Research

Methodologically, my work is anchored in the qualitative, interpretative and reconstructive methods of empirical social research. I consider the interview or survey (as the most common type of data) to be a suitable method for the exploration of a new field of research and for the investigation of the consciousness and subjective perspectives of respondents in order to reconstruct perceptions, attributions and everyday typifications. The fact that interview analyses can reach their limits and that a methodological extension in the form of ethnographic field research or mixed methods is required was already evident in my dissertation on German-Ukrainian business communication. The aim of the thesis was to uncover central communicative problems in the intercultural business environment and to describe and explain cultural communication and action patterns of German and Ukrainian actors. While the interviews only brought to light topics on the level of linguistic awareness, ethnographic research lasting several months in a German-Ukrainian working context revealed structural conditions and power relations, interests and cultural patterns. In this context, communication processes and culturalizations took place that had a significant impact on the success of the company.

In view of globalization, migratory movements, differentiation and increasing complexity, and under the premise that cultures should not be understood as homogeneous entities but as heterogeneous, complex and interactive structures in constant negotiation processes, woven into equally constructed and fluid socio-political contexts, an interactionist and constructivist approach in the form of the survey of ‘natural’ interactions and complex ethnographic research is indispensable. In ethnography, two aspects are particularly important to me: 1) fundamental reflexivity of the research or the researcher in the field and 2) the free application of the entire spectrum of methods of empirical social research in the collection of field-related data. Dealing with such complexity in the data corpus is certainly a challenge.

In my research I methodically combine interactional sociolinguistics and interpretative conversation analysis with methods of social science hermeneutics, ethnography, the “understanding” interview, and video and image analysis. The principles of grounded theory are always in the foreground.