussing and explaining the situation typical of Israel within our international team, it became clear that this situation, while not normal, was familiar to the Israeli researchers. In addition, these discussions urged the German-based researchers to reflect on the German discourse on war and peace, a discourse that changed dramatically during this period due to the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. One voice that emerged from the discussion was that pacifism might be seen as a luxury or a privilege of those living in more peaceful regions. Thus, the shared reading of Nessya's interview generated less deterministic and less binary perspectives on security and military power. [36]

3.3.3 Reading for self in a translated text: listening to the female "you"

This collaborative work strengthened the team's sensitivity to language use. The challenge of working with a translated text led to special care in commenting on the interviewee's choice of words or narrative structure. The I-poem and its modifications are a key element of the LG. But what is the analytical evidence of a translated I-poem, given that the translation from Hebrew to English can change both the grammatical explicitness and the semantics of the vocabulary chosen in the translation? In the following discussion, we focus on the use, semantics, and grammatical differences of pronouns in English and Hebrew, and demonstrate the implications for analysis of reading the original and the translation side by side. Based on this example, we argue that the need to translate the text and to justify the translation led us to ask very productive questions about the self-positioning of the interviewee and the challenges of narrative sense-making in circumstances where the self and the body are under constant threat. [37]

In this excerpt, the interviewee tries to make the interviewer understand what she observed and how she assessed the terrorist attack and its aftermath. In this section, the interviewee repeatedly switches between the pronouns "I/we" and "you." This shift is evident in both the Hebrew original and the English translation. This shifting between perspectives, including addressing the interviewer ("You can't call Givatayim a village"), gains another layer when the grammatical information of the Hebrew "you" is added. Hebrew has gender-specific pronouns, so Nessya has an explicit choice between masculine (ata) and feminine (aht) second-person pronouns. She chose to use the feminine singular in all of her you-statements. [38]

One approach to Nessya's choice is to discuss the meaning of a grammatical choice in its context (i.e., linguistic pragmatics). According to STERN PEREZ and TOBIN (2009), the masculine singular can be used generically while the feminine singular is restricted to specific circumstances and provides additional information: The feminine singular "you" can be used to address a specific female person or in an all-female group. However, because "this form is customarily utilized only in person- or gender-specific discursive situations, [...] [it] may create a sense of greater proximity and less neutrality toward the female individual being addressed" (p.90). [39]

We can therefore interpret Nessya's use of the feminine singular "you" as establishing and emphasizing proximity between the two female veterans, herself and the interviewer. This increased proximity helped Nessya to open up. At the same time, Nessya addressed the interviewer as a counterpart from whom to expect not neutrality but rather affirmative understanding. [40]

Another approach to Nessya's specific use of personal pronouns is to interpret the entire text passage by reading the shifting use of pronouns in relation to the specific context of each sentence. Nessya uses first-person pronouns only in two sentences, in which she gives basic information about the event she is explaining to the interviewer ("I was on reserve duty"; "We went to seal off the village"). Both times, she then goes on to discuss this morally challenging situation in a very nuanced way, using the feminine "you" throughout. By using "you," she addresses the listeners, inviting them to imagine themselves in this situation. At the same time, Nessya also makes empathic shifts of perspective in the way she discusses the situation. These shifts can be found on the level of content as well as on the level of language, as we show in Table 1.

Section

Grammatical form

Self-poem

Context

1

I, active

I was

in the reserve

2

Female you, passive

that happens to you

a Molotov-cocktail attack

 

 

they close off from you

soldiers close off area

3

We, active

we went

to close off the village

4

Female you, active

you can’t call

Givatayim a village

 

 

you know

 

 

 

you behave

question: fair, legitimate?

 

 

you agree

with this (occupation, politics)

 

 

you talk

with the person

 

 

you

 

 

 

you see

you see him as a person

 

 

you act

how; it matters

Table 1: Self poem [41]

First, in Section 1 of the table, Nessya described the scene using "I": She was on reserve duty and witnessed a Molotov attack. Then she switched to the second person: "... as soon as this happens to you, they close off from you." Note that the "you" in these statements refers to the people affected by the attack and whose village has been sealed off. Thus, Nessya seems to have taken the perspective of the affected civilians, even though she was actually acting as a soldier, and she marked this perspective with the word "they." In the following sentence (Section 3), she used "we" when referring to herself and her comrades who closed the area. She then discussed this situation as problematic and morally challenging, using the female "you" in an active construction (Section 4). First, she commented somewhat critically on the use of the word "village" for the closed-off area, comparing it to a city in Israel, thereby evoking the idea that this is happening in an area familiar to the listener. She then raised the question of how to behave in such a situation, where there is a moral dilemma between military needs and the needs of civilians. Nessya discussed empathic interpersonal interaction as her way of dealing with this dilemma: "[I]f you see him as a person [...] it makes a difference." [42]

