Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts

Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts
Author: Philippe Lecomte
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-01-28
Genre:
ISBN: 9781789906776

This book provides readers with the latest research on the dynamics of language and language diversity in professional contexts. Bringing together novel findings from a range of disciplines, it challenges practitioners and management scholars to question the conventional understanding of language as a tool that can be managed by language policies that 'standardize' language. Each of the contributions is designed to recognize the strides that have been made in the past two decades in research on language and languages in organizational settings while addressing remaining blind spots and emerging issues. Particular attention is given to multilingualism, socio-linguistic approaches to language in the workplace, migration challenges, critical perspectives on the power of language use and the management of organizations as dialogical, discursive spaces. Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts offers new insights into familiar and less familiar issues for international business scholars, sociolinguists, management practitioners and business communication scholars and experts, and brings understanding to the central role that language usage and linguistic diversity play in organisational processes.

Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts

Understanding the Dynamics of Language and Multilingualism in Professional Contexts
Author: Philippe Lecomte
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2023-01-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1789906784

This book provides readers with the latest research on the dynamics of language and language diversity in professional contexts. Bringing together novel findings from a range of disciplines, it challenges practitioners and management scholars to question the conventional understanding of language as words with stable meanings, an assumption which treats language as a tool that can be managed by language policies that ‘standardize’ language. Each of the contributions is designed to recognize the strides that have been made in the past two decades in research on language and languages in organizational settings while addressing remaining blind spots and emerging issues. Particular attention is given to multilingualism, sociolinguistic approaches to language in the workplace, migration challenges, critical perspectives on the power of language use and the management of organizations as dialogical, discursive spaces.

Exploring the Dynamics of Multilingualism

Exploring the Dynamics of Multilingualism
Author: Anne-Claude Berthoud
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271372

This book addresses the meanings and implications of multilingualism and its uses in a context of rapid changes, in Europe and around the world. All types of organisations, including the political institutions of the European Union, universities and private-sector companies must rise to the many challenges posed by operating in a multilingual environment. This requires them, in particular, to make the best use of speakers’ very diverse linguistic repertoires. The contributions in this volume, which stem from the DYLAN research project financed by the European Commission as part of its Sixth Framework Programme, examine at close range how these repertoires develop, how they change and how actors adapt skilfully the use of their repertoires to different objectives and conditions. These different strategies are also examined in terms of their capacity to ensure efficient and fair communication in a multilingual Europe. Careful observation of actors’ multilingual practices reveals finely tuned communicational strategies drawing on a wide range of different languages, including national languages, minority languages and lingue franche. Understanding these practices, their meaning and their implications, helps to show in what way and under what conditions they are not merely a response to a problem, but an asset for political institutions, universities and business.

Speech and the City

Speech and the City
Author: Yaron Matras
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1108485707

Explores how cities can offer a counter-weight to hostile attitudes to multilingualism by forging civic identities that embrace diversity.

Researching Language in Superdiverse Urban Contexts

Researching Language in Superdiverse Urban Contexts
Author: Clare Mar-Molinero
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 178892648X

This book contributes to understanding research approaches for studying multilingualism in the context of contemporary superdiversity, in environments that are being dramatically transformed by transnational migration and movement of peoples. It explores language in urban contexts: the city as a site for experimentation and creativity in language practices. This involves considering theoretical frameworks in which to examine these practices, but above all, it focuses on how we do, or could do, research into these language practices and their users. What methodologies are we using to understand urban linguistic contexts? What do we want to learn? The chapters explore complex and challenging situations, capturing the evolution of new forms of language practice and changing attitudes to language in the city.

The Routledge Handbook of Public Service Interpreting

The Routledge Handbook of Public Service Interpreting
Author: Laura Gavioli
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2023-01-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000804828

The Routledge Handbook of Public Service Interpreting provides a comprehensive overview of research in public service, or community interpreting. It offers reflections and suggestions for improving public service communication in plurilingual settings and provides tools for dealing with public service communication in a global society. Written by leading and emerging scholars from across the world, this volume provides an editorial introduction setting the work of public service interpreting (PSI) in context and further reading suggestions. Divided into three parts, the first is dedicated to the main theoretical issues and debates which have shaped research on public service interpreting; the second discusses the characteristics of interpreting in the settings which have been most in need of public service interpreting services; the third provides reflections and suggestions on interpreter as well as provider training, with an aim to improve public service interpreting services. This Handbook is the essential guide for all students, researchers and practitioners of PSI within interpreting and translation studies, medicine and health studies, law, social services, multilingualism and multimodality.

