Description
Ursula Ritzau FHNW School of Education, Switzerland Marta Kirilova University of Copenhagen, Denmark Charlotte Øhrstrøm University of Copenhagen, Denmark L2 users’ 'fitting in' in occupational and educational contexts This paper addresses the concept of linguistic and cultural ‘fitting in’ in three different datasets in which Danish is used as an L2. It draws on postmodern interactional approaches to identity, culture and learning with inspiration from Bourdieu’s habitus, Goffman’s stigma, and Van Lier’s affordances. The first dataset consists of job interviews with immigrants and newcomers to Denmark; the second dataset represents interviews with and audio self-recordings of international employees in a Danish company; the third dataset consists of learning journals and audio recordings from Swiss university students learning Danish as part of their study programme. On the basis of this relatively large corpus of written and interactional data, the aim of our paper is to conceptualize the notion of fitting in by examining what skills (linguistic as well as socio-cultural) users of Danish as L2 are expected to have in order to fit into relevant occupational and educational contexts. We focus primarily on opportunities to listen to and practice Danish, use of different foreign languages as stepping stones for learning Danish and negotiation of socio-pragmatic competence. Through integrating the concept of fitting in into three datasets, our paper contributes to understanding how L2 speakers negotiate identities in a variety of contexts. Empirically, it casts light on L2 speakers’ experiences and needs in relation to specific professional environments, which is significant for developing training programmes and educational resources. Theoretically, it feeds into current discussions of the notion of fitting in by illuminating differences and similarities in a range of settings.| Period | Nov 2016 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Købehavn, DenmarkShow on map |