The sequence with the active, female "you" is also interesting from a feminist perspective. In terms of content, Nessya discussed insecurities and ambiguities about responsibility for other people and empathic interpersonal interactions as a way of dealing with these issues. Thus, Nessya dealt with issues that are often considered feminine in binary, normative constructions of gender. However, reading the self-poem for this part gives the impression of a person who understands the situation and knows what to do:

you can't call

you know

you behave

you agree

you talk

you

you see

you act [43]

Thus, Nessya's feminine voice is presented as highly agentic, a trait often associated with masculinity in binary, normative constructions of gender. Social psychologists have shown in various studies that the opposition between communal and agentic traits is still a hallmark of gender stereotypes today (ELLEMERS, 2018; HENTSCHEL, HEILMAN & PEUS, 2019). In this excerpt, we see communal themes at the level of content mixed with agentic self-presentation at the level of language. In other parts of the interview, Nessya described her experience of agency as a positive aspect of her military service, along with friendship: "[...] to succeed in this, to feel, like, you're acquiring skills, like, that you know how to do the job that you need to do." [44]

3.3.4 Reading for multiple voices: Beyond reading for self

In addition to the voices we discussed as forms of self-expression (i.e., "I," "we," female "you"), we also paid attention to Nessya's use of the word "they." This sparked some discussion among team members about whether or not it makes sense to construct a "they" voice, and what quality or meaning such a voice holds. A closer look at the passages containing the word "they" reveals that this voice is multi-layered and refers to very different others:

they threw a Molotov cocktail on a car [Palestinians who injured a girl]

they close off from you, like, half of the villages there in the area [Israeli military]

they need to leave, and they need to enter [Palestinian civilians]

their life, like, what's this closure [Palestinian civilians] [45]

We speculated that Nessya felt caught in the middle between the hierarchical, securitized and militarized organization on the one hand and the civilian population controlled by the military on the other. In fact, she was part of the military presence in the area and understood the security considerations and therefore the measures taken against the Palestinians. At the same time, however, she did not identify herself as a member of the group of people who decided to close the area: She distanced herself from a military discourse, using the word "they" to refer to those who "close the village." Instead, as she prevented Palestinians from entering their town, she expressed empathy for them and was very concerned about their well-being. This voice also showed us the non-binary way in which Nessya herself saw the conflictual situation she found herself in. [46]

In summary, we have discussed the fact that this excerpt shows very little use of first-person pronouns and that Nessya mostly explained her experience using the feminine form of "you." We interpret this as indicating a close proximity between the interviewee and the interviewer, both of whom are female veterans. In addition, we looked at the way Nessya used the word "they" to construct others and position herself in relation to those others. Throughout the text, we could trace her shifts in relation to others and her self-positioning and perspective at the level of language and see how this corresponds to her nuanced and multifaceted way of reflecting and narrating her experience as a soldier. [47]

4. Discussion and Conclusions

In this article, we explored the use of an extended version of the LG for a collaborative qualitative process. More specifically, out of scholarly curiosity about respondents' voices and narratives and their interpretation, we initiated a multidisciplinary research project and used the extended version of LG methods to collaboratively analyze a narrative excerpt from a personal interview with a female combat soldier. [48]

Collaborating as a research team that was diverse in terms of language, academic discipline, social contexts, and sociopolitical realities enhanced the analysis by promoting a reflexive stance from which to explore the narrative. Textual references and social settings that might be considered obvious and unquestioned in a monolingual research group became key topics of analysis. This is also the case in collaborations between scholars from different disciplines, when terms, definitions, and discourses are framed in specific ways and members of the research team constantly interpret them to each other. [49]

We chose the LG as an appropriate method for analyzing the interview narratives, because it is designed to explore multiple voices in conflictual situations (BROWN et al., 1988). HAREL-SHALEV and DAPHNA-TEKOAH (2020, 2021) had employed this method extensively in previous research. It was used in this research exercise as a unified methodological language to disaggregate the different voices of the interviewee. The use of an extended version of the LG was helpful in describing and exploring additional layers of meaning while analyzing a narrative in translated form and with reference to the social embeddedness of the data and the data analysis, thus demonstrating its effectiveness. [50]

Several times our discussions of the excerpt from Nessya's interview led us to discuss general background information about the historical and political context of the interview (e.g., questions about the political and historical connotations of being a soldier in Israel). DAPHNA-TEKOAH and HAREL-SHALEV provided the other members of our team with background information about the educational system, military service, organization, and social significance. The discussion moved away from the specific data to learning about each other's living conditions and national laws that affect personal careers and family structures. Rather than dismissing these discussions and information as distractions, we valued them as helpful in understanding the context of the data collection, especially for those unfamiliar with the rules of daily life in the country where the interview took place. [51]

