Spencer Hazel

SHSenior Researcher
spencer[at]sdu.dk
(2015 – 2016)
 Over the years, I have ventured into a range of territories, all of which have been informed by an interest in social interaction. Most recently, I have been especially interested in linguistically dynamic settings, and usually in institutional settings such as workplaces, classrooms and counselling. More specifically, my interest is in the resources of which we avail ourselves in physically co-present interaction in order to facilitate mutual understanding. To that end, I have recently co-edited, with Kristian Mortensen and Gitte Rasmussen, a special issue in the Journal of Pragmatics on avenues for incorporating non-vocal resources into conversation analytic research.

STUDENT GUIDANCE COUSELLING
My PhD research explored institutional interaction in study guidance settings in international universities, with data featuring International Office helpdesk service encounters and student counselling meetings. This included exploratory work with Kristian Mortensen on how members enact particular institutional activities and related social identities by drawing on a range of resources, including – and relevant to the current project – material and graphic objects in the local environment. Furthermore, the study demonstrated how objects are drawn on to represent components in the somewhat complex administrative procedures at the heart of the guidance activities.

THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
A separate research strand that I am pursuing concerns interaction in creative settings. Recently, I conducted fieldwork with two theatre companies as they went about rehearsing new productions for performance. The video data allow for an exploration of how theatre practitioners go about the business of playing, discovering, understanding and representing social interactional settings. The study is situated at the intersection between social scientific approaches to human sociality and its creation and consumption as cultural artefact. With regard our social objects endeavour, one line of investigation concerns the enactment of objects within theatrical performance, including their transformation from material resource to prop to socially situated object in a staged scene. Currently in press, I also have one article on developments in the 1990s UK theatre scene, and in preparation an article on representations of healthcare in theatre performance.

HEALTHCARE INTERACTION
Leading on from the above, healthcare provision is an area of research that I have become increasingly interested in, while contributing methodological support and analysis to Performance features in clinical skills assessment (2014), a research project carried out by Celia Roberts, Sarah Atkins and Kamilla Hawthorne in the UK. Sarah and I are now pursuing further lines of investigation in continuation of this research project, including a study of the enactment of empathy in healthcare encounters, as well as the deployment of visual resources in advice giving sequences.

RESEARCH METHODS
My involvement in the above project for King’s College, London stems from a byline in research methods relating to the production, treatment and application of audio- and audio-visual data for studying social interaction. With Janus Mortensen, I have run research methods workshops in Denmark, Spain, the UK and Japan, which aim to provide a platform to reflect on the various interconnected stages for data development – from technical considerations to getting access to settings right through to analysis and presentation of data as part of dissemination. More importantly, the workshops provide hands-on skills development in the use of transcription linking tools such as ELAN and CLAN. The workshop materials, consisting of tutorial documents and step-wise exercises can be also downloaded from talkbank.org. Furthermore, two preliminary publications on this topic, The Data Cycle and Transcription Linking Software, can be found in proceedings from a research methods symposium in Osaka (Ikeda & Brandt (eds), 2012). A more substantial article on transcription linking software is currently in review.

INTERNATIONAL WORKPLACE STUDIES
Finally, I am also associated as researcher within the LINGCORP project (Language and Interaction in the Global Corporate Workplace). This research project (funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Culture and Communication) has been tasked to investigate processes of internationalisation in everyday workplace settings, brought about as a result of transnational mobility and cross-border collaboration. LINGCORP applies a range of methodological approaches to examine the implications of the on-going processes of internationalisation on those who operate in these linguistically charged environments. Recent publications include an article for the Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication on language policing in the workplace, and with Janus Mortensen a number of studies on multilingual practices in international settings.

I have recently collaborated on articles with Johannes Wagner (on language classroom interaction) and Janus Mortensen (on language change in lingua franca settings). Currently, I am preparing papers with Mie Femø Nielsen on facilitation in idea development meetings; with Kristian Mortensen on second language classroom interaction; Louise Tranekjær on laughter sequences, and with Sarah Atkins on general practitioner examinations in the UK.

Further information and list of publications can be found on my website here.

