Kuka sinä on? Tutkimus yksikön 2. persoonan käytöstä ja käytön variaatiosta suomenkielisissä arkikeskusteluissa

This dissertation examines the second person singular, focusing on the variation of its use in Finnish everyday conversations. In what ways are the second person singular forms employed in turns-at-talk, and how do they affect the ongoing interaction and the participation framework of the speech situation? The data come from the Arkisyn corpus, a morphosyntactically annotated database of conversational Finnish that includes data from approximately 30 hours of conversation. The theoretical and methodological approach is anchored in interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and dialogism. The study is primarily qualitative but combines that approach with quantitative methods.

In Finnish, the second person singular can be expressed through the second person pronoun, verbal person marking, or the possessive suffix, forms that are often used to refer to the addressee. This dissertation shows, however, that second person singular forms can also be used in fixed expressions (e.g., tietsä ‘(do) you know’) or to create open reference, so that they do not refer exclusively to the addressee, but rather describe interpersonal or generic experiences or states of affairs. These forms may also be ambiguous in that, in their immediate context of use, multiple interpretations of the meaning of the second person singular form are simultaneously possible.

The categorization of different usages of the second person singular forms in the data is based on contextual features, including the sequential positioning of the second person singular expression, the composition of the turn containing the expression, and the prosodic and bodily cues related to the composition as well as on the responses that follow the turn containing the expression. The study shows that it is crucial to take the social activity into account when distinguishing and categorizing the different usages of the second person singular forms.

The study reveals that, in addition to referring to and addressing the recipient, the second person singular forms can be employed to describe personal and subjective thoughts or events as well as to share potentially mutual experiences that the speaker expects to be recognizable by the other participants. This dissertation’s central finding is that, in all its usages, the second person singular form is an index of recipiency, creating a dialogic and interactional space in its context of use. With the help of the second person singular, the current speaker may change the participation framework of the speech situation and recruit the other conversational par ticipants to engage in the interaction in various ways. Moreover, the study shows that the second person singular forms are commonly used in contexts in which the participants make their own action understandable to others in the course of the
interaction.

These results regarding the variation in the use of the second person singular forms complement earlier research on personal reference in Finnish everyday conversation. Furthermore, the study contributes to the discussion of the dialogicality of human interaction and shows that grammatical forms play an important role in creating intersubjectivity among participants.