Spencer Hazel

Kitchen Talk – Exploring Linguistic Practices in Liminal Institutional Interactions in a Multilingual University Setting

This chapter reports on a small-scale investigation of how linguistic diversity is managed and turned into a resource for social meaning making in an informal, multilingual setting at a Danish university. Although firmly located within the institution of the university, the particular setting (known as a kitchen) represents a liminal space where institutionally implemented regulations and norms of conduct, including norms related to language choice, are less formalised than for instance in classroom settings. When language choice is not a predetermined condition of interaction, the act of selecting or negotiating a medium of interaction becomes a relevant activity for interlocutors to engage in, and we see this repeatedly in our data. Drawing on methods and theoretical insights originating in the Conversation Analytic tradition, we present a number of illustrative examples of the practices of language choice that students display during the formation or reconfiguration of engagement frameworks. We argue that language choice is an important aspect of ‘doing being an international student’ for local as well as non-local students, although the norms the two groups orient to are different.

The paradox from within: research participants doing-being-observed

This article analyses a collection of cases from video recordings of naturally occurring interaction in institutional settings, where members display an orientation to the presence of the recording equipment. Such instances have been treated elsewhere as evidence of contamination of the ecology of the setting. The findings suggest that participants do remain aware of the recording activity, but that they publicly display when they are attending to it. Indeed, it is used as one resource to occasion identity work as competent, knowledgeable members of a particular institutional community, displaying to one another their understanding of the research aims, and their knowledge of how these kinds of data are constituted. Investigating how observational research is oriented to and constituted by the observed allows for a better understanding of what at that moment and in that setting is deemed recording-appropriate or -inappropriate conduct, and offers a more nuanced perspective on how data are co-constituted.

L2 and L3 Integrated Learning: Lingua Franca Use in Learning an Additional Language in the Classroom

This study offers an empirical account of the use of English in Danish-as-aforeign- language classroom settings. We will refer to English as the lingua franca – which in itself is a second language for the majority of the participants in the data – and to Danish as the target language. We consider implications of lingua franca interaction in target language classroom interactions, and show how in sequences where participants orient to linguistic issues in the target language, for example grammatical forms or lexical items, they often do this with reference to the lingua franca.

The classroom moral compass – participation, engagement and transgression in classroom interaction

Abstract This article explores the moral accountability of second language classroom participation, evidenced in sequential environments where participants display an orientation to some or other transgression in the engagement framework. Classroom participation is a sensitive issue which touches on what Garfinkel (1964, 225) has referred to as the moral order, constituted through the seen-but-unnoticed practices that pass as the natural order of things. A transgression of the particular way an engagement framework is organised is accountable, and although usually non-critical, it often results in the onward flow of the classroom activity to be momentarily suspended in order to address the transgression. When a classroom participant violates this ‘normality’, it not only attracts attention but can even invite moral and psychological evaluations, and may threaten the social status of the member responsible. Participants manage the tension for adhering to certain (negative) social categories by adopting mitigating strategies, for example by occasioning a jocular frame when attending to the transgression. Drawing attention to potentially sensitive issues points at the underlying moral order and at what is handled as normal, which in turn provides the analyst with a window on the practices into which participants have been socialised.

Discovering Interactional Authenticity: Tracking Theatre Practitioners Across Rehearsals

This study follows a group of actors over the course of a rehearsal period, as the theatre ensemble goes about the business of transforming a play-script into a performance. The analysis focuses on one short section of dialogue in the play, and follows the work that the actors do from their earliest attempts at staging this section through to the dress rehearsals. The chapter demonstrates how the actors modify the ways in which they format their actions, as they look to settle on a choreographed routine for representing the particular social actions described in the play-script.

Facilitation of positive social interaction through visual art in dementia: a case study using video-analysis

ABSTRACT The aims of this exploratory study were: to investigate the process of visual art appreciation in a person with dementia, in real time; and to test the feasibility of using video-analysis as a method to explore this process by and with a person who has minimal verbal expression. Gallery personnel guided a woman with severe dementia around an exhibition. Audio-visual recordings of the interactions were analysed. Patterns were identified, and interpreted in the light of conversation analysis theory and research. Evidence was found of turn-taking vocalisations on the part of the research participant. Her participation in a dialogical process was facilitated by the skilled and empathic gallery personnel in ways that the analysis makes clear. We argue that this supports the inference that successful communicative acts took place, contrary to expectations in the light of the participants level of disability. We demonstrate in this paper how a woman with minimal speech due to dementia was enabled to engage with visual art through the facilitation of an expert guide, attuned to her needs. This is a novel example of a person-centred approach, because it takes place outside the context of caring, which is the typical setting for examining person-centred ways of relating to individuals with dementia.

Lending bureaucracy voice: Negotiating English in institutional encounters

This chapter presents a small set of micro-analytic studies of interaction in institutional encounters at a Danish university which illustrate how English in the context of university internationalisation is habitually called upon to verbalize concepts and practices which are intimately tied to local settings but which do not necessarily have direct equivalents in English. Drawing on methods and theoretical insights originating in the conversation analytic tradition, we demonstrate how speakers negotiate expressions for local bureaucratic terms and procedures as well as their meaning, and argue that such instances of joint meaning making carry the potential to contribute to the hyper-local emergent register of English found in the setting. A key finding of the analysis is that speakers in the data are afforded different epistemic rights and obligations with relation to the lingua franca being used depending on their institutional role, (inter)national status and general familiarity with the linguistic resources used. English first language speakers are shown to be positioned as linguistic norm providers in several cases, but participants who use English as a foreign language also have a say in introducing new terms and redefining old ones, particularly when they use English to lend bureaucracy voice in interactional roles associated with institutional power. Methodologically, the chapter makes a case for the detailed study of social interaction in transient multilingual communities as a window on linguistic and social change which may stimulate crossfertilization between the general research areas of sociolinguistics, particularly the study of language variation and change, and the emerging body of research on the use of English in lingua franca scenarios.