Linguistic Repertoires and Semiotic Resources in Interaction: A Finnish Manager as a Mediator in a Multilingual Meeting

Abstract

This article examines professional communication in a multilingual meeting in a small company in Finland within ethnographic, sociolinguistic, and discourse analytic frameworks. English is used as a lingua franca by a group of Finnish and Chinese business professionals. The aim is to study how language is used with other semiotic resources to construct meaning in interaction. In particular, with the focus on an individual participant who was the mediator in the meeting, the goal is to analyze participants’ role alignment and interpersonal relationships. The results show that business professionals’ roles are renegotiable in a meeting and by means of language accompanied by embodied actions such as gaze and gestures. The findings also reveal how different languages are used for particular purposes in the meeting.