I am a professor of Scandinavian languages, as the field is traditionally known. In fact, professors in the field usually specialise in the Scandinavian language of their country. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian professors mainly all study their respective languages—and in Finland it is commonly Swedish, as it is our second national language.

It seems I have always been inclined towards spoken language research. As a student I was interested in sociolinguistics, and later on pragmatics.

The term of interactional linguistics arose at the turn of the 21st century, when researchers began combining language analyses and social constructs in spoken language. What is meant by the concept is the kind of practically oriented, conversation analysis based language research that became popular with linguists in the 1980s.

While I was a student I had no vision of remaining at the University and becoming a researcher. Perhaps it was only a case of having poor self-awareness. As it turned out, it was the courses that required independent research (and independent thinking!) that were the most rewarding.