Topic > Multilingualism and identity in transnational workplaces in Sweden

Index IntroductionResearch questionsResearch planThe dataThe focus groupThe settingsData collectionEthical considerationsTheoretical basisSuggested chronologyIntroductionThe project explores how the social identity of young immigrants is achieved in workplace interactions. I propose to study workplace activities that occur through interaction. For this project, I would like to focus on two types of interactional activities in the workplace: (a) task-based activities such as assigned group projects and (b) various institutional discourses, especially peer conversations, customer conversations and job interviews, among others. The data collected from workplace activities will be enriched by individual interviews which could provide me with further important knowledge regarding the identity work of young immigrants. By identity I mean the performance or ascription to a social category that can be formed, altered, negotiated, and then achieved in interaction with verbal and nonverbal means (using speech and other embodied resources) to reference and make inferences about themselves. and more. In this project I intend to study immigrants who are considered young adults (here aged between 18 and 25), who at the time of their arrival in Sweden were registered as unaccompanied minors, i.e. they were migrant children who had moved to Sweden alone. or became separated from their families in transit. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay According to the Swedish Migration Agency, in recent decades, there has been a gradual increase every year in the registration of unaccompanied minors. In 2007 there were 1,264 children, which rose to over 7,000 in 2014 and reached an unprecedented number of 35,369 in 2015. Although the majority of this group of immigrants are still awaiting a decision on their asylum claims and their residence permits, there are often transnational contexts that welcome job seekers with various linguistic skills where these young immigrants have typically found work, such as workshops, service industries and factories. According to my daily observations due to my current work assignments and interaction with many young immigrants, I have realized that one of their challenges at work is, on the one hand, managing their language and communication practices with their clients, leaders group and workmates. On the other hand, within these linguistically and culturally diverse contexts, they must assume identities or manage the identities attributed to them, while engaging in various sequentially organized activities. These identities can be characterized by discursive or situated practices (see for example Zimmerman, 1998), referring to individual or group categorisation, meaning the use of a language that constitutes people as members of the same, or different , social group (see for example Day, 1998). What this project aims to investigate are, therefore, the processes and strategies through which the target group of immigrants shows how to deal with daily communication at work and how to manage and respond to linguistic diversity which often introduces and privileges one language over the other. other. others (often Swedish and sometimes English) as the organizational/official language while other languages ​​are used in everyday interaction at work (e.g., Hill & van Zyl, 2002). More importantly, these processes and strategies reveal how assumed or ascribed identities are used as resources in the workplace. I also highlight the intercultural and social diversity oflanguage in performance and identity and discuss how speakers use language to maintain or cross “cultural and linguistic boundaries” (e.g. Fredriksson, Barner-Rasmussen, and Piekkari 2006, 407) when conducting their activities. . A variety of terms will be used in the study such as membership categorization analysis (MCA) (Sacks 1979), normative and non-normative categories, identity making and “translocality” (Greiner & Sakdapolrak 2013) in the formation of identity that transcends boundaries , to express a certain theoretical assumption about the object of study. The theoretical framework is based on the analytical approach of the ethnomethodological conversation (Sacks, 1992; Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998) within which this study is placed within the analysis of discourse (Zimmerman, 1998), and is inspired by a sociocultural linguistic perspective that combines sociocultural and linguistic anthropology (Bucholtz & Hall 2005), language and identity as discursive products of social interaction and situated performances (Bourdieu, 1977, 1982; Giddens, 1984; Gumperz, 1982; Heller, 2007a, b; Pujolar, 2008), and interactional linguistics (e.g., Mondada 2014). This research proposal contributes to the idea that identity emerges and is realized in interactional contexts, rather than being inherited and predetermined (Bucholtz & Hall 2005, Keevallik 2010). Research questions By studying interactional activities in the workplace, this project will try to answer the following questions: How do participants - in particular the group under study - (as speakers, with whom they talk or talked about) are placed in categories with associated characteristics or characteristics? What are the verbal and non-verbal resources used to (co-)construct such categories? What are the consequences of identity work in the workplace for both young immigrants and their