Chapter 8: Multilingualism in the Home, Workplace, and Community: Lessons From an Experiential Learning Project

In a recent article on community-engaged research, Bay and Yankura Swacha (2020) have advocated a research approach that is less about numbers and statistics and more about communities as “living meshworks” (p. 122). Even in circumstances when research is designed with and for the benefit of the community, various agencies’ pressing demand for hard data and measurable outcomes can strip the research experience of the human factor. Thus, Bay and Yankura Swacha have introduced “meshworks” as a critical lens to view communities as living organisms, as situated in places where people’s experiences are affectively interwoven, dynamic, and multilayered (i.e., having physical, environmental, and material dimensions). Building on this notion that communities are living organisms and that research must capture the depth of the human experience (with emotions, contexts, values, etc.), this chapter explores a few avenues on how this can be accomplished.