Azar Raoufi Masouleh
About me
PhD at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism at Stockholm University. I conduct audio/video-based research on social and professional activities, categorization practices in talk and identity construction in institutional settings. The main focus of my PhD work is the fine-grained analysis of spontaneous naturally occurring talk-in-interaction at multilingual workplaces in Sweden, and the in situ backstage talk, leadership-in-action, multimodal analysis of turn-taking in digital-mediated mettings, and socio-technical practices at work. The specific microanalytic approaches I use are Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis (EMCA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) within a sociolinguistic framework, with regard to the use of language and other semiotic resources.
Ongoing PhD projects
- Topicalizing Peers’ Language: Situated Linguistic Identities at Workplaces
This study investigates workplace interactions where peer’s linguistic backgrounds are topicalized. Analyzing video recordings of backstage interactions, the research highlights different interactional consequences of topicalizing peers’ native languages and how it results in transformations in participation frameworks and thereby in the situated identities of participants. To address the main aim, the study uses an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach to examine how participants respond to language-related inquiries, such as “How do you say X in your language?”, and how these inquiries serve as membership inference-rich devices. The findings reveal that topicalizing a peer’s language (other than the main medium in the group) can trigger various activity types, including jocular interactions and informal learning. Moreover, the interaction may lead to the display of possible vulnerability, as unfolding talk can position individuals as marginal within the group and thus occasion stance-taking toward that positioning with resistance.
- Transmodality in Multilingual Workplaces: Analyzing Turn-Management and Device-Mediated Interaction with Google Translate
This study explores the development of mutual understanding through digital devices in face-to-face institutional interactions. Specifically, it examines the role of a mobile phone translation app and its procedural consequentiality for epistemic activities in a multilingual workplace in Sweden, where participants do not share Swedish as a common language. The study uses ethnomethodological conversation analysis and applies the concept of transmodality to conduct a detailed analysis of multimodal turn-management across five key stages of interaction progressivity: 1) Initiation and Preparation to use the Device/App, 2) Input (Speaking or Typing) into the App, 3) Reception and Assessment of the Written Text, 4) Display of the Translated Utterances to the Interaction Partner, 5) Reception of a Response to Further the Conversation. The findings highlight how participants manage turn-taking, action formation, and epistemic activities while using translation apps to mediate communication. The study identifies three key patterns: (a) temporal extension of turns, (b) delays in turn production and completion, and (c) the insertion of sequences to check and confirm understanding of each turn. These patterns emerge as participants navigate their interactions through the translation app on their mobile phones. Ultimately, the study demonstrates not only how turns are managed through digital mediation but also how specific embodied movements, such as gestures and gaze directions, become tied to translated content, impacting both intersubjectivity and the progressivity of interactions.
- Professional Talk-in-Interactions in Multilingual Workplaces in Sweden: A Focus on Leadership-in-Action
The study contributes to the body of research related to EMCA and MCA-inspired analyses of the internal life of multilingual workplaces in Sweden. Linguistic and institutional asymmetries and participation framework are approached and examined in formal situations of manager-employee interactions in a multimodal way. The discussion is centered around interactional organization and accomplishment of work-related meetings between manager and employee. On the basis of video-recorded interactions in four multilingual companies, the article explore how the process of doing leadership is asymmetrically determined according to more powerful category bound resources available to the manager; how the particular manager constructs himself as an effective leader in the multilingual workplace through a diverse range of leadership styles and techniques; and what interactional strategies and semiotic resources he uses to consolidate his situated social position as a “boss” while doing leadership.
- Navigating Socio-Technical Practices in Interactional Spaces within Multilingual Workplaces: A Focus on Manager-Employee Meetings
Using EMCA and MCA, this audio/video-based research examines how one-to-one meetings between managers and employees are conducted using digital aided translation tools; and how membership categorizations and professional/linguistic identities are characterized and ascribed through these practices. By exploring the interrelated roles of people (managers, floor workers), artefacts (cell phones, computers) and physical spaces (production rooms, offices), the study investigates the “individual repertoires” in relation to “spatial repertoires” in the process of accomplishing work-related meetings in specific professional contexts.
Research Assistant
Interaction with social robots for education: Learning with robots? The project aims to explore how we can use and benefit from human-robot interaction in adult education in Sweden, with special focus on students with Swedish as a second language. A joint project between the Department of Education, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan), and the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism.
Previous Education
-Master’s Degree in Language and Culture in Europe, Linköping University, Sweden
-Magister thesis, Department of Thematic Studies – Child Studies (TEMAB): The influence of parental language policy on bilingual child language preference at home.
-Master Thesis, Department of Culture and Communication (IKK): Everyday Construction of Gender Identity in a Sex-reassigned Child Negotiating Membership Categorization.
-Bachelor’s degree in English Language interpretation and Translation, Rasht University, Iran (2001-2006)
Publications
-Basic English for University Students (2007, Iran)
-English for Engineering Students (2007, Iran)
-English for statistics and Mathematics Students (2008, Iran)
Previous Research Experience
-The Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University, Sweden (Dec. 2012- Sep. 2013)
Dealt with a new orthographic system in Persian Language
-University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, France (Feb 2015- April 2015)
“Intersexuality in Social Interactions: How to pass as a girl”
-Presented the preliminary results at the seminar on Gender and Language Studies, Linguistics Department, Sorbonne Novelle- Paris 3.
