Merja Pikkarainen

This study analyses the language use of non-native speakers of Finnish and non-native speakers of Russian by exploring the joint activity by two or more participants in authentic conversations. More specifically, the present focus is on word searches, collaborative productions and candidate understandings. Although these structures have been claimed to be similar phenomena, they also have different characteristics. The data of this study consist of approximately 11 hours of naturally occurring conversations in a range of everyday and institutional situations in Finnish and Russian. The methodological framework adopted for this analysis is interactional linguistics, which focusses on analysing the language use in naturally occurring interaction. Interactional linguistics can be defined as a part of linguistics that originates from different types of functional orientations (conversation analysis, functional linguistics, and anthropological linguistics). However, the main analytical t...

of migration to the city was to receive higher education. However, Kyrgyz young people who arrived in the capital but failed to enter the university tended to leave Bishkek, unlike Russian-speaking young people who remained in the city and tried to find jobs. Kyrgyz young people who graduated tended to join the ranks of local bureaucracy and intelligentsia, and formed the basis for the present-day Russified Kyrgyz urban population. Gradually, these Kyrgyz (today they are frequently no longer ‘first generation’ urban) moved closer to ‘Europeans’ in terms of social status, life style, cultural norms, and linguistic behavior. 3. The fieldwork was carried out as part of an international collaborative project ‘Exploring Urban Identities and Community Relations in Post-Soviet Central Asia’ (Leverhulme Trust, the UK, 2007–2012). Empirical base for findings and observations presented in this paper consists of more than 80 in-depth interviews carried out with residents of Bishkek of different nationalities and social/educational backgrounds (Kyrgyz, Russians or representatives of other ethnic groups) in autumn 2008, spring 2011 and autumn 2013.