ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author draws on his own experience of conducting research on language choice in the workplace and discusses the politics of selecting research topics. She increasingly developed an uncomfortable feeling about studying about the less powerful in our society and thought that it might benefit her scholarly achievement more than those migrants’ lives. Thus, rather than studying down a socially and economically marginalized population, the author decided to study up in the power hierarchy. This was to evade her moral conflict. In conducting a study, searching for voices of underrepresented groups or studying down certainly uncovers their experiences of marginalization in the social, economic, gendered, and racial hierarchy of power. An example of studying across in applied linguistics is an Asian Canadian researcher interviewing an Asian Canadian ESL teacher – both shared experiences of being racialized in the Canadian society.
