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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 663

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

Interaction, Pragmatics and Variation in Pluricentric Languages. A comparative study of communicative patterns in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish

Authors: Wide, Camilla (1); Lindström, Jan (2); Nilsson, Jenny (3); Norrby, Catrin (4)
Submitted by: Wide, Camilla (University of Turku, Finland)

In our project Interaction, Pragmatics and Variation in Pluricentric Languages, we investigate similarities and differences in communicative patterns in Sweden Swedish and Finland  Swedish. By using variational pragmatics (Schneider & Barron 2008) as our theoretical point of departure and Conversational Analysis (CA), interactional linguistics and ethnography of communication as analytical tools, we describe interaction and communicative patterns in institutional encounters in the domains service, education and health care. In this paper we show results from two pilot studies conducted within the project.

In cross-language communication, speakers of different first languages are often aware of the potential cross-cultural miscommunication their different linguistic backgrounds might cause, while interlocutors who speak the same language, but who belong to different speech communities are not as likely to be prepared for any communicative failure. So far, there has been very little research into how national varieties of pluricentric languages (e.g. German, French and Dutch) differ in terms of interactional and communicative patterns as a result of their use in different societies.

In our paper we show the breadth of pragmatic differences between the national varieties of Swedish by focusing on how a transaction is introduced in service encounters, how praise and criticism are formulated and received in university supervision meetings and how interpersonal orientations are manifested in medical consultations. In service encounters there is a greater tendency towards more formal address and greeting in Finland Swedish, and some pragmatic formats like self-introductions in institutional telephone calls follow patterns which are more typical of Finnish than of Swedish (Norrby, Wide, Lindström & Nilsson in press.). In university supervision meetings, the Sweden Swedish supervisor tends to treat criticism as something problematic and hedges instructions on how to change passages in the students’ work by the use of discourse particles, adverbs, jokes and laughter. Also, the supervisor generally uses generic forms of address when delivering criticism and more direct forms when giving praise. The Finland-Swedish supervisor, on the other hand, does not seem to treat criticism as something problematic. She uses more direct address in passages of criticism and does not hedge in the same way as the Sweden-Swedish supervisor. Interpersonal orientations in Finland Swedish doctor–patient interaction show, again, more formal patterns of address and the feedback tokens differ from those that are typically used in Sweden Swedish.

References:

Norrby, Catrin, Wide, Camilla, Lindström, Jan & Nilsson, Jenny. In press. Finland Swedish as a non-dominant variety of Swedish – extending the scope to pragmatic and interactional aspects. In R. Muhr (ed.), Non-dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages. Getting the Picture. In Memory of Michael Clyne. Wien et al.: Peter Lang Verlag.

Schneider, Klaus P. & Barron, Anne (eds.) 2008. Variational pragmatics. A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.