VAKKI Publications (Dec 2020)
Ruotsinkielisten kirjoittamisen käytänteitä: tapaustutkimus kahdesta yrityksestä Helsingin ja Vaasan seuduilla
Abstract
In this article we present results from a case study of five business professionals and their workplace literacy practices and literacy events. The five interviewees are Swedish-speaking Finns, part of a 5 % minority in Finland, and they live both in the Helsinki capital area and in the Vaasa region. The business professionals work for two anonymized companies: Delta, a global business consultant company, and Zeta, a Scandinavian bank. Our theoretical framework is New literacy studies (Barton 2007/1994). All the interviewees use at least three languages at their work: their mother tongue Swedish, their second language Finnish (both are national languages in Finland), and English. High skills of both national languages are needed to perform the work tasks, and national languages are used more than English. The writing tasks are diverse and connected to the specialized work tasks of each employee, with the exception of e-mails that all interviewees write daily. The language choices are influenced by several factors, among them the language preferences of the recipient and the task at hand. Evidently, the companies have managed to make the best use of the language skills of the interviewees.
