Innovative methods in collaborative research: mediagrams in the study of digital multilingual workplace communication and home-school interaction

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent developments in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics bring with them a need for methodological innovation in the study of multilingual communication in the online/offline nexus. As a response to this, our paper reports from a research project on migrants’ digital interaction to consider how mediagrams can be used for collaborative research in multilingual workplaces and schools. A mediagram is a visual tool used for collaborative data collection and analysis to capture one individual’s digital interaction, and to visualise, in a comprehensible manner, linguistic, digital, and modal resources used by this individual with specific interlocutors. The aim of this paper is to examine how mediagrams can be used to increase the participatory dimension of the sociolinguistic research processes, focusing on biographical dimensions and digital practices. For this purpose, we describe two distinct applications of mediagrams. First, a study of labour migrants’ digitally mediated workplace communication, and second, a study of parent-teacher communication. We discuss these two applications, considering participatory approaches in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, focusing on participants’ conceptions and participation and mediagrams’ methodological potential in post-digital contexts.