Haasteita ja onnistumisia – suomalaisen insinöörin ajan myötä rakentuva viestintärepertuaari
Nyckelord:
sociolinguistics, work environment, English as a lingua franca, interviewAbstract
The role of English as the lingua franca in working life is undisputed. Earlier studies on Finnish workplace contexts have provided valuable information about the kind of English that is used and how employees themselves think about the use of English at work (e.g. Louhiala-Salminen, Charles & Kankaanranta 2005; Alatalo 2006; Virkkula 2008; Huhta 2010; Louhiala-Salminen & Kankaanranta 2011). As professionally educated people move to global working life from educational contexts, the challenges of using English at work may be surprising and unexpected – suddenly they should be able to do their job in English, but cannot understand the colleague’s accent or use their whole repertoire in face-to-face communication. A professionally educated person also has to find ways to solve problems and communicate with people from various cultural backgrounds in computer-mediated communication. This article focuses on such challenges faced by a young Finnish engineer and discusses the implications of the findings for language education.
