Humonen, Kristina (2019) ‘I am in no position to express myself.’ An ethnographic case study of multilingualism at a Finnish food corporation. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Language is at the heart of workplace interactions and has significant implications for lived workplace experiences. Despite the growing body of knowledge on language use in professional contexts and increased visibility outside academia, ‘language-sensitive’ workplace research is still a relatively new orientation in sociolinguistics as well as organisational studies. Both disciplines call for more ethnographic research, especially in understudied low-skilled work settings, to which this project seeks to make a contribution. This is where this thesis positions itself.

The project asks two main questions; 1.) What is the relationship between the official language policy and language practice in the organisation? and 2.) How does access to language resources enable employees to claim positions of power? It argues that hierarchical divisions of labour are reinforced through prevailing migration discourses and official language policies. The research provides new empirical evidence with respect to the processes of workplace in/exclusion by including both social and spatial factors in the analysis, and explores the relationship between language and migrant kitchen workers’ (in)visibility. The study draws on ethnographically collected data from a Finnish multinational food corporation. It combines 5 different datasets from 10 research sites across the corporate hierarchies; i.e. the occupation of participants ranged from the executive managers to dishwashers. In total, the corpus consists of 101 research participants and 151 hours of recorded data in addition to other supplementary material.

The findings suggest that strategic management of language repertoires enables employees to claim positions of power beyond formal hierarchies. This research illustrates the complexity of claiming professional roles and shows how employees’ ‘language skills’ and professional ‘competence’ are intertwined and mutually constitutive. Employees negotiate situated positions of power vertically (management) and horizontally (co-workers). Contrarily, employees with limited proficiency in the local language are in precarious positions. Specifically, the data shows how language can be used as a mechanism for systematic workplace (in/)exclusion, and suggests that issuing ‘linguistic penalties’ on migrant employees can be advantageous for employers. In closing the thesis I will provide a conceptual frame of the factors that influence the professional identity construction of non-native employees, and introduce a revised analytical model (from Angouri and Piekkari, 2018) to guide future research on multilingualism in the workplace.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Multilingualism, Sociolinguistics -- Finland, Multilingual communication, Intercultural communication, International business enterprises -- Employees -- Language
Official Date:	September 2019
Dates:	Date Event September 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Applied Linguistics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) ; Liikesivistysrahasto ; Suomalainen tiedeakatemia
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	ix, 227 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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