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Building on Linguistically Exclusive Talk: Access, Participation, and Progressivity in a Multinational Military Staff

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Complexity of Interaction

Abstract

This chapter analyses how officers training to work in a multinational military staff orient to challenges caused by a lack of access to what their colleagues are saying, due to their conversing in a language they do not speak nor understand. The study uses conversation analysis to investigate situations where non-Finnish-speaking officers ascribe meaning to Finnish-language talk. The analyses examine the aspects of the prior talk the non-Finnish-speakers were able to interpret, the available semiotic resources these interpretations could be based on, and the next actions these turns achieve or make possible. The data consist of audio–video recordings made in the tactical operations centre (TOC) of a multinational brigade during an international computer-aided crisis management exercise.

The first author is responsible for identifying the research questions, conducting the analysis, and preparing the manuscript. The data for this research was collected by Pentti Haddington and Antti Kamunen who, through joint agreement, will be listed as authors in all studies emerging from the dataset in question.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See e.g., https://puolustusvoimat.fi/web/fincent/-/the-viking-18-exercise-brings-170-participants-to-santahamina-finland or https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/en/activities/exercises/viking-18/.

  2. 2.

    This exchange is also analysed, in Finnish, in an earlier study by Haddington et al. (2021), which focuses on different code-switching practices within the TOC. The participants’ talk and embodied conduct have been re-transcribed for the purposes of this chapter.

  3. 3.

    In all the graphic transcripts, the participants’ talk in the speech bubbles is presented in a simplified manner compared to the Jeffersonian transcripts that follow. Overlapping talk is indicated with overlapping speech bubbles, and all talk that is originally spoken in Finnish but has been translated to English for the comic strips is indicated by placing it inside arrowhead symbols, for example: ˂what?˃.

  4. 4.

    In Finnish, the nominative case interrogative pronoun “mikä” is semantically narrower than the partitive case interrogative pronoun “mitä”. Both translate into English as “what”, but only “mitä” functions as an open class repair initiator, whereas “mikä” is used in repair initiations concerning specific nouns and noun phrases (Haakana et al. 2016).

  5. 5.

    It is shared knowledge within the TOC that DEP does not understand Finnish, cf. Excerpt 3.

  6. 6.

    What DEP had written is not visible in the data at this particular time, but usually that corner has been reserved for phone numbers for certain key personnel or, on the other side of the board, the TOC’s lunch break cycle.

  7. 7.

    An analysis of the same exchange has been previously presented in a study by Haddington, Kamunen, and Siipo (2021), in which the focus was on the participants’ code-switching practices. The participants’ talk and embodied conduct has been re-transcribed for the purposes of this chapter.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all the exercise participants, especially the TOC personnel, for letting us get a glimpse of their important and valuable work. We also thank FINCENT, the Finnish and Swedish Defence Forces, and the Finnish National Defence University for their help and support. Special thanks to Antti Siipo from the LeaF infrastructure, who worked as our technician in the data collection process and has provided invaluable help with compiling and post-editing the data.

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (decision number 322199).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Antti Kamunen & Pentti Haddington

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  1. Antti Kamunen
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  2. Pentti Haddington
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Correspondence to Antti Kamunen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Pentti Haddington

  2. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Tiina Eilittä

  3. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Antti Kamunen

  4. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Laura Kohonen-Aho

  5. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Iira Rautiainen

  6. Languages and Literature, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Anna Vatanen

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Kamunen, A., Haddington, P. (2023). Building on Linguistically Exclusive Talk: Access, Participation, and Progressivity in a Multinational Military Staff. In: Haddington, P., Eilittä, T., Kamunen, A., Kohonen-Aho, L., Rautiainen, I., Vatanen, A. (eds) Complexity of Interaction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0_6

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