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Auli Hakulinen

Auli Talvikki Hakulinen
Born March 10, 1941, Helsinki

BA 1965 (Finno-Ugristics), licentiate 1971 (General Linguistics), University of Helsinki
PhD 1976 (General Linguistics), University of Turku

Assistant Professor of Finnish 1981–1991, Professor 1991–2006, University of Helsinki
Academy Professor 2001–2004
Research assistant in the text linguistics research group at the Academy of Finland 1974–1977, University of Turku
Visiting researcher at MIT, Spring 1973
General linguistics assistant 1968–1971, University of Helsinki
Research assistant in the Sociological Research Unit at London University 1967–1968
Finnish language teacher, University of Indiana, 1963–1964

Publications, research projects and other scientific activities
Research areas: syntax, text linguistics, women’ studies, conversation analysis, language and interaction analysis

Significant awards and special achievements:
Kristiina Prize 1986
Maikki Frieberg Award 2002
Finnish Cultural Foundation Award 2005
E. J. Nyström Prize 2007

Photo: Kuva-siskot
Written by Auli Hakulinen (Kaija Hartikainen, ed.)
Translated by
Joe McVeigh

My best memories from the University of Helsinki

When it was best, it was group work – this is how I could roughly describe how my academic life has gone on. On the one hand, I am of the kind that enjoys solitude, but on the other, work still goes more smoothly together with another person or more. My actions have been guided, if I dare say so, not so much by ambition as curiosity. I have been curious and restless rather than profound and thorough. But I reckon we need people like me as well; after all, the subject of research is the academic community, not the individual, a fact that Ilkka Niiniluoto emphasised a long time ago.

Members of the research group and a visiting researcher from America, Charles Goodwin, at Auli Hakulinen’s house in the 1980s (Auli’s family album).​
Members of the research group and a visiting researcher from America, Charles Goodwin, at Auli Hakulinen’s house in the 1980s (Auli’s family album).​

When I finally started working at the University of Helsinki, after a series of setbacks and mishaps, it was all very happy at first, though I never found acceptance, not to mention affection, among the old gentlemen of academia. However, I had the liberty of teaching things that had never before been taught in the department but which I found important – new theories of syntax, text analysis, pragmatics and the history of our subject, the Finnish language.

Quite soon I got funding from the Academy of Finland for a research project, in which I asked a group of my students to join. Over time this project was to ‘produce’ not only five doctoral dissertations but eleven children, but above all it was about absorbing a new field of research together with the students.

Auli Hakulinen, the Custos, with Eeva-Leena Seppänen before the latter’s doctoral defence in 1998.​
Auli Hakulinen, the Custos, with Eeva-Leena Seppänen before the latter’s doctoral defence in 1998.​

I have stopped counting all the dissertations of conversation analysis – some might say there are too many. In any case, I have made myself dispensable, for which I am grateful.

In my farewell party, my former students surpassed themselves, as they claimed I had always told them to do. Picture: Arja Lehtonen.​
In my farewell party, my former students surpassed themselves, as they claimed I had always told them to do. Picture: Arja Lehtonen.​

 

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