Malvika Iyer

Some aspects of experience can be challenging for research participants to verbalise. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) researchers need to get experience-near to meet their phenomenological commitments, capturing the “texture” and quality of existence, and placing participants in relation to events, objects, others, and the world. Incorporating drawing into IPA designs provides a vehicle through which participants can better explore and communicate their lifeworlds. IPA researchers also require rich accounts to fulfil their interpretative commitments. Drawing taps into multiple sensory registers simultaneously, providing polysemous data, which in turn lends itself to hermeneutic analysis. This article outlines a multimodal method, the relational mapping interview, which was developed to understand the relational context of various forms of distress and disruption. We illustrate how the approach results in richly nuanced visual and verbal accounts of relational experience. Drawing on an “expanded hermeneutic phenomenology,” we suggest how visual data can be analysed within an IPA framework to offer significant experiential insights.

Objectives: To explore the perspective of adults with intellectual disabilities from minority ethnic groups, on their relationship with social care services.Methods: Thirty-two adults took part in semi-structured interviews. Transcripts were analyzed within a Pluralist framework, adopting the structure of Template Analysis and then drawing on phenomenological, narrative, and discursive approaches.Results: Our participants were generally positive about the services which they received, which they evaluated primarily in terms of their continuing good relationship(s) with specific workers. Our respondents were sophisticated users of cultural resources and identities; the concept of ‘cultural affordance’ may be useful alternative to ‘cultural competence’. We discuss three distinctive narratives about independence (Stability; Progress; Resistance). Each highlights the importance of maintaining connectedness to others, and the crucial role played by ownership of decision-making.Conclusions: We have developed a set of resources which service providers (and researchers) can use with people with intellectual disabilities, in order to support mutual understanding, service planning and delivery.

This chapter critically analyses EMI and its impact on a society that underwent drastic changes in its socioeconomic and political scenario resulting from a struggle for language rights after independence from Britain. Jaffna Peninsula, the Tamil-speaking northern part of Sri Lanka, is considered one of the pioneering bases in South Asia for the introduction of EMI owing to the influence of American Missionaries. However, due to diverse internal conflicts, socio-political struggles, and unplanned language policies, there have been a number of unprecedented changes and challenges faced by this region. The present study divides the historical backdrop of the region into three phases for convenient analysis. The first phase represents the period from the introduction of EMI until the independence of the country. The second phase encompasses the post-independent period up to the beginning of the national ethnic conflict. The third phase is the post-war period to date. The article brings into light the impact of EMI on local languages in the first phase, how local language policy affected EMI in the second phase, and, as a result of the struggle created in the second phase, how the third phase EMI has become a less efficient model.