Interdisciplinarity is when one field does not understand what you’re saying—
because another field’s terminology is leading the discourse.
When you take endless detours, explaining and re-explaining,
because information-structural is not lexical,
and sociolinguistic is not quite sociopragmatic.
Working interdisciplinarily is crucial, yet challenging.
One field does not know what to do with the other.
No journal wants to publish your work—
because your methods do not align perfectly with one discipline’s standards.
And so, you stand there.
With approaches and theories, papers and utopias,
values and visions, data and calculations.
Not just choosing, but justifying—
why this definition, why this method,
why this approach is the only way
to answer your research question.
Ah yes—
the research question.
That’s where it all begins.
How do you phrase a question
when your work moves between or within multiple disciplines?
What is my goal,
and how far can I stray from scientific conventions to reach it?
Do I enrich the dialogue,
or do I remain outside of it—
alien, unrecognized?
Crisis of method.
Gather data—yes. But how?
Better too much than too little—
so I collect not just videos, but personal data, group discussions.
And then? Transcription.
But how much?
What is enough? What is too much?
How do I analyze it all?
Without a clear method in mind, transcription is a risk—
but what do I have to lose?
Documentary method is always an option,
especially for interviews—
but will my findings satisfy both didactics and educational sciences?
Would it be a shame,
with all this data,
not to take a more open approach?
Grounded Theory, maybe?
Or… perhaps conversation analysis?
If I transcribe using the discourse and conversation-analytic transcription system,
shouldn’t I stay true to its methodology?
Or will I lose myself in linguistics—
and need to find my way back to educational sciences then?
To ensure my work is not just thematically interdisciplinary,
but truly, methodologically, integrative?
To enrich myself with ideas from different fields,
to create something new—
something tangible.
Something that does not just speak of interdisciplinarity,
but embodies it.
Because of all these questions I started talking to my dissertation
I told myself it would be a journey,
a quest for knowledge,
a pursuit that connects dots,
binds disciplines,
shapes new understandings—
but no one warned me
that this journey would feel so solitary
even with all the voices around me.
I sit with my dissertation,
staring at pages filled with half-finished thoughts,
footnotes tangled in contradictions.
„What do you want from me?“
„Why are you so difficult?“
„Will you ever make sense?“
Interdisciplinarity, they say, is the future.
A bridge between worlds,
a conversation between fields.
But some days, it feels like shouting into the void,
where linguists speak in terms of syntax and semantics,
and educational scientists counter with subjectivation and socialization.
Where I write a sentence,
only to rewrite it twice—
once to make sense in my field,
and once more to make sense in theirs.
And then, I ask myself:
Quo vadis, interdisciplinarity?
Where do we go from here,
when every idea,
every theory,
every method
seems to fall between the cracks of these disciplines?
I am writing at the intersection of language and education—
where the formal analysis of address meets the lived experience of being addressed.
Where linguistics dissects a phrase,
but educational science asks what it does to the person hearing it.
It’s strange,
how the way we’re spoken to can shape us,
can turn us into someone new.
Through this lens,
language isn’t just a tool—
it’s an act of becoming.
But still, I question.
How much theory is too much?
How much data is enough?
How do I measure something as intangible as co-speech and language violence?
And then—there’s that fear.
That someone, somewhere,
has already published the answer to my questions.
That their paper will cross my desk,
and I’ll realize I was always just a step behind.
That after all this work,
my contribution is nothing but an echo.
But then, something shifts.
A moment of clarity in the chaos.
A conversation at a conference—
where someone nods, really listens.
A question that sparks a new idea.
A discussion that opens a door I hadn’t seen before.
And suddenly, interdisciplinarity isn’t just struggle.
It’s possibility.
It’s standing on a stage in another country,
sharing thoughts that once felt too scattered to matter.
It’s seeing how different perspectives sharpen my own,
how dialogue turns confusion into insight.
I may sit alone in my office,
transcribing videos,
reading articles,
pulling threads from the work of others,
but in this solitude,
there is connection.
I return to my doctoral college,
to the people who get it,
who sit with their own tangled thoughts,
who ask the same questions,
who remind me that we are not alone in this.
This is the paradox of a dissertation:
you are constantly alone,
with your subject, your data, your method,
but never truly isolated.
You’re surrounded by the work of others,
by their ideas, their theories,
their research that shapes yours,
even when you don’t see it at first.
And it’s in this tension—
between the solitary act of writing
and the shared act of research—
that I begin to see the power of this work.
So, I sit,
and I write,
and I question.
I ask myself,
„What is the meaning of this address?“
„How does this sentence make the person hearing it feel?“
And I know—
no matter how many others publish,
no matter how many voices speak—
this is my research.
And it matters.
Because, in the end,
we are all connected by the questions we ask,
and the answers we dare to seek.
So, I keep talking to my dissertation.
And slowly, it starts talking back.
(© Alexandra Warda
Science Slam zum Thema Interdisziplinarität; entstanden für die HUMM-Conference in Tallinn am 27. & 28.03.2025)