Email messages in BELF

To find out how the perceptions about Finnish and Swedish communication were reflected in authentic data, 282 email messages written in BELF by the Finnish and Swedish employees of the paper company were investigated (for details, see Kankaanranta 2006). The analysis was based on the textualisations of 106 requests with a special focus on their directness to find out about the alleged ‘directness’ of the Finns and the nature of impositions to find out about the alleged ‘discussion-orientation’ of the Swedes.

In the data, every second request could be classified as direct, but the Finns were still somewhat more direct than the Swedes. Of all requests made by the Finns, 63% were classified as direct using either imperatives (e.g. Please comment.) or questions (e.g. What do you think?), whereas the Swedes used more indirect forms such as modal initials (e.g. Could you please comment on this?). More interesting than the relative directness of the requests was the fact that both groups used expressions that the other one never used or at any rate used less frequently.

One example of this difference is the use of kindly by the Finns to replace please; the Swedes never used it. Although the data was limited in size, it could be suggested that kindly is transference from the equivalent Finnish adverb ystävällisesti, which is an integral element in Finnish requests. For some Finnish speakers it may come more easily than please, which represents a functional equivalent for the adverb. What may confuse some Finnish speakers is the dictionary translation for please (olkaa hyvä), which is used when offering something, i.e. in the meaning of here you are.

Another example of different usage is that the Swedes clearly used modal initials more than the Finns. To put it simply, when the Finns wrote Please comment on this, the Swedes preferred Could you please comment on this. More research is needed to further explore this difference.

The nature of impositions in the requests did not generate any clear differences between Finns and Swedes. Most of the impositions (63%) called for communication-related activities: contacting people, informing them about something, and delivering something to them. Interestingly, one-fourth of all requests called for comments or opinions about other texts or business issues and was equally distributed among Finns and Swedes (see examples above).

This result seems to suggest that discussion and dialogue were ongoing and extensive in the company and both Finns and Swedes could be described as discussion-oriented. When this characteristic is combined with the fact that first names were frequent in salutations and complimentary closes of the emails, we gain an image of a people-oriented, democratic corporate culture reflected in the actual use of BELF.

To sum up, the authentic email data supported the survey findings only to some degree and the same applies to the authentic meeting data (see Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005).

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