Multilingualism at Work

Multilingualism at Work
Author: Bernd Meyer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 902721929X

This volume focuses on work situations in Europe, North America and South-Africa, such as academic, medical and public sector, or business settings, in which participants have to make constant use of more than one language to cooperate with partners, clients, or colleagues. Central questions are how the social and linguistic organization of work is adapted to the necessity of using different languages and how multilingualism impinges on the communicative outcome of different types of discourse or genres. Thus, the authors are all interested in multilingual practices 'at work', which is to say how different forms of multilingual communication are managed, flexibly adjusted to, acquired, and/or improved in a given workplace setting that often calls for particular implicit or explicit language policies. Thus, this volume contributes to the study of workplace communication in a globalized world by drawing on different types of authentic data.

The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace

The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace
Author: François Grin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2011-01-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136978283

This book proposes a path-breaking study of the economics of multilingualism at work, proposing a systematic approach to the identification and measurement of the ways in which language skills and economic performance are related. Using the instruments of economic investigation, but also explicitly relating the analysis to the approaches to multilingualism at work developed in the language sciences, this interdisciplinary book proposes a systematic, step-by-step exploration of the issue. Starting from a general identification of the linkages between multilingualism and processes of value creation, it reviews the contributions of linguistics and economics before developing a new economic model of production in which language is taken into account. Testing of the model using data from two countries provides quantitative estimations of the influence of multilingualism on economic processes, showing that foreign language skills can make a considerable contribution to a country’s GDP. These findings have significant implications for language policy and suggest strategies helping language planners to harness market forces for increased effectiveness. A technical appendix shows how the novel technical and statistical procedures developed in this study can be generalized, and applied wherever researchers or decision makers need to identify and measure the value of multilingualism.

Preparing Teachers to Work with Multilingual Learners

Preparing Teachers to Work with Multilingual Learners
Author: Meike Wernicke
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1788926129

This collection examines a diverse range of approaches to multilingualism in teacher education programmes across Europe and North America. The authors investigate how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts and discuss the key features of current pre-service teacher education initiatives that address the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity evident in classrooms in their respective countries. The focus is not only on migrant-background learners but includes students from Indigenous, autochthonous and heritage language backgrounds, and speakers of minoritised regional varieties. The chapters contextualise, both historically and ideologically, the specific initiatives and measures taken in the participating countries. They also reveal the complexity of each educational context and the role that history, language policies and institutional and programmatic priorities play in the development and implementation of a multilingual focus in teacher education. In exploring how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts, the authors take a critical view of how multilingualism itself is conceptualised within and across contexts. The book highlights the valuable impact that explicit instruction on theories of multilingualism, pedagogies in multilingual classrooms and lived realities of multilingual children can have on the beliefs and practices of pre-service teachers.

Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication

Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication
Author: Peter Auer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 606
Release: 2008-09-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311019855X

This volume is an up-to-date, concise introduction to bilingualism and multilingualism in schools, in the workplace, and in international institutions in a globalized world. The authors use a problem-solving approach and ask broad questions about bilingualism and multilingualism in society, including the question of language acquisition versus maintenance of bilingualism. Key features: provides a state-of-the-art description of different areas in the context of multilingualism and multilingual communication presents a critical appraisal of the relevance of the field, offers solutions of everyday language-related problems international handbook with contributions from renown experts in the field

Multilingualism and Creativity

Multilingualism and Creativity
Author: Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2012-09-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1847697968

In this monograph, Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin presents the results of his empirical investigation into the impact of multilingual practice on an individual's creative potential. Until now, the relationship between these two activities has received little attention in the academic community. The book makes an attempt to resuscitate this theme and provides a solid theoretical framework supported by contemporary empirical research conducted in a variety of geographic, linguistic, and sociocultural locations. This study demonstrates that several factors - such as the multilinguals' age of language acquisition, proficiency in these languages and experience with cultural settings in which these languages were acquired - have a positive impact on selective attention and language mediated concept activation mechanisms. Together, these facilitate generative and innovative capacities of creative thinking. This book will be of great interest not only to scholars in the fields of multilingualism and creativity, but also to educators and all those interested in enhancing foreign language learning and fostering creativity.

Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship

Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship
Author: Quentin Williams
Publisher: Channel View Publications
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2022-07-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1800415338

This book offers a fresh perspective on the social life of multilingualism through the lens of the important notion of linguistic citizenship. All of the chapters are underpinned by a theoretical and methodological engagement with linguistic citizenship as a useful heuristic through which to understand sociolinguistic processes in late modernity, focusing in particular on linguistic agency and voices on the margins of our societies. The authors take stock of conservative, liberal, progressive and radical social transformations in democracies in the north and south, and consider the implications for multilingualism as a resource, as a way of life and as a feature of identity politics. Each chapter builds on earlier research on linguistic citizenship by illuminating how multilingualism (in both theory and practice) should be, or could be, thought of as inclusive when we recognize what multilingual speakers do with language for voice and agency.

Tasks, Pragmatics and Multilingualism in the Classroom

Tasks, Pragmatics and Multilingualism in the Classroom
Author: Sofía Martín-Laguna
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-04-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1788923669

This book reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of pragmatic markers in written discourse in a third language (English) by secondary students living in the bilingual (Spanish and Catalan) Valencian Community in Spain. It examines pragmatic transfer, specifically positive transfer, in multilingual students from a holistic perspective, taking into account their linguistic repertoire and using ecologically valid classroom writing tasks in a longitudinal study. It tackles the issue of task-based language teaching from a multilingual perspective by presenting a study which takes place in natural classroom contexts where real classroom tasks are used to explore the interaction between languages in multilinguals. The book combines a focus on multilingual language development and pragmatics and discusses the resources multilingual learners take to the classroom.

Multilingualism

Multilingualism
Author: John Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2002-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134810717

By looking at the effect of language difference, Edwards examines the interaction of language with nationalism, politics, history, identity and education. This book unpicks this complexity and creates a multidisciplinary overview.

Multilingualism

Multilingualism
Author: John C. Maher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198724993

John C. Maher explains why societies everywhere have become more multilingual, despite the disappearance of hundreds of the world languages. He considers our notion of language as national or cultural identities, and discusses why nations cluster and survive around particular languages even as some territories pursue autonomy or nationhood.

The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace

The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace
Author: Bernadette Vine
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2017-08-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317425804

The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace provides a comprehensive survey of linguistic research on language in the workplace written by top scholars in the field from around the world. The Handbook covers theoretical and methodological approaches, explores research in different types of workplace settings, and examines some key areas of workplace talk that have been investigated by workplace researchers. Issues of identity have become a major focus in recent workplace research and the Handbook highlights some core issues of relevance in this area, such as gender, leadership, and intercultural communication. As the field has developed, applications of workplace research for both native and non-native speakers have emerged. Insights can inform and improve input from practitioners training workers in a range of fields and across a variety of contexts, and the Handbook foregrounds some of the ways workplace research can do this. This is an invaluable resource for researchers and graduate students interested in learning more about workplace discourse.