colleagues? How are social categorization and identity formation in interaction used as resources to carry out daily activities in the workplace? By answering the above-mentioned questions, the project will surely also discuss how these immigrants, as multilingual and multicultural transnationals, demonstrate their linguistic practices through multimodal means of interaction. Research plan The data The data used for this project will mainly consist of video and audio recordings of interactions at workplaces. I intend to carry out ethnographic observations of the context and collect video and audio recordings of the interactive activities. Ethnographic notes will be used as additional information in case of relevance for the clarification of recording materials. I will also carry out post-activity interviews (REFs) with people involved in such activities, including both immigrants and their co-interacts in workplace activities. The reason for the need for interviews is to (a) investigate participants' understanding (or possible misunderstandings) of such activities and (b) increase my understanding of people's contributions (including job-specific linguistic terms, jargons, etc.) in the case of their relevance for the analysis of primary data, i.e. recordings. The Subject GroupAs explained, I intend to collect my data in workplaces where young immigrants (between 18 and 25 years old) work. I will particularly choose those young immigrants who had previously been registered as unaccompanied minors with the Swedish Migration Agency. Even though most of the unaccompanied minors in recent years are from Afghanistan and it would be advantageous for me since I share a common language with them, I will still collect data from a variety of young immigrants with different backgroundslinguistics to make the project more inclusive regarding the target group. The settings The settings will be in at least two regions of Sweden, in particular in the counties of Stockholm and Östergötland. Since I have been working with unaccompanied minors for the last 3 years, I have contacts with several companies such as Östgötasvamp from Vikingstad, one of the largest mushroom growers in Sweden, and Euroform from Tranås, a manufacturer of plastic system solutions, and STAGA, a The company is a product and process development company, all featuring multilingual workplaces populated by Afghans, Syrians, Chechens, Bosnians, Eritreans, Palestinians, Greeks, Somalis, Bulgarians, Bosnians, Thais and Swedes as workers. Data collection The research will be longitudinal and will collect data on young immigrants in order to analyze their experiences of multilingualism in the workplace through interviews, observations, video recordings, recorded narratives or survey data. Data will be collected at specific intervals (for example once a month), so that daily routines and activities can be recorded over a long period of time to identify any changes in roles and activity structure. The video recordings will be transcribed, digitized and the selected excerpts will be analyzed in detail for the purposes of the study. Throughout the research, ethical rules are strictly followed as per the opinion given by the “Ethical Review Committee”. Ethical considerations The project will be in line with the ethical principles established by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and will also follow the recently introduced law known as GDPR. (B). I will also design a data management plan for the project regarding the management of personal information in my data, saving the material in a secure server on the university website and how to make the data used in the project available to the public (this is obviously a sensitive issue on which I would like to receive guidance with the help of future supervisors and department management) Theoretical background The study takes an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach, analyzing and uncovering the interactional and methodical practices that workers use to give make sense of their social world (Garfinkel 1984, Goffman 1961) and understand common-sense routines and daily activities (Fitzgerald, Housley, and Butler 2009). The research will be placed within an intersubjective (vs. individual), praxeological (vs. cognitive) and performative approach to identity (Bucholtz & Hall 2005). Following a conversation analysis (Sacks, 1979) and an ethnomethodological approach (Garfinkel 1967), identity is procedurally relevant for speaking in an interaction only when participants are obviously oriented towards it (Schegloff, 1997), through which the daily creation of social identities and the rules that govern interactions can be explained (see Stokoe and Weatherall 2002). EM and how it developed into AC bases analysis on normative aspects of interaction (Heritage 1984). Both ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approaches seek to identify the general practices within people's micro-level social interaction through which “social order” is achieved, rather than “order” being a structure within which actions take place (Garfinkel 1967; Sacks 1992). Suggested timelineI intend to write an anthology of scientific articles to accumulate as a doctoral thesis. The time frame involves conducting a more detailed field investigation. This takes up much of the time in the first year that would also be spent on courses; I will follow specific courses regarding theory and methodology and also the research field; in the meantime.