Orienting to the language learner role in multilingual workplace meetings

Abstract

Abstract The modern work life is interactionally challenging. For many, work consists of short-term projects executed in transient team combinations. An increasing number of work communities operate in multilingual environments, and many professionals conduct their work in a language which is not their first or strongest. The flux of interactional and linguistic settings in workplaces requires communication practises that acknowledge the difference in the participants’ language skills. In this paper, we explore such practises in a Finnish non-governmental organisation, using Conversation Analysis as our method. We focus on instances in which the professionals explicitly orient to their own or their co-participants’ role as language learners during workplace meetings. The paper aims to determine how this topicalisation is performed and what consequences it has for the construction of the (professional) identity of the second language speaker. The data consist of approximately 40 h of video-recorded meetings with Finnish, Russian and English as the main languages. The analysis reveals that instances where the language learner role is oriented to are usually related to practical questions of choosing the language for the meeting or a sufficiency of linguistic resources to conduct professional activities, yet they can also be used as means to construct one’s professional identity. These instances share certain features, such as prior topicalisation of language issues and the use of contextualisation cues that can help to soften the potentially problematic nature of referring to the (co-participant’s) limitations. The article contributes to our understanding of how to support participation and professional language learning in transient work settings.