Graduate Researcher Series: an Interview with Pip Mackey

Valeria Morelli

Pip is a third-year PhD candidate in the School of Language and Linguistics. Her research examines how personal care assistants from non-English speaking background and older people in the Australian aged care setting communicate with each other and build a rapport.

Valeria spoke to Pip about her doctoral research and her past and future projects.

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Hi Pip, thank you for taking the time to speak with me. To start us off, can you tell me a bit about your research project? 

When I explain it to the general public, I would say I research how personal carers from non-English speaking backgrounds interact with older people in Australian aged care homes. What I’m particularly looking at is the tension that they have in their jobs, because they need to both interact on a very practical level, I call this transactional talk, and on a relational level as well. So I am looking at how they incorporate interpersonal communication with practical talk.

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How did you get to this topic? 

My work before my PhD was largely working as an EAL teacher, it was through that English language teaching to migrants to Australia that I started to come across personal carers who needed to develop their English to further their careers in personal or aged care. I was very interested in the fact that their grammatical language was not particularly advanced, but their pragmatic language skills were really good. 

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That’s interesting! What was the data-collecting process like?

I have data that I collected from another project that I worked on before I did my PhD. It was this project that bridged my Master’s where I did my minor thesis in second language pragmatics. I received a grant from the Victorian Government through the Education Department to develop a training kit for personal carers who speak English as an additional language to develop pragmatic language skills to help them connect with older people in aged care homes. I collected interviews with personal carers, their managers, their senior staff and people who train them, to look at what communication skills training they needed and the areas where they communicate the most. Then I went out with a colleague and we did observation in the workplace, note taking, before recruiting personal carers who were nominated as being really good at their jobs and don’t speak English as a first language. We collected recordings of them interacting with older people. Once I’d collected this data, we turned those recordings into short training films and other training materials.

But the big thing was coming back to the linguistic insights, to the pragma-linguistic and socio-pragmatic tools that we use. This project was called “The Little Things.” It’s really resonated with people I’ve trained using it. They go, “Yeah, it is those little things that make a difference.” So for me, I’m looking at: what are those little linguistic tools that we use? Even those “Hmm,” “Uh-huh,” “Really?” things to show that we’re listening or how we use a person’s name and when we use a person’s name and how we transition from having a little social chat to “Right now I’m going to get you ready for the shower.”

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How did you move from that project to your PhD research?

Now I’m largely just working with the recordings of those interactions and I’m narrowing in on how the personal carers and how the older people use directives. By saying directives I mean how they recruit the cooperation of the other. Both the personal carer and the older person do it quite a lot, but they do it differently and so they’ll word it differently, so I’m looking at what that is showing us about entitlement and contingency. I’ve certainly always been interested in how they formulate requests for action and how they might mitigate it. For instance, what kind of words they might use to soften it or make it seem less of an intrusion, and that comes back to my concept of little words again.

The other side of my research interest is the older person’s complaints and troubles talk. These also link to directives and I think it has to do with entitlement. If you complain and you’re in a position of entitlement, then you can expect some degree of an offer for service or action to follow. There’s that sort of implication in those complaints, but there’s also an intimacy to them. The carer to older person relationship can be very intimate and I’m also looking at what they are doing that builds the relationship and the rapport that’s entwined into practical talk.

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Do you plan to develop some other training material from your research? 

Well, the good thing is my research has validated the training materials we have already developed, which is a relief. But there’s certainly plenty of scope to do more training work in training material development, which is what I’m quite passionate about. I’d definitely like to work more in that field.

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Do you have any advice for first-year PhD students? 

Well, I remember when we started lots of people saying, “Make friends with your cohort.” And I totally agree with that advice, I think that really helps. There’s nothing like talking about your troubles and difficulties and supporting each other in that to bond you with some of your first-year colleagues. It helps to connect when you know that everybody is in the same boat.

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I totally agree. What would you say is the biggest challenge that you have encountered so far?

I think working towards confirmation is your big challenge in your first year. And then the big challenge after that was getting back to the PhD and going, “Oh, right, I haven’t finished it!” So, my advice would be: have a real plan of exactly what you’re going to do straight after your confirmation.  

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That’s great advice! Finally, to end on a positive note, what’s your favourite memory of your PhD so far? 

I like coming to campus to work. I think it really is a good thing. And I think again it comes back to that interaction with other people that you study with.

Thank you, Pip. It was great chatting with you and learning more about your research!

Thank you, Valeria.