PhD Activities
Research Visit:
(Feb 1 - Apr 8, 2024), working on the project "Transmodal Analysis of Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation" with Jon Hindmarsh, Professor of Work and Interaction and Head of Department, Public Services Management & Organisation, Business School at King's College London.
Seminars
-(Dec. 4, 2020) Data session, Talk, Interaction and Multimodality (TIM), Department of Education, Stockholm University. Collegial Talk-in-Interactions in a Multilingual Workplace: a focus on work-related interaction and office small talk.
-(Apr. 7, 2021) Higher Seminar, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. Organizing and Accomplishing Collegial Talk-in-Interactions in a Multilingual Workplace.
-(Apr. 22, 2022): Data session, Talk, Interaction and Multimodality (TIM), Department of Education, Stockholm University. Topicalization of language in socially-related interactions at work.
-(Oct. 21, 2022) Research Forum for Interaction and Learning (ReFIL), Department of Education, Stockholm University. Professional Talk-in-Interaction in Multilingual Workplaces in Sweden: A Focus on Leadership-in-Action in a product and process development company.
-(Oct. 26, 2022) Higher Seminar, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. Language as a Topic in Small Talk: Construction of Common Ground in Multilingual Workplaces.
-(Nov. 23, 2022): The Interaction Seminar: Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. Professional Talk-in-Interactions in Multilingual Workplaces in Sweden: A Focus on Leadership-in-Action in a Cafeteria.
-(Mar. 30, 2023): Samtals- och interaktionsseminariet (SIS), Linköping University. The Conversation and Interaction Seminar jointly organized by the Child Theme Department, the Department of Culture and Society, and the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning. Navigating Socio-Technical Practices in Interactional Spaces in Multilingual Workplaces: A Focus on Manager-Employee Meetings
-(Sep. 1, 2023): Data session, Talk, Interaction and Multimodality (TIM), Department of Education, Stockholm University. Multimodal Aspects of Epistemic Check: Manager-Worker Interactions in Multilingual Workplaces, with a Focus on a Café-Restaurant
-(Nov. 29, 2023) Higher Seminar, Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. Constructions of Leadership in Professional Talk-in-Interaction at Multilingual Workplaces
-(Dec. 14, 2023) Higher Seminar, Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies (TÖI), Stockholm University. Exploring Multilingual Dynamics in Workplace Interactions: The Role of Digital and Human Translation in Manager-Employee Meetings.
-(Feb. 1-Apr. 4, 2024): Weekly data session, Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation, Business school, Kings college London.
-(Feb. 20, 2024): Data session: Multimodal Layerings in Google Translate Mediated Manager-Employee Meetings, school of geosciences, the University of Edinburgh.
-(Mar. 12, 2024): Data session, Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University.
-(Mar. 13, 2024): Data session, Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation, Department of Sociology, University of York.
-(Mar. 14, 2024): Data session, Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, Loughborough University.
Conference
(Sep. 16, 2022) 12th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP), University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Language as a Topic in Small Talk: Construction of Common Ground in Multilingual Workplaces (Focused on backstage and small talk in three companies in Sweden).
(Sep. 21, 2023) The Ofti Conference, the 39th conference on research on speech and interaction at Uppsala University on September 21–22, 2023. Multimodal Aspects of Epistemic Check: Manager-Worker Interactions in Multilingual Workplaces, with a Focus on a Production & Engineering Company.
(April. 19, 2024) Language and communication in a digitalised world, ASLA (the Swedish Applied Linguistics Association) 18–19 April, 2024, Dalarna University. Multimodal Analysis of Turn-Taking in Digital Device-Mediated Translation.
Workshop
(Mar. 10, 2021) Language choice and ideology in a multilingual society, Stockholm University. Language as a Topic in Small Talk.
(Apr. 27, 2023) Space-in-interaction, Stockholm University, Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages, Finnish, Dutch and German. The construction of alignment in Google Translate- mediated manager-employee meetings.
(Dec. 17—21, 2023) Analyzing social practices for sense making. Developing analytic skills. (EMCA Bootcamp X) at the research station Svanninge Bjerge, a collaborative program of Aarhus University and University of Southern Denmark.
Completed doctoral courses
The Dynamics of Multilingualism: Affinities (5.0 hp) at Stockholm University led by Caroline Kerfoot and Maria Kuteeva.
Linguistic Ethnography (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Christina Hedman, Jenny Rosén, Kamilla György, Caroline Kerfoot, Angela Creese, Rickard Jonsson and Karin Aronsson.
Bilingualism from a learning perspective (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by José Alemán Bañón.
Conversation Analysis (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Catrin Norrby, Gunlög Sundberg, Stefan Norrthon.
Academic Writing for International Publication (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Beyza Björkman Nylén.
Introduction to teaching (for university teachers in the Humanities and Social Sciences) (3.0 hp) led by Hans Färnlöf.
Professional development, Teaching and Learning (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Cormac McGrath.
Studying interaction (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Catrin Norrby, Gunlög Sundberg, Peter Auer.
Sociolinguistics 1 (7.5 hp) at Stockholm University led by Anna-Malin Karlsson
Teaching
-Conversation Analysis, Stockholm University 2020, (2 lectures & data session)
-Second Language Use in Social Practices (daytime and evening courses), Stockholm University, 2021 (2 lectures & data session)
- Second Language Use in Social Practices (evening course), Stockholm University 2022, (1 lecture & examination)
