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

Abstract

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.