Diversity

Diversity
Author: Mustafa F. Özbilgin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2023-08-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000926168

Diversity: A Key Idea for Business and Society introduces an idea that proliferates business and society, having been incorporated into mainstream theory and practice. Beyond this multidisciplinary setting, how diversity is defined, framed, managed and regulated is also exposed to considerable social, economic, political and ideological interpretation and manipulation. This volume explores definitions of diversity, its various manifestations and interdisciplinary influences that shape how diversity is researched. The text turns to workforce diversity as a particular case of diversity and explores antecedents, correlates and consequences of workforce diversity. The author considers power, inequality and intersectionality to illuminate the subject from the key manifestations, including class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and disability. With insights from an array of fields from economics, through management to biology, the author also highlights the various cases against diversity alongside analysis of how to navigate the diversity jungle in practice. This concise, authoritative book will be essential reading for students, researchers and reflective practitioners interested in workforce diversity as well as unique supplementary reading across the social sciences.

Managing Multilingual Workplaces

Managing Multilingual Workplaces
Author: Sierk Horn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0429775032

This book sets new trajectories for language-sensitive business and management research and pedagogy. The existence of language plurality characterises these. Empirical studies have been established as important and relevant for contemporary research. It has shifted language-sensitive research from the periphery to the centre of international management research. However, this field is rapidly changing, and new thematic approaches have begun to emerge. By addressing this, the book offers genuine and more nuanced insights into existing themes and comes with applications of emergent conceptual developments in different settings. The second part of the book covers methodologies and gives examples and cutting-edge insights into the role of translation in the execution of empirical research and theorising arising from it. Finally, the book draws together innovative ways of how to address the challenges of a multilingual teaching classroom and how to innovate in order to incorporate such diversity through pedagogic practice. This book provides a source that unites insights from multilingual empirical research, methodological considerations and pedagogic practice in order to advance knowledge and debate. It will be a ‘handy source’ of information that offers direct access to the latest guidance on language-sensitive management challenges. It will, therefore, appeal to an internationally-minded and mobile audience, including scholars, students and decision-makers.

The Dynamics of Language

The Dynamics of Language
Author: Rajend Mesthrie
Publisher: Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1775822273

Linguistics – the close study of language and languages – is an indispensable foundation for all forms of knowledge. The African continent is blessed with hundreds of languages which act as local repositories of culture and interaction. South Africa alone has eleven official languages, plus Sign Language, many heritage languages, and new languages of global movements and migration. Part of the linguist’s business is to document, record and affirm languages and diversity. Applied linguists use their training to understand and enhance the role of language in education and upliftment, and the opportunities and challenges of new technologies of communication. The International Congress of Linguists meets every five years to reflect the development of the field and 2018 is the first time that the congress is being held in Africa. This book is a collection of the plenary and focus papers presented at the conference and thus represents current thinking in the major branches of language study as represented by leading local and international scholars. The papers discuss the history of languages, their structure, acquisition, diversity and use. At the same time due regard is paid to the African continent in connection with its linguistic diversity, multilingualism and educational and societal concerns. The Congress is meant to affirm the value of the languages of Africa, of languages and Linguistics in general, as well as to inspire and equip younger scholars to undertake advanced research into language in its many facets.

The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education

The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education
Author: Joel Austin Windle
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2020-02-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1788926951

This book contributes new perspectives from the Global South on the ways in which linguistic and discursive boundaries shape inequalities in educational contexts, ranging from Amazonian missions to Mongolian universities. Through critical ethnographic and sociolinguistic analysis, the chapters explore how such boundaries contribute to the geopolitics of colonialism, capitalism and myriad, interwoven, forms of social life that structure both oppression and resistance. Boundaries are examined across time and space as relational constructs that mark the terms upon which admission to groups, institutions, territories, or practices are granted. The studies further present alternative educational approaches that demonstrate the potential for agency and transgression, highlighting moments of boundary crossing that disrupt existing linguistic ideologies, language policies and curriculum structures.