Exploring university students’ relationships with communicative resources under the corona-virus-quarantine by Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

Format Type

Plenary

Format Type

Paper

Start Date

14-1-2021 3:50 PM

End Date

14-1-2021 4:10 PM

Abstract

During the last decade in Critical Applied Linguistics, the concept called translanguaging has been evolving primarily under the influence of postmodern, poststructuralist theories. The recent conceptualization, however, considers human communication a phenomena, in which multiple linguistic, sensory, cultural, modal and material ‘communicative resources’ are orchestrated. In fact, a need has been called for to investigate how interactants make sense of their relationships with their ‘communicative resources’. In response to such need, I find it essential to employ IPA as an inductive experiential methodology, though this is still quite rare in the field. Thus, the current research targets three university students in Japan (Japanese and Chinese). These students, under the corona-virus quarantine, experienced living with two robots – Alexa (American AI assistant equipped with linguistic and sensual/lights ‘resources’) and aibo (Japanese AI dog with bodily and sensual/sounds ‘resources’). The data were collected through diaries and semi-structured interview, and “3-step analysis” based on Dialogical Self Theory was adapted for further analysis and discussion. The research results revealed that all students tended to express their general experience of communication in Japan by exploiting fixed categories of ‘resources’ such as language, culture and nationality. However, when they retold their experience with the robots, the boundaries of the categories became blurred. Amidst anxieties and fears that intensified/worsened during the quarantine, each student developed emotional attachment to both robots in relation to other ‘communicative resources’ in their own respective ways. Interesting enough, some of the ‘other’ resources included ‘nature’, ‘technologies’, ‘my space’ and ‘data’.

Keywords

IPA, translanguaging, communicative resources, critical posthumanistic applied linguistic project

Comments

This project has been sponsored/supported by Yurui Communication Labo, Keio University (Shonan Fujisawa Campus) in Japan.

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Jan 14th, 3:50 PM Jan 14th, 4:10 PM

Exploring university students’ relationships with communicative resources under the corona-virus-quarantine by Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

During the last decade in Critical Applied Linguistics, the concept called translanguaging has been evolving primarily under the influence of postmodern, poststructuralist theories. The recent conceptualization, however, considers human communication a phenomena, in which multiple linguistic, sensory, cultural, modal and material ‘communicative resources’ are orchestrated. In fact, a need has been called for to investigate how interactants make sense of their relationships with their ‘communicative resources’. In response to such need, I find it essential to employ IPA as an inductive experiential methodology, though this is still quite rare in the field. Thus, the current research targets three university students in Japan (Japanese and Chinese). These students, under the corona-virus quarantine, experienced living with two robots – Alexa (American AI assistant equipped with linguistic and sensual/lights ‘resources’) and aibo (Japanese AI dog with bodily and sensual/sounds ‘resources’). The data were collected through diaries and semi-structured interview, and “3-step analysis” based on Dialogical Self Theory was adapted for further analysis and discussion. The research results revealed that all students tended to express their general experience of communication in Japan by exploiting fixed categories of ‘resources’ such as language, culture and nationality. However, when they retold their experience with the robots, the boundaries of the categories became blurred. Amidst anxieties and fears that intensified/worsened during the quarantine, each student developed emotional attachment to both robots in relation to other ‘communicative resources’ in their own respective ways. Interesting enough, some of the ‘other’ resources included ‘nature’, ‘technologies’, ‘my space’ and ‘data’.