7. Finnish Engineers’ Trajectories of Socialisation into Global Working Life: From Language Learners to BELF Users and the Emergence of a Finnish Way of Speaking English

Räisänen, Tiina

doi:10.21832/9781783095100-011

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Pete explicitly frames small talk as a feature that is somewhat foreign for Finns in general. As discussed in Räisänen (2016), this points to Sajavaara and Lehtonen's (1997) study reflecting on a discourse of Finns' national, and stereotypical, perception of themselves as untalkative northerners.…”

Section: Example 9 Oskari (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The examples reveal how the participants establish a clear relationship between nationality, culture and language, which functions as a resource for ascribing identities to oneself and others (see also Räisänen, 2016). Participants' identity work thus emerges as associated with interculturality and discourses of difference and sameness.…”

Section: Example 10 Pete (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This section provides an overview of earlier studies on the participants' identity construction in relation to using English (Räisänen, 2012(Räisänen, , 2013(Räisänen, , 2016Virkkula & Nikula, 2010). This is complemented with a focus on their identities in the framework of interculturality.…”

Section: Language Learner and User Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interestingly, Oskari uses the same strategy as in Example 6: by imagining himself in past situations at home in Finland, Oskari aligns to the identity he ascribes to others, as also being not very keen to speak English. Here he is somewhat hesitant in his orientation ("I guess I don't"), but elsewhere he explicitly constructs the identity of an incompetent speaker, someone who is very reluctant to start speaking it (Räisänen, 2012(Räisänen, , 2013(Räisänen, , 2016Virkkula & Nikula, 2010). This example illustrates discursive work in finding similarities between intercultural encounters abroad and those at home.…”

Section: Example 10 Pete (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The students successfully learnt to use ELF but experienced challenges in socializing with locals due to problems in their language proficiency and language choice (Kalocsai, 2009: 42-43). Virkkula and Nikula's (2010) and Räisänen's (2016) studies on Finnish engineering students' identity construction before and after staying abroad show that as a result of their increased contact with other ELF speakers, students' identities change from EFL learners to ELF users, with national culture an important resource for identity construction. This highlights the constructed nature of culture and identities as situated, fluid and changing, as understood in social constructionism (e.g.…”

Section: Competence Culture and Interculturalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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4. Discursive Identity Work and Interculturality during Blue-Collar Work Practice Abroad: Finnish Engineering Students as Language Learners and Users

Räisänen¹

2019

Study Abroad, Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality

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This chapter addresses foreign language learners' and users' discursive identity work and interculturality in the context of blue-collar work practice abroad. It focuses on Finnish engineering students who were working in Germany with the aim of learning about their field of study. The participants had learnt English as a foreign language at school but had little or no previous knowledge of the local language of the host country. The study aims to find out what discourses the students draw on, how they orient to sameness and difference and what identities they make relevant in these discursive processes. The data used for this study are interviews collected at the beginning and after the students' four to six months' stay abroad and analyzed from a perspective that combines ethnography, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. The findings show that the students' interculturality is connected to language policies and choice, discourses of global and local language, the ability to use one's communicative repertoire, and identity struggles caused by the challenges posed by languages during the stay abroad.

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Section: Example 9 Oskari (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Example 10 Pete (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Language Learner and User Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Example 10 Pete (May 2003)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Competence Culture and Interculturalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

4. Discursive Identity Work and Interculturality during Blue-Collar Work Practice Abroad: Finnish Engineering Students as Language Learners and Users

Räisänen¹

2019

Study Abroad, Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality

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Translingual Practices in Global Business. A Longitudinal Study of a Professional Communicative Repertoire

Räisänen

2018

Translanguaging as Everyday Practice

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This chapter draws on a longitudinal ethnographic study of a Finnish engineer's communicative repertoire that develops in the process of professional migration. The participant first works as a factory intern in Germany, then as a project engineer and project manager in Finland, and latterly as an operations manager in China. Here, repertoire is viewed through dynamic and flexible translingual practices, in which people follow, appropriate and invent norms, combine and shuttle between languages, ways of speaking, semiotic resources and modalities in the transnational work space in order to meet, interact, make meaning and build relationships and, ultimately, do their jobs. The data selected for this chapter provide an overview of the professional's translingual practices in speaking (face-to-face and computer-mediated) and writing at work. The analysis combines temporal and spatial dimensions and demonstrates how the professional communicative repertoire manifests itself through translingual practices, some of which remain in the repertoire over time while others change.

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Towards a Richer Understanding of Language and Identity in the MNC: Constructing Cosmopolitan Identities Through “English”

2023

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Bringing in insights from sociolinguistics, this conceptual paper advances the theorizing on language and identity in the MNC, viewed as socially constructed by individuals in interaction when they cross fluid linguistic and geographical boundaries. We posit that the identities of global business professionals in the MNC are not intrinsically tied to nationality and native language, they are rather cosmopolitan and constructed in interactions in English as the working language (BELF: English as a Business Lingua Franca). We further conceptualize the multilingual MNC as a social constellation – providing the context for processes of identity construction but also shaped by them. We outline three propositions that capture the ways in which BELF contributes to the construction of a cosmopolitan identity on three dimensions (individual, interactional and contextual) in multilingual professional MNC settings. The first one concerns the identification of individuals as participants in BELF interactions drawing from their different linguistic resources, national origins and professions, and previous experiences. The focus in the second one is on BELF interactions that manifest an orientation to both sharedness and difference in skills, knowledge and social relations. The third proposition concerns the MNC context in terms of enabling BELF interactions and being (re)constructed as a social constellation with fluid linguistic and geographical boundaries. We further elaborate on the methodological implications of sociolinguistic and cosmopolitan approaches to IM research on identity in general, and how our propositions could guide future research on language and identity in the MNC in particular.

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7. Finnish Engineers’ Trajectories of Socialisation into Global Working Life: From Language Learners to BELF Users and the Emergence of a Finnish Way of Speaking English

Cited by 7 publications

References 16 publications

4. Discursive Identity Work and Interculturality during Blue-Collar Work Practice Abroad: Finnish Engineering Students as Language Learners and Users

4. Discursive Identity Work and Interculturality during Blue-Collar Work Practice Abroad: Finnish Engineering Students as Language Learners and Users

Translingual Practices in Global Business. A Longitudinal Study of a Professional Communicative Repertoire

Towards a Richer Understanding of Language and Identity in the MNC: Constructing Cosmopolitan Identities Through “English”

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