Gunilla Jansson

Response Practices in Multilingual Interaction with an Older Persian Woman in a Swedish Residential Home

In the present case study, a care encounter between an older multilingual (Farsi/Swedish/English) Persian woman and staff in an ordinary, Swedish residential home is investigated. The woman is perceived as suffering from dementia symptoms, but has not received any formal diagnosis of the disease. More specifically, the study focuses on how the womans contributions in her mother tongue, Farsi, are responded to by a carer, who is also multilingual and speaks Swedish as a second language (L2), but has a very limited knowledge of Farsi. The data consists of recorded material from a mundane morning activity in the residential home, as the woman is undressed and prepared to go to the shower. The method employed is conversation analysis, and the study addresses the interactional outcome of this type of multilingual encounters, highlighting the way the establishment of mutual understanding is negatively affected by the fact that the participants do not or only to a limited extent share a common language. Analysis of the data shows that most of the womans contributions in Farsi are responded to in L2-Swedish by the carer, primarily by means of seven different response practices: soothing talk, instrumental talk, minimal responses, explicit expressions of understanding, mitigating talk, questions, and appraisal. The findings are discussed in light of new demands on Swedish (and Western) care- and health care systems to adapt to the increasing number of multilingual, older people, who will become residents in care facilities and attend day centers within the coming years.

Bridging Language Barriers in Multilingual Care Encounters.

Abstract The present case study demonstrates how the multilingual practices of a linguistically diverse workforce contribute to the functioning of a modern workplace. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and recordings in a residential home for elderly people with dementia in Sweden, the article explores how multilingual immigrant care workers creatively use their language skills to overcome linguistic boundaries and communicate with an elderly Kurdish resident. It is shown that despite the fact that the participants do not, or only to a limited extent, share a common language, the care workers manage to create multilingual encounters that allow them to perform care tasks in an activity context where empathy and efficiency are of great importance. Although the data in this study manifest the struggle of multilingual care workers to bridge language barriers, the study also highlights the complexity of providing adequate and well-functioning care in today’s diverse society, where linguistic and cultural matching of clients and caregivers cannot always be obtained. These results are discussed in the light of new demands on Swedish (and more broadly Western) care systems to adapt to the increasing number of multilingual older people, who will become residents in care facilities.

Recontextualisation processes as sense‐making practice in student‐writers’ collaborative dialogue

The research introduced in this article is placed in the field of socially mediated learning processes and draws from fieldwork in a highly diverse sector in higher education. It explores the potential of peer scaffolding as a means of making sense of tutor comments. The data consist of recordings of conversations in two collaborative writing groups on two laboratory reports. The participants were students with a second‐language background enrolled in a course which was part of a one‐year Master’s programme in computer science at a Swedish university. The analysis is based on transcriptions of episodes in the recordings, where the students are engaged in conversations about different aspects that can be related to the unfolding text. All instances in these episodes where the students are making use of teachers’ comments on explicitness with respect to logical reasoning are coded. A qualitative analysis of the interaction reveals how aspects from teacher voices are extracted from the institutional frame, paraphrased and put into the students’ colloquial talk. The findings indicate that peer collaboration plays an important role in enabling students to use the meta‐knowledge available in the educational setting as a tool for their learning of academic literacies. Pedagogical implications are discussed in terms of the potential of peer scaffolding as a means to support and develop teachers’ discourse around writing.

'You're doing everything just fine': Praise in residential care settings

This study examines the use of praise in caregiving of nursing home residents with dementia in Sweden. The data consist of video-recordings of staff–resident interaction in residential care settings where caregivers assist residents with personal hygiene. High-grade assessments accomplishing praise or a compliment such as ‘jättebra’ (‘great’) are routinely used online, simultaneously with the care activity, by the caregiver when the residents are requested to undertake manual tasks on their own, such as tooth brushing, washing, dressing, and getting out of bed. It is shown that the primary function of the assessments is to encourage someone to do something, which is discussed as an institutionally related problem. These results contrast with prior research on domiciliary care in Sweden and Denmark, which show that high-grade assessment terms formulated so as to accomplish praise or a compliment are reserved for situations where the home helper’s institutional role as the senior citizen’s helping hand is downplayed. It is argued that a more sensitive use of assessments and a higher awareness of the social norms concerning epistemic primacy may be a step toward implementing person-centeredness in residential care for older people.

The multifaceted use of a written artefact in student supervision

This article explores the use of a written artefact, an assessment form encompassing a checklist with health care terms, in supervised nurse student-patient interactions during assessment interview ...

Language brokering in multilingual caregiving settings

Using the methodology of conversation analysis to examine audio-recorded multi-party conversations between a Swedish-/Farsi-speaking resident and multilingual staff in a Swedish residential home, this article describes a practice for establishing shared understanding by one caregiver enacting the role of language broker. The focus is on caregiving settings where caregivers assist an elderly person with her personal hygiene. We demonstrate how brokering is used to (1) maintain the conversational flow in a small talk sequence and (2) address the contents in the residents complaints. The article thus advances our understanding of language brokering as an activity that multilingual staff in a linguistically asymmetrical workplace setting take on to assist a colleague in performing client-oriented activities.