Since such background information is difficult to link to specific words in the data, our collaboration led to the idea of extending the LG even further. We propose to keep the third step of listening and reading for social context as an analytical step of data analysis. Quotations from the data such as words, phrases, silences, or transcribed interactions, can be cited as aspects of social context. However, in order to distinguish between general background information and such specific references to social context, we suggest adding an initial Step 0 in which background information is provided about the historical, organizational, and/or sociopolitical context in which the data were collected. Coming at the beginning of the analysis process, Step 0 would help to establish information about social circumstances that are relevant to understanding the data but are not implicitly or explicitly mentioned in the data (KIEGELMANN, 2024). [52]

In sum, by making all the steps of the research process more explicit and transparent, the version of LG methods we used was helpful in systematically reflecting on the multiple layers of the data, including attention to the complex identities of the interviewee, the multilayered dynamics of voice, silence, and interdependence in the interview relationships, as well as the complex connotations of the social discourses and social structures that play a role in the data collection and analysis processes. In addition, using the outlined LG methods also helped the members of this multilingual, multinational team to move forward in a collaborative analysis. Translations advanced and deepened our analysis by forcing us to articulate what is otherwise assumed and to question what is unsaid. [53]

Notes

1) Cover names are being used for anonymization. <back>

2) Givatayim is a city in central Israel that is used by the interviewee as a comparison for the size of the closed off area. <back>

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Authors

Marie-Luise SPRINGMANN is a clinical psychologist. With her research, practice and teaching she focuses on the intersections between psychology and social theory. She is particularly interested in the topics of gender and sexual diversity, body and psyche, intersectionality, and the links between theorizing and research methodology. She completed her PhD on the subject of eating disorders and gender and is currently training as a psychological psychotherapist at the Systemic Institute of the Freiburg University Medical Center. Moreover, she is a member and lecturer of the professional association for queer psychology in Germany (VLSP*).

Contact:

Marie-Luise Springmann

Systemic Institute
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy
Freiburg University Medical Center, Eugen-Martin-Str. 4, 79106 Freiburg, Germany

E-mail: ml.springmann@posteo.de
URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marie-Luise-Springmann

 

Professor Shir DAPHNA-TEKOAH is dean of the Faculty of Social Work at Ashkelon Academic College and founder of the Acute Sexual Trauma Room at Kaplan Medical Center. In her research, she focuses on developing innovative models for assessing and treating violence in medical settings, with expertise in trauma, combat trauma, and healthcare systems. Her academic interests span trauma, women combatants, health, violence, and gender studies.

Contact:

Shir Daphna-Tekoah

Faculty of Social-Work
Ashkelon Academic College, 12 Yitzhak Ben-Zvi St. Ashkelon, 78211, Israel

E-mail: shir.dt@gmail.com
URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Shir-Daphna-Tekoah

 

Ayelet HAREL is professor of political science in Ben-Gurion University's Conflict Management and Resolution Program, and the Department of Politics and Government. She is also serving as the vice-dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research is located at the intersection of politics, conflict studies and feminist international relations.

Contact:

Ayelet Harel

Conflict Management and Resolution Program
Department of Politics and Government
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, POB 653, Beer-Sheva, 8410501, Israel

E-mail: ayeleths@bgu.ac.il
URL: https://cris.bgu.ac.il/en/persons/ayelet-harel

 

Béatrice HENDRICH is professor for Turkey studies at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Islamicate World at the University of Cologne in Germany. Her main research interests are within the field of Turkey's gender history, female combatants in Turkey's past and present, and general history of the early Turkish Republic.

Contact:

Béatrice Hendrich

Institut für Sprachen und Kulturen der islamisch geprägten Welt (ISKIW)
Universität zu Köln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Köln, Germany

E-mail: bhendri1@uni-koeln.de
URL: https://iskiw.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/personen/professorinnen/apl-prof-dr-beatrice-hendrich

 

Mechthild KIEGELMANN works at Karlsruhe University of Education as a professor in the Department of Psychology. Since the 1990ties, she has been engaged in the development of qualitative research methodology in psychology. Her research is embedded in a feminist perspective on processes of interplay of unequal social structures and psychological development. At her university, she serves as anti-discrimination officer.

Contact:

Mechthild Kiegelmann

Department of Psychology
Karlsruhe University of Education, Bismarckstraße 10, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany

E-mail: Kiegelmann@ph-karlsruhe.de
URL: https://www.ph-karlsruhe.de/personen/detail/Mechthild_Kiegelmann_169

Citation

Springmann, Marie-Luise; Daphna-Tekoah, Shir; Harel, Ayelet; Hendrich, Béatrice & Kiegelmann, Mechthild (2025). Not lost in translation: Multi-perspective collaborative analysis with the listening guide, illustrated by a case of a woman in combat [53 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 26(1), Art. 11, https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-26.1.4222.

Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (FQS)

ISSN 1438-5627

Funded by the KOALA project

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