The basic background of substantive theory development was introduced in Section 3.2.5. Here, however, to refresh the reader’s memory, the definition of substantive theory grounded in data, what it means to develop a substantive theory, and the form and function a theory can have, are briefly recapitulated.
In the present study, I employed the GTM method to explore reliance on languages during the process of composing a non-native L3 narrative by a small population of L1 Transylvanian-Hungarian multilinguals. Thus, the data I collected were local, and their analysis lead to the formulation of a grounded or substantive theory that “pertains only to the phenomena being studied and makes no claims to generalise beyond” (Urquhart, 2013, p.
193). Glaser and Strauss (1967) defined substantive theory as being “a theoretical interpretation or explanation of a delimited problem in a particular area” (p. 79). Because its inherent characteristic of being grounded in data, such a theory “should ‘fit’ with the setting from which it has been derived” (Bryant, 2017, p. 98; single quotation marks in the original).
The fit of such a theoretical formulation with the data from which it emerged is established in the process and by the process of constant comparison throughout the research process, and is documented by the researcher by providing a thick or rich description of how data analysis took place. Thus, by documenting the fit, the researcher provides for the trustworthiness and credibility of their study, and ultimately the substantive theory. From the viewpoint of the life of a theory, or its “career” (Merton, 1949, p. 22), it is important to take into account the form a grounded theory can take and the place it can claim within the larger body of scientific knowledge. Davidson Reynolds (2016) states that a theory is a set of
“abstract statements that are considered part of scientific knowledge in either set-of-laws, the axiomatic or the causal process form” (p. 9). Additionally, in connection with the scope of newly formulated theories Whetten (1989) recommends the researchers to “err in favour of including too many factors, recognizing that over time their ideas will be refined…[and] it is generally easier to delete unnecessary or invalid elements than it is to justify additions” (p.
490). Bryant (2017), echoing Glaser and Strauss (1965), remarks that a substantive theory will be first judged on grounds of usefulness to the scientific and professional community active in the particular knowledge field in which the theory was developed.
The discussion of the substantive theory developed in the present study is based on Tables 5, 6, 7 and 8, so the reader is kindly referred back to those. The four tables mentioned above constitute the starting point for the following discussion because they contain the open codes and focused codes through which the theory is grounded in the research data.
The study explored how reliance on languages takes places in an L3 linguistic problem solving situation in a multilingual context, and found that the participants relied on both their L1 and the L2 in the retrieval of L3 words; however, the L2 seemed to have been
favoured more in this process, acting as a support language for the L3. The developed theory attempts to explain the relationship of reliance established between two non-native languages within the MML, how such a relationship may establish and evolve, and why such a reliance relationship has chances to establish between non-native languages.
In the discussion to follow, I refer to the focused codes and some open codes present in Tables 5, 6, and 8 as categories or concepts. To understand this change in terminology, I will provide the reader with a very short update on what happened with the focused codes and some of the open codes in the final stages of theory construction. In the phase of theory construction, or “grounded theorizing” (Bryant, 2017, p. 113), the focused codes were further subjected to transformation in the ways already described in the thesis. They were merged to form larger groups of ideas among which different relationships were established using Spradley’s (1979) system of relationships, and they were transferred from one group of focused codes to another based on the similarity of their properties. The process of comparing, grouping, and organizing codes is part of the broader constant comparison process which fuels theory development. The main aim of theory development is to establish the relationships between the focused codes, and include them in the theoretical interpretation and explanation. As soon as they find their place in the theoretical explanation, focused codes become categories or concepts (Bryant, 2017; Charmaz, 2006; Urquhart, 2007, 2013) in the substantive theory. The two terms “category” and “concept” are used interchangeably in the rest of the discussion.
I propose a substantive theory that draws partially on concepts from cognitive psychology and suggest that one possible organization and functioning of the MML can be accounted for by the joint effects of encoding specificity (Reder et al., 1974a; Tulving &
Thomson, 1973) and processing fluency (Benjamin et al., 1998; Kurilla & Westerman, 2008;
Unkelbach & Greifeneder, 2013). Data collected in the study suggest that the phenomenon of using languages together is intimately connected to metalinguistic awareness. The core categories of the substantive theory put forward are languages used together and metalinguistic awareness. Between these two core categories there is a cyclic causal relationship, as represented in Figure 23, in the sense that the many ways of using languages together by a multilingual lead to a heightened metalinguistic awareness, which in turn can be conducive to a flexible and efficient harnessing of linguistic resources. The dynamics of this growth process turns the multilingual language user into a linguistic connoisseur, an individual who enjoys using their languages with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties.
The cyclic causality that links the categories of using languages together and metalinguistic awareness integrates well with the dynamic model of multilingualism (Herdina
& Jessner, 2002) because the mutual influence, which is suggested to exist between the two elements of the substantive theory, may account for the dynamics of several languages, and by extension, for the dynamics of the lexica belonging to these languages. Cyclic causality is the mark of dynamic models (Harnack et al., 2017).
In what follows, the core categories of using languages together and metalinguistic awareness are presented and described in detail. Each core category has a number of subordinated categories that can be conceived as the properties or descriptors of the core category. Between each subcategory and its core category there are different kinds of links as Table 11 and Table 12 show.
5.1 Core Category I: Languages Used Together
One of the core categories developed during data analysis is languages used together. Its development is sketched in Figure 18. As the reader has surely noticed, this category appears as a focus code in both Table 5 and 8. In the final steps of theory development, this focus code was elevated to the role of category because it proved to be able to concentrate the attributes of the other focused codes, which were subsumed to it and now flesh out the central category. The elevation, or the promotion, of the languages used together focused code to a more abstract level was possible because of the meaning of
“together”, which has a sufficiently broad meaning to incorporate the concepts of one language being taught and learnt through the medium of another, of relying on the lexicon of one language to retrieve the words of another language, with or without the help of a bilingual dictionary, and the concept of harnessing the potential of similarities between words of different languages to support learning and processing of multiple languages. Table 11 Figure 23. The Cyclic Casual Relationship Between the Core Categories of the Substantive Theory
presents the category languages used together along with its subcategories and its links to the data through the open codes.
Essentially, the meaning of together in this core category is that of languages in contact, languages in association, in agreement and harmony, and one language as a support for the another.
A quick taking stock of Table 11 reveals that the core category is related to its subcategories by two types of relations: category-specimen and cause-effect. Relative to each subcategory, for instance, we can formulate statements such as “The subcategory X (where X is a particular subcategory) is an aspect of the category languages used together.”
Likewise, based on the cause-effect relationship, we can formulate statements such as
“Languages used together is the effect of subcategory X (where X is a particular subcategory)”. The presentation of findings by research instruments in Section 4.1 dealt with each subcategory at length. Here, the content of each is presented succinctly to provide the reader with an understanding of how they fit the purpose of the theory (Lynham, 2002).
5.1.1 Subcategory: Additional languages (Ln) through a native or a non-native language.
In educational environments situated in multilingual geographical areas, such as the western part of Romania, it is often the case that the language of education, and thus the Table 11. The Subcategories of the Core Category LANGUAGES USED TOGETHER and the Open Codes, which Ground Therm to the Data
The Subcategories of the Core Category LANGUAGES USED TOGETHER and the Open Codes, which Ground Therm to the Data
Note. The arrows show the direction of elevation