This article shows how supervisors and students use cognitive verbs such as think or know
in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish supervision meetings. Drawing on
the research framework of variational pragmatics, we highlight
similarities and differences between the use of cognitive verbs in the
Sweden-Swedish and the Finland-Swedish interactions. Our data consist of
ten video- and/or audio-recorded supervision meetings, five from each
country. The analysis shows that supervisors in both data sets use
cognitive verbs in order to modify the strength and directness of their
feedback. One difference is that while the Finland-Swedish supervisors
tend to mitigate their on-going feedback through references to the past,
e.g. jag tyckte ‘I thought’, the Sweden-Swedish supervisors do
similar interactional work by using more neutral verbs when expressing
an opinion, e.g. tänker ‘think expressing thought’ instead of tycker
‘think expressing opinion’. The students in both the Sweden-Swedish and
the Finland-Swedish supervision meetings use cognitive verbs e.g. when
describing their writing process. A difference, however, is that the
Sweden-Swedish students to a higher extent than the Finland-Swedish
students use cognitive verbs to deliver supportive feedback, while the
Finland-Swedish students more frequently than their Sweden-Swedish peers
do so when reporting their own thoughts and opinions about the text.