Every day people all over the world go to their workplaces, where they probably have to use at least two and perhaps even more different languages depending on what kind of work they do. English language seems to be especially highlighted in the common workplace, especially if there is business performed internationally. Keeping that in mind, we conducted a small case study looking into the case of a Finnish employee working in a global company.
The person we interviewed is a male individual of Finnish origin, who works in the field of information technology, and his employer is a global company operating in the ICT field. It is no surprise, then, that the English language is used essentially every day at his workplace. Our purpose was to find the ways in which English is used at his place of work, and how the he responds to these interactional situations.
Nowadays workplaces can be very multicultural the employees often share a language that everybody understands. The main driving motivation for using English the interviewee’s workplace appears to be the multinational nature of his work community. The co-workers and other members of the immediate work community of the interviewee are people of several different nationalities, with the most predominant nationalities being Finnish and Indian. Some of the working community speak English as their first language, while others speak it as a second language.
Because of the multicultural nature of the work environment in question here, English is used as the favoured method of spoken communication not only in “casual” daily workplace discourse, but also in meetings. The meetings can be long-distance conferences organized virtually via the Internet that include people from different parts of the world or face-to-face interactions between colleagues who share a physical workplace. We asked him whether the instances of using English differently based on the method of communication, to which he stated that he does not spend a great deal of time thinking over phrases in real-time spoken interactions as the mistakes in live conversation can be corrected on the fly.
The interviewee mentioned that English is used widely also in e-mails when communicating with non-Finnish co-workers. The computer programs that he uses for work, as well as all work-related documentation, are also in English, thus making them accessible to all colleagues. The nature of the field in which the interviewee works in may also be a factor in itself when considering the vast use of the English language. The interviewee mentioned that phrasing and clarity in written communication is more important because he has to think about word choices, phrases, and the overall grammar and structure of the written text carefully before publication in order to avoid misunderstandings.
Codeswitching between Finnish and English is a very common occurrence amongst the Finnish co-workers. The reason for the abundant codeswitching is that the terminology used in the field of IT is mainly in English. The Finnish terminology is not really used since everyone working in the field is familiar with the English versions and it makes learning and using them easier. The relatively fast-paced developments common to the field offer little time for Finnish variants of terms to become standardized, and so the people working in the field of IT use English more often than not.
For more information on the subject and this particular case study, you can read our full-length essay on the topic by clicking HERE
English in Finland 