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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 475

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Talk-about-language as discursive practice in formal bilingual meetings

Authors: Koskela, Merja (1); Vik-Tuovinen, Gun-Viol (2)
Submitted by: Koskela, Merja (University of Vaasa, Finland)

Finland is a bilingual country with Finnish and Swedish (5.4 % of the population) as the national languages. Therefore, some of the administrative organs function bilingually. The present study focuses on the discursive practices of negotiating the choice of language in formal bilingual meetings. We define formal bilingual meetingas a meeting where Finnish and Swedish are spoken and where the meeting documents are provided in two languages. In the meeting the chair as well as officials and other experts normally use both languages, whereas participants may use their own mother tongue. (See Language Act 423/2003.) Our aim is to explore how the participants of such meetings comment on language use and what functions this kind of talk serves in the meeting context. Interactions between Finnish and Swedish-speaking meeting-participants that overtly deal with aspects of language use in a bilingual setting are analyzed. The term discursive practice refers to the implicit and explicit rules and conventions that govern what people are allowed and expected to do in specific roles or relationships. They regulate how people think, act, and speak in certain social positions. (See e.g. Gee 1990; Fairclough 2000.)

Our material consists of recordings of formal bilingual meetings: meetings of the city council of the city of Vaasa and meetings of the Regional Co-operation Group of Ostrobothnia (MYR) in the bilingual region of western Finland. Vaasa has a Swedish-speaking minority of 25 %, while the region as a whole has a bare majority of Swedish speaking inhabitants. The MYR Group is responsible for the national administration of EU structural fund programs in the region. The council meetings and the MYR meetings are both conducted as bilingual meetings. However, simultaneous interpreting service is provided during the council meetings but not during the MYR meetings.

This study is part of a larger research project launched in 2010, Bilingualism and multicultural Finland – best practices and future challenges for professional discourse. In line with Levine (2009), we call the phenomenon studied Talk-about-language. According to Levine (2009: 33), language can be a dedicated topic of conversation, a part of an ongoing conversation or a marker of a shift in the direction of conversation. Our results indicate that Talk-about-language occurs especially when the chair exercises language brokering and when the normal bilingual conventions are broken. Each social setting is bound with its own conventions, and all language use reflects these conventions. We believe that negotiating the conventions of language use reveals unspoken features of bilingual social settings. 

Literature:

Fairclough, N. (2000). Language and power (2nd ed.). New York: Longman.

Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in discourse. London: Falmer.

Language Act (423/2003). Available: http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/2003/ en20030423.pdf. Cited: 23.1.2012

Levine, G. S.  (2009). L2 Learner Talk-about-Language as Social Discursive Practice. L2 Journal, Volume 1, 19-41.