‘Demystifying’ multilingual fieldwork: on the importance of documenting and reflecting on language learning in ethnographic research

Drawing on my experiences of conducting ethnographic research in France and Bulgaria, I argue in this chapter that documenting and reflecting on language learning has a crucial part to play in breaking the silence that often still surrounds how researchers learn and use different languages for fieldwork. I begin by highlighting the fact that my PhD thesis was effectively ‘silent’ about such questions, before describing how in recent research in Bulgaria I attempted to document and analyse my language learning practices much more systematically. I then compare the approaches to language learning I adopted for these two studies, showing how my language learning practices in relation to Bulgarian were informed by what I had learned from reflecting on my experience of using French for my PhD work. Finally, I suggest that ‘demystifying’ multilingual fieldwork also requires an open discussion with the bodies that fun