Reuben Sanderson

Read about the research being undertaken by Reuben Sanderson, a PhD student in Linguistics

Thesis title

Workplace Collaboration Online: a Multimodal Analysis

Supervisors

Abstract

The recent coronavirus pandemic has led to more people working from home and communicating with their colleagues through video conferencing tools like Zoom (Bleakley et al. 2021). Collaborative practices are changing at a rapid rate, as new tools necessitate new ways of working. My research aims to investigate these changes in workplace interaction, seeking to understand and to improve how we collaborate in the modern workplace.

I adopt a multimodal approach to analysing workplace interaction, including multiple modes of communication in my analysis. Building on the work of Wertsch (1998), Scollon (2001), and Norris (2004, 2011; see also Multimodal Research Centre), I take the mediated action as my primary unit of analysis, rather than prioritising the spoken word as is common in other discourse analytic research (Bucholtz & Hall 2016; De Fina 2011). In this way, I adopt a more holistic approach to analysis by including other systems of communication, such as gaze, gesture, and proxemics.

My approach to data-collection builds on the well-established theoretical and methodological process of previous workplace discourse research (Holmes & Stubbe 2015; Holmes, Marra & Vine 2011; see also Language in the Workplace Project). I video record naturally-occurring, video-mediated meetings to explore what people actually do when they collaborate online. I supplement this data with ethnographic observations and notes detailing the day-to-day norms and practices of the workplace, to provide context and support for my analytical interpretations (Marra & Lazzaro-Salazar 2018).

This research aims to extend the field of workplace discourse analysis by bringing together multimodal and discourse analytic approaches, contributing to the current academic trend of researching online workplace communication, and aiding in the development of theoretical and analytical tools for improving how people collaborate online.

Biography

Reuben Sanderson is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where he also earned his MA in Linguistics with Distinction. The final project of his Master’s degree, “An Historical Analysis of /s/-Retraction in New Zealand English”, was awarded the Ian A. Gordon Prize in Linguistics in 2020. Reuben has also worked as a tutor in the LALS department, teaching both LING221 and LING111. His interests cover the fields of workplace discourse analysis, multimodality, Interactional Sociolinguistics, and general linguistic research.