ABSTRACT

Professionals working in international companies in Sweden are expected to speak, read, and write in Swedish and English in their daily work. This article discusses professional writing in different languages. Through the use of methods from linguistic ethnography, we aim to enrich the understanding of workplace literacy by studying writing and texts in multilingual business contexts. Our results show that professionals are expected to navigate between a translanguaging mode and a more monolingual mode in everyday communication. Also, when they opt for producing monolingual texts, literacy practices that surround those texts are often multilingual. Moreover, they imagine a future, secondary audience for their texts, often resulting in the choice of English for reaching out, or in the choice of Swedish as a way of keeping matters local. Knowing when to choose a translanguaging mode or a more monolingual mode is a necessary skill or competence in this type of workplace. Our results also show that the use of multimodal resources includes the material placement of texts, and that old materialities such as pen and paper are still essential. Different linguistic and semiotic resources are used, including resources from academic, business and personal discourse.

摘要

在瑞典的国际公司工作的专业人员应在日常工作中说，读和写瑞典语和英语。本文讨论了不同语言的专业写作。通过使用语言人种学的方法，我们旨在通过在多语言业务环境中研究写作和文本来丰富对工作场所素养的理解。我们的结果表明，在日常交流中，希望专业人员在翻译模式和更讲一种语言的模式之间导航。同样，当他们选择制作单语文本时，围绕这些文本的扫盲实践通常是多语种。此外，他们想象着他们的文字将来会成为第二受众，通常会导致选择英语进行宣传，或者选择瑞典语作为将事务保持在本地的方式。在这种类型的工作场所中，知道何时选择翻译语言模式或更单一的语言模式是必不可少的技能或能力。我们的结果还表明，使用多式联运资源包括文本的实质性放置，而诸如笔和纸之类的旧实质性仍然至关重要。使用了不同的语言和符号资源，包括来自学术，商业和个人话语的资源。