This dissertation examines how intersubjectivity is accomplished in multilingual workplaces under conditions of linguistic diversity and technological mediation. Adopting an ethnomethodological conversation analytic perspective, it analyzes how participants organize meaning-making, participation, and epistemic positioning through the sequential coordination of talk, embodied conduct, and material resources. The data consist of approximately 55 hours of video- and audio-recorded workplace interaction from five workplaces in Sweden and include both unmediated and digitally mediated interactions involving tools such as Google Translate and ChatGPT.

The dissertation comprises three studies. The first investigates how coworkers make linguistic knowledge interactionally relevant in informal peer interaction, showing how such moments reorganize epistemic positioning and membership categories. The second examines smartphone-based translation with Google Translate, demonstrating how participants extend turns across pre-, production-, and post-phases and incorporate processing delays into sequence organization. The third analyzes AI-mediated interpreting with ChatGPT, showing how system outputs become accountable interactional contributions that participants interpret, repair, and assign responsibility for.

Together, the studies show that multilingual workplace communication relies on participants’ collaborative management of linguistic diversity and asymmetry across both unmediated and technologically mediated interactions. Intersubjectivity is secured through adaptive turn management, multimodal coordination within hybrid participation frameworks, and ongoing negotiation of epistemic positioning. The dissertation contributes to EMCA research by examining how sequential organization operates when actions are distributed across human participants and technological systems, and to the research field of Scandinavian languages research by providing detailed analyses of language use and participation in contemporary multilingual workplaces.

This study examines how smartphone-based use of Google Translate reconfigures turn-taking and interactional progressivity in multilingual workplace encounters. Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis, it shows how three-turn sequences (initiation, response, and confirmation) are expanded through pre- and post-phase actions necessitated by digital mediation. These include GT processing delays, interface monitoring, and embodied conduct related to device handling and screen presentation. The analysis demonstrates how participants balance the need for sequential progressivity with the maintenance of intersubjectivity, even when interaction is prolonged by technological constraints. Rather than treating translation-induced pauses as disruptions, participants incorporate them as structurally embedded elements of extended turn construction. By analyzing shared-device (single smartphone) and dual-device (two smartphones) configurations, the study highlights how access, turn visibility, and participation rights are collaboratively managed. These findings contribute to understanding transmodal coordination in digitally mediated communication and offer new insights into the interactional consequences of translation technologies in workplace settings.

This study investigates workplace interactions where peer's linguistic backgrounds are topicalized. Analyzing video recordings of backstage interactions (Goffman, 1959), the research highlights different interactional consequences of topicalizing peers’ native languages and how it results in transformations in participation frameworks and thereby in the situated identities of participants. To address the main aim, the study uses an ethnomethodological conversation analytic approach to examine how participants respond to language-related inquiries, such as “How do you say X in your language?”, and how these inquiries serve as membership inference-rich devices. The findings reveal that topicalizing a peer's language (other than the main medium in the group) can trigger various activity types, including jocular interactions and informal learning. Moreover, the interaction may lead to the display of possible vulnerability, as unfolding talk can position individuals as marginal within the group and thus occasion stance-taking toward that positioning with resistance.