The Power of Mother Tongue: A Critical Analysis of Language Exclusion in Qualitative Research and Its Implications for Narrative Depth

Abstract

Research loses its voice when participants are required to borrow someone else’s tongue. This study critically explores how language exclusion, particularly the dominance of English in qualitative research, limits narrative depth, emotional expression, and cultural authenticity in studies that depend on lived experiences to understand complex social realities. While qualitative research aspires to amplify participant voice, it often marginalises that very voice by failing to encourage responses in participants’ own languages. This is especially prevalent in multilingual contexts such as South Africa, where researchers frequently avoid multilingual interviewing due to budgetary constraints, particularly the costs of translation and transcription. Adopting a qualitative research approach within an interpretivist paradigm, this study uses a descriptive and analytical research design based on secondary data. The population consists of published qualitative studies across various social science fields, conducted in multilingual settings between 2015 and 2025. A purposive sampling technique was used to select 30 studies that relied heavily on interviews or focus groups. The data collection method involved document review and systematic coding of selected studies, while thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis were employed to examine how language use was addressed or ignored and how it influenced the quality of findings. Findings reveal that in most cases, researchers failed to provide space for mother-tongue responses, leading to superficial data, distorted meaning, and loss of cultural nuance. Studies that did incorporate indigenous languages showed greater emotional intensity, clearer narrative coherence, and deeper insight into lived experiences. These findings have broad implications; they point to a persistent methodological weakness rooted in financial and institutional neglect of language diversity. The study contributes to the decolonial and linguistic justice discourse by proposing a language-conscious framework for qualitative research design and evaluation.