In a study of features that seem to be typical of children's conversations, 10 Finnish preschool children's conversations were videotaped and audiotaped over a period of 10 hours. The children were taped in conversation, play, fairy tale, and eating situations. Among the findings are that all children enjoy playing with language, but some initiate…

Poor results in organizational communication research may be due to the lack of comparative research, relying instead on small, unrepresentative samples from one or two organizations. Measurement techniques such as the communication audit and the network analysis make possible the comparison of different organizations and the collection of data…

Issues emanating from a workshop, "Broadening the Mind or Reduced Personality: Skills for Increasing Cross-Cultural Awareness," held at the 1990 Jyvaskyla Seminar on Cross-Cultural Communication are discussed. The issues relate to problems that arise when Finnish educators attempt to incorporate training in cross-cultural communication…

Research on spoken discourse that was conducted for three master's theses at the University of Oulu is summarized. The studies were as follows: (1) an examination of linguistic strategies realized in business negotiations, based on an analysis of six recordings of simulated negotiations between eight Finnish engineers and a native speaker of…

Some failure types that occur in cross-cultural interactions are described, mainly from the point of view of Finns and Finland and from primarily anecdotal and "folk theoretical" data. Material from such sources as newspapers, joke collections, proverbs, and student experiences are used as the basis of the discussion. Non-grammatical…

Discusses radio and television programing in Finland by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) and describes programs that have been developed to cover the country's three official languages: Finnish, Swedish, and Saame. Language courses offered by the YLE are described, and the importance of languages in the community is considered. (LRW)