PUBLICATIONS

Forthcoming

    • Bringing an object to life – staging representations of object use in naturalistic theatre – Hazel, Spencer (in review) . In Maurice Nevile (Ed.). Knowing things: Objects, Knowledge and Interaction. Routledge
    • Transcription linking software: integrating the ephemeral and the fixed in interaction research – Hazel, Spencer and Janus Mortensen (in review) . Discourse Studies
  • Gestural leitmotifs – tracking body-visual patterning in social interaction – Spencer Hazel (in review). Gesture

2015

    • Lending bureaucracy voice – developing cultural and linguistic norms in transient multilingual communities – Janus Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (forthc., 2015). In Anna Mauranen, Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Svetlana Vetchinnikova (eds.). Changing English: Global and Local Perspectives. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter
    • The Paradox from Within – Research Participants Doing-Being-Observed – Spencer Hazel (2015). Qualitative Research, Online First Link
    • Acting, interacting, enacting – representing medical practice in theatre performance – Spencer Hazel (2015). In Malene Kjær, Jens Lohfert Jørgensen & Anita Holm Riis (eds). Thematic Issue on ‘Health’, Akademisk Kvarter/Academic Quarter. Aalborg: Aalborg University, 12, 44-64 Link (PDF)
    • Institutional identity negotiation in multilingual workplace settings – Spencer Hazel (2015). In Lubie Grujicic-Alatriste (ed.) Linking Discourse Studies to Professional Practice. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Link
    • L2 and L3 integrated learning –lingua franca use in developing an additional language in the classroom – Spencer Hazel and Johannes Wagner (2015). In Paul Seedhouse and Christopher Jenks (eds.) International Perspectives on the ELT classroom interaction. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 149-167 Link (PDF)
  • Identities at odds – embedded and implicit language policing in the internationalized workplace – Spencer Hazel (2015). In Hans J. Ladegaard and Christopher Jenks (eds.) Special Issue: ‘Language and Intercultural Communication in the Workplace: Critical Approaches to Theory and Practice’. Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication, 15(1), 141-160 Link

2014

    • Cultivating objects in interaction – visual motifs as meaning making practices in talk-in-interaction – Spencer Hazel (2014). In Maurice Nevile, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann and Mirka Rauniomaa (eds). Interacting with Objects: Language, materiality, and social activity. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 169-194 Link
    • Special Issue: A body of resources – CA studies of social conduct – Gitte Rasmussen, Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (Eds.), (2014), Journal of Pragmatics, 65 Link
    • Introduction – Spencer Hazel, Kristian Mortensen, & Gitte Rasmussen (2014). In Gitte Rasmussen, Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (eds.) Special Issue: ‘A body of resources – CA studies of social conduct’, Journal of Pragmatics, 65 Link
    • Embodying the institution – object manipulation in developing interaction in study counselling meetings – Spencer Hazel and Kristian Mortensen (2014). In Gitte Rasmussen, Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (eds.) Special Issue: ‘A body of resources -CA studies of social conduct’, Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 10-29 Link
  • Moving into interaction – embodied practices for initiating interactions at a help desk counter – Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (2014). Journal of Pragmatics. 62, 46-67  Link

2013

    • Negotiated exclusion – on the constitution of ‘otherness’ in a multilingual workplace setting – Spencer Hazel and Hartmut Haberland (2013). Working paper for the Workshop on Diversity and Difference in the Contemporary Workplace, Copenhagen Business School, January 31- February 1, 2013  Link (PDF)
  • Kitchen talk – Exploring linguistic practices in liminal institutional interactions in a multilingual university setting – Spencer Hazel and Janus Mortensen (2013). In Hartmut Haberland, Dorte Lønsmann and Bent Preisler (eds.) Language alternation, language choice and language encounter in international education. Dordrecht: Springer.  Link

2012

    • Interactional competence in the institutional setting of the international university – talk and embodied action as multimodal aggregates in institutional interaction – Spencer Hazel (2012). Ph.d. thesis. Roskilde: Roskilde University  Link
    • Transcription linking software: integrating the ephemeral and the fixed in interaction research – Spencer Hazel, Janus Mortensen and Hartmut Haberland (2012). In Ikeda, Keiko and Adam Brandt (eds.) Proceedings for the symposium ‘Challenges and New Directions in the Micro-Analysis of Social Interaction’, Kansai University, Osaka  Link
  • The data cycle – Janus Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (2012). Proceedings for symposium ‘Challenges and New Directions in the Micro-Analysis of Social Interaction’, Kansai University, Osaka  Link

2011

  • Initiating round robins in the L2 classroom – preliminary observations – Kristian Mortensen and Spencer Hazel (2011). Novitas-ROYAL (Research on Youth and Language): 5(1): 55-70   Link (PDF)