Patricia O. Covarrubias

In whatever context, the impetus for my research is to yield results that improve institutional (and other) contexts so that our world can benefit more productively from our human socio-cultural distinctiveness. My research passions are driven by my desire for my son and other people’s sons and daughters to enjoy a world rich with social inclusivity and justice, peaceful living, and fruitful multicultural experience.

Research:

I completed my Ph.D. program at the University of Washington in June 1999 where I specialized in cultural/intercultural communication. Working on a graduate degree was one of the most enriching experiences in my life. I learned a lot about my field, myself, and about the connection between the two. Since that time, my research has focused on understanding and describing how indigenous culture influences peoples’ ways of communicating and vice versa, and on describing how culturally grounded communicative practices reflect and create a unique life for groups of people. Ultimately, I am interested in studying the influence of culture within the activities and events of everyday life, with particular interest in, but not limited to, organizational contexts. My research goals include contributing to: cultural and intercultural communication, language in social interaction, racialized communication, the much understudied activity of communicative silence, and ethnographic approaches.

Past projects

At a construction site in Veracruz

My past research includes a book investigating the communication practices of Mexican construction workers in Veracruz, Mexico, and the ways they used these practices to create and maintain relational alignments that in turn were used to create and maintain networks of workplace cooperation

Current projects

• Some of my current research involves inquiry into American Indian silences and their generative aspects. My recent work also involves combining interpretive and critical approaches to address what I call “masked silence sequences” or discriminatory silences as enacted in college classrooms. Another project involves the abstraction of a definition of “academic success” on behalf of American Indian college students.

• A trip to Denmark during summer 2008 represents my continuing effort to probe into fresh areas for inquiry. This project embraces the controversial social phenomenon of Danish women converting to Islam, particularly as such conversions affect communication in general and communication in the workplace. This contemporary Danish debate offers a locus of study for broader understandings about the discursive power of religious conversions and their impact on organizational life. This topic further can serve to investigate women’s power to exercise agency in the construction of their own cultural and intercultural identities in ways that challenge traditional feminisms and feminist theories.

• Because my research commitments include continuing work with Mexican/Hispanic/Latina(o)/Chicana(o) ways of communicating, potential new directions consist of inquiry into the emotional impact of undocumented immigration on Mexican mothers of young children. This project would help address the complicated effects of a contemporary social problem that affects the health, health care, and clinical practices enacted in New Mexican communities.

• I am working with Judith White on a study focused on identifying the communication preferences of New Mexico legislators.