OKAY as a content word : Regulating language and constructing centres of norms in Finnish, Finland-Swedish, and Sweden-Swedish academic writing consultation meetings

• The focus of this article is on OKAY as a resource for regulating language and constructingnorm centres in authentic consultation meetings related to academic writing and recordedin Finland and Sweden. It gives an overview of all occurrences of OKAY in theinteractional data in question, revealing that the word occurs frequently in academicwriting consultations in Finnish, Finland Swedish, and Sweden Swedish. There aresimilarities in the frequency of its use and the distribution of occurrences betweencounsellor and student in the Finnish and the Finland-Swedish data, whereas the SwedenSwedish counselling interactions follow a slightly different pattern. Through the lens ofconversation analysis and systemic–functional linguistics, we further demonstrate how thecounsellors and the students use the evaluative content word OKAY as a resource forregulating both academic writing and the counselling interaction, and thereby positionthemselves epistemically and orient towards different centres of norms.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

academic writing; centres of norms; conversation analysis; epistemic positioning; language regulation; okay as a content word; systemic–functional linguistics; writing consultation

Linguistics

lingvistik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)