RESEARCH

Formally trained in both Linguistics and Sociology, I am an interdisciplinary scholar of language and social life. In the broadest sense, my research explores how humans use the resources of language to make sense with one another, and to make sense of one another, in social interaction.

I typically divide my research agenda into three broad, overlapping areas, which I describe in greater detail in the sections below:

  1. Basic Structures of Human Social Interaction

  2. Language in Institutional Contexts

  3. Language in the lives of LatinX and Spanish Speakers (especially in the U.S.)

These do not represent discrete research ‘projects’, but rather themes that I recurrently revisit in my work. Some recent publications are highlighted as examples below, but see CV & Publications for a complete listing.

Some newly forthcoming publications across these research areas include:

  • Raymond, Chase Wesley. (Frth.). Code-Switching, Agency, and the Answer Possibility Space of Spanish-English Bilinguals. In Galina B. Bolden, John Heritage, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen (Eds.), Polar Answers. John Benjamins.

  • Hoey, Elliott M., and Chase Wesley Raymond. (Frth.). Racist Renditions: Mock Language in Interaction. In Nadja Tadic and Hansun Waring (Eds.), Critical Conversation Analysis. Multilingual Matters.

  • Gubina, Alexandra, Barbara A. Fox, and Chase Wesley Raymond. (Frth.). What to do next: Comparing ‘should I’ and ‘do you want me to’ in joint activities in American English. In Margret Selting and Dagmar Barth-Weingarten (Eds.), New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research. John Benjamins.

  • Fafulas, Stephen, Chase Wesley Raymond, and Michael Woods. (Frth.). La variación fonológica del español hondureño. In Manual Díaz-Campos and Juan M. Hernández-Campoy (Eds.), Enciclopedia Concisa de los Dialectos del Español (ENCODES). Blackwell.

 

Image from a Spanish-language news interview analyzed in Raymond (2022), where the Interviewee refers to the Interviewer (named Ana) as “Anita”, using a diminutive.

Figure from Enfield, et al. (2019), comparing rates of interjection vs. repetition answer types across 14 languages.

Images from Thompson, Fox & Raymond (2021) on how participants design proposals during joint activities. Here, while painting a table with four friends, Leo makes a vocal proposal, accompanied by a pointing gesture.

[1] Basic Structures of Human Social Interaction

As a conversation analyst and interactional linguist, I am interested in the fundamental practices, mechanisms, and structures that participants make use of as they move through social interaction with one another. My primary focus in this area seeks to understand how interactants produce and understand particular grammatical practices in the service of communicative aims, in addition to how these practices intersect with social identities, norms, relations, and inequalities. In this area, I work most intimately with data involving monolingual speakers of English and of Spanish, as well as bilingual Spanish-English speakers. Recent research has explored:

Language, norms, and normativity (esp. concerning gender, sexuality, regional, and dialectal identities)

Question and answer design

Morphological structures (including address terms: tú, vos, usted)

Specific linguistic particles & constructions

Specific conversational actions

‘Mimi & Eunice’ cartoon, which happens to reflect some of Heritage, Raymond & Drew’s (2019) findings on the design of apologies.

[2] Language in Institutional Contexts

In addition to exploring features of basic human social interaction, I am also interested in how language and interactional practices intersect with objectives and outcomes in various institutional contexts. To name but a few settings reflected in my prior published work, I have examined call-ins to a bilingual radio station, shoe-repair-shop transactions, 911 emergency service calls, FIFA Women’s World Cup broadcast commentary, primary and secondary care medical consultations, and hearings of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Particularly in the case of governmental and service-based institutions like medicine, a constant guiding interest for me is the identification of ‘best practices’ for serving members of the public. This routinely leads me to consider issues of language-based inequalities, especially in the case of U.S. Spanish speakers, which I describe in greater detail in the section below.  

Some of my past research in this area includes:

Some current, in-progress research in this area includes:

  • I’m working with colleagues at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus on a project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), concerning weight management in primary medical care consultations—called ‘PATHWEIGH’. Caroline Tietbohl and I are taking the lead on examining video recordings of clinician-patient consultations. To learn more about the project, check out:

    PATHWEIGH, Pragmatic weight management in adult patients in primary care in Colorado, USA: Study protocol for a stepped wedge cluster randomized trial. (Suresh, et al., 2022, in Trials)

  • With Ana Cristina Ostermann (UNISINOS, Brazil) and Paul Drew (University of York, UK), we are examining obstetric and gynecological consultations with low-SES patients in Brazil.

Questioning during the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, analyzed in Raymond, et al. (2019). (Photo taken from the BBC, 2018)

Image of FIFA Women’s World Cup announcers (Jorge Pérez Navarro & Andrea Rodebaugh), from collaborative work with Holly R. Cashman (2014, 2021) on gender & institutional identities in U.S. Spanish sports broadcasting discourse.

[3] Language in the lives of LatinX and Spanish Speakers (especially in the U.S.)

Encompassing both of the prior two categories is my work with LatinX folks and Spanish speakers, especially in the southwestern United States (and in Southern California, specifically). Despite not being designated an ‘official’ Spanish-speaking country, the U.S. has more Spanish speakers than any other country in the world, with the exception of Mexico. I am interested in all aspects of the ‘linguistic life’ of these individuals and their communities—from mundane conversational contexts and practices, to those occurring in institutional settings. My research across these contexts routinely highlights issues of identity and group membership, language/dialect contact, as well as (especially in institutional contexts) language rights and language access.