Abstract

We study the moment-by-moment unfolding of bad news delivery in an unplanned business meeting between two professionals using English as a lingua franca. We aim to show how the negotiation of the valence and meaning of the news creates a place for the situated construction of professional identities and social relations. Applying multimodal conversation analysis supported by ethnographic fieldwork we analyze audio and video recorded data. The findings show how the professionals first collaboratively (re)establish the conditions for the news delivery and then work toward achieving epistemic and emotional congruence through their use of multimodal resources (talk, gaze, gestures, and material objects) and sociocultural and organizational knowledge. This chapter provides insights into professional identity construction as a collaborative accomplishment, and how it is impacted by situational contingencies. The study also illustrates the situated practices by which egalitarian leadership style is enacted by the Nordic manager in the multinational company.