intercultural encounters; language ideologies; learning ‘in the wild’; linguistic asymmetries; multimodal conversation analysis

Maria Frick, University of Oulu
Niina Lilja, Tampere University
Ad Backus, Tilburg University

While the epistemic, deontic and linguistic positions of participants in human interaction are never completely equal, multilingual interactions may involve linguistic or cultural asymmetries that present special challenges for intersubjectivity. These asymmetries are made visible through discourse analytical methods, paying attention to how speakers construct and reflect beliefs and ideologies about language, interaction, and cultures. At the microlevel, conversation analysts examine video-recorded real-life interactions to find out, for instance, how participants orient to language skills in one another or to troubles in understanding, and the means they use to build intersubjectivity.
This thematic section brings together studies of interviews that reveal the ideologies and concurrent ways of speaking that influence social involvement by multilinguals and studies of video recorded interactional situations that show how the use of different languages (multilingualism) by participants intertwines with gestures, touch, gaze, and other bodily means (multimodality). By bringing together discourse and conversation analytic frameworks and multimodal and usage-based linguistic analysis, both how people interact in real life situations and what their thoughts and underlying ideologies are regarding those interactions will be examined. Among other questions, the following will be addressed:

The thematic section includes studies from two research projects: Co-designing social interactions in everyday life (Tampere University, 2017–2020) and Linguistic and bodily involvement in multicultural interactions (University of Oulu, 2019–23), funded by the Emil Aaltonen foundation and the Academy of Finland respectively. The short presentations are followed by a general discussion.

Presentations: