Language in the Workplace

ABSTRACT The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore the implications of the analysis for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the community of practice framework.

Talk about food at work is typically overlooked as peripheral, just like other relationally-oriented discourse (e.g. small talk and humour). Drawing on a data set of workplace interactions recorded in formal and informal settings, we demonstrate how food talk erodes and troubles formality boundaries. The distinctive distribution of food talk at the boundaries of workplace interaction
creates a duality: because it occurs at boundaries, food talk is regarded as irrelevant; when it occurs in non-boundary positions, it has the interactional effect of reducing formality, regardless of its legitimacy as a business topic. In practice, food talk “indexes” boundaries and informality. Each time it occurs at boundaries, or creates informality, this indexicality is reinforced. We demonstrate just how food talk indexes informality in meeting talk.

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A widely shared opinion states that English in its international form is particularly suited for the economy. Consequently, a shift from national languages to English as corporate language has been observed in many countries. However, this choice is not based on the results of scientific research, but rather on ideologies. In many cases, the real practices can differ quite significantly from what people think and/or tell they do. This calls for empirical research. In this paper, we will analyse the demolinguistic situation of Switzerland with a special focus on English at work, have a look at the public debate about English and national languages at school and acknowledge the actual linguistic practices in several types of economic environments, in order to answer the question whether English and/or any other language dominates communication at work in Switzerland.

We spend a great part of our lives communicating at work. When we enter the world of work we discover many forms of spoken and written communication that are completely new to us: with time we learn how to understand and use them. The language of work has an important role in the lives of most people. Even outside the workplace people participate in professional interactions as customers, clients or patients. Most people are aware that the way they communicate with friends and family is different from the way they communicate with their boss or a client; but they're not able to say exactly which features distinguish professional language from everyday language. Workplace discourse is linked to professional and organizational contexts, and concerns a type of communication which occurs between people with different roles, for example boss-employee, sellercustomer etc. Examining workplace language involves studying a the social roles too. We have to consider two fundamental questions: 1) What is special about the language of work? 2) How does the language of work vary in different workplaces? According to Drew and Heritage (1992), the institutional talk, as they call workplace, vary from ordinary conversation in a number of ways:

This chapter examines the wide and fruitful deployment of the community of practice framework in language and the workplace research. Past research is critically reviewed in order to explore the affordances and constraints of positioning aggregates of co-workers in this way. During the earliest applications of the notion of communities of practice in workplace research it became obvious that it can be a powerful theoretical model for examining both the actions of workplace participants and the social structures that they reproduce and resist. Building on such insight, the author recommends that a nuanced and layered understanding of ‘communities’ or ‘groups’ and their practices can further enrich research in language and the workplace as the field moves forward. Future directions are suggested as a way to expand understanding of communities of practice at work (and their frontiers), including research into mobile workplaces, workplaces with mostly transient membership, and the relationship between workplaces, community belonging, layered timescales and spatial trajectories.

In this paper, I examine how language policy acts as a means of both empowering the Welsh language and the minority language worker and as a means of exerting power over them. For this purpose, the study focuses on a particular site: private sector businesses in Wales. Therein, I trace two major discursive processes: first, the Welsh Government’s national language policy documents that promote corporate bilingualism and bilingual employees as value-added resources; second, the practice and discourse of company managers who sustain or appropriate such promotional discourses for creating and promoting their own organisational values. By drawing on concepts from governmentality, critical language policy and discourse studies, I show that promoting bilingualism in business is characterised by local and global governmentalities. These not only bring about critical shifts in
valuing language as symbolic entities attached to ethnonational concerns or as promotional objects that bring material gain. Language governmentalities also appear to shape new forms of ‘languaging’ the minority language worker as selfgoverning, and yet, governed subjects who are ultimately made responsible for ‘owning’ Welsh.

When having a meeting in office-context situation in Indonesia, minutes of meeting is commonly used to fill the gaps when participants couldn’t recall or catch the ideas being discussed in the meeting or if some of the participants cannot attend the meeting (Gutmann 2010, pg. 1). Hence, the objective of writing minutes of meeting is to capture the chronology and information conveyed during the meeting, so that it can be well-understood by the readers. In this paper, I woud like to outline the cultural backgrounds involved within the participants of the meeting held in a law firm concentrating in consulting Agrarian legal cases, which is located in South Jakarta, Indonesia. I argue that the cultural backgrounds of the people attending the meeting (the office staff and the clients) affect the choice of linguistic elements used in the minutes of meeting. I will use the Natural Semantic Metalanguage’s Cultural Script approach to depict the essence of using particular forms of address and not using pronouns in the minutes of meeting written for some meetings in this office. With Cultural Script approach, I wish to be able to outline the culture of the office as reflected in the minutes of meeting without mixing it with the perspective of cultural outsiders.

Through the lens of Dörnyei's (2005) Second Language Motivational Self System, this exploratory study focused on two groups of Canadian newcomers learning English in the traditional classroom setting (English as a Second Language [ESL]; n=37) and the workplace (Workplace Language Training [WLT]; n=29) to determine the role of motivation in their integration into Canadian society and development of the 'Canadian self'. The results, collected by way of a questionnaire and follow-up interviews, show newcomers holding positive attitudes towards English learning and building their Canadian identity in the process. Notably, beliefs concerning the value of employment to fulfill personal obligations and duties promoted the WLT learners' motivation and willingness to engage with language learning significantly more than those of their ESL counterparts. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

This dissertation focuses on Finnish language learning opportunities in cleaning work, which is the most common job for immigrants in Finland. The study investigates what opportunities and constraints there are for Finnish language learning in cleaning work, how a work community supports language learning, and what factors facilitate or constrain investment in language learning at work. Language learning opportunities are explored from an ecological approach as affordances – the reciprocal relations between an individual and his/her social and physical environment. The study also explores the scaffolding provided by the work community and investment in second language learning. Nexus analysis based on the research traditions of critical discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, and interactional sociolinguistics is applied as the methodological framework of the study. The data were generated ethnographically in two cleaning workplaces and they consist of interviews, observations, fieldnotes, photographs and audio- and video-recorded interaction situations. The findings of the four sub-studies are reported in four research articles. The findings show that Finnish language learning opportunities in cleaning work are limited because cleaning is routine-like and the structures of outsourced cleaning services restrict cleaners’ language use. The availability of affordances and their pedagogical value depend largely on the work community, which plays a crucial role in providing symbolic, verbal, and embodied scaffolding to workers who speak Finnish as a second language. This study did, however, identify a virtuous circle that enables second language learning: learning requires perceiving and utilising meaningful affordances, more affordances are opened up with the scaffolding provided by the work community, and learners’ positive positioning and meaningful career plans motivate them to invest in work-related language learning. On the other hand, because immigrants are often positioned in manual work in low-paid sectors, their opportunities to invest in developing professional language skills are limited. Providing meaningful education and career trajectories would support the goal-oriented language learning of immigrants.

Ensuring newly arrived migrants gain fluency in the language of their host country has challenged governments worldwide. Whilst many governments provide settlement and language programs for migrants, a critical site for language development and cultural integration is the workplace itself. However very few studies have explored how different worksites and job types in the new globalised economy may facilitate migrants' acquisition of the language of a target community with which they need to communicate. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study and sets of interviews, this research explores how a multilingual call centre based in London facilitates such language acquisition. This site uses English as well as a number of other European languages to market mostly IT products into Europe and beyond and we discuss how the training and provision of scripts contributes to agents being able to develop their language skills. This study revealed a number of facilitators for language acquisition including the spatial layout of the worksite where communication, both socially and professionally, takes place; but perhaps most surprisingly, we learned that the way in which the agents use scripts to scaffold their exchanges on phones plays a significant role in language acquisition.

Cleaning is often the survival employment that migrants can get in their new home country. Ideally, the workplace can be a site for integration and language learning. This article explores how two migrants working as cleaners in Finland narrate their work-related Finnish language learning trajectories. The research is designed by applying nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), which focuses on social action in the intersection of interaction order, participants’ life experiences, and discourses in place. The social action in focus here is investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which means a commitment to developing language skills to achieve one’s aspirations. The article also analyses how language learners position themselves and are positioned by others, because positioning affects access to meaningful learning opportunities. Positioning analysis by Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) in a small stories approach is applied to analyse the key participants’ oral narratives told in the...

This paper examines opportunities for language learning in a cleaning job, which is a typical entry-level job for immigrants. An ethnographic case study approach is taken to investigate examples of the conditions that allow or prevent language learning for the focal participant, a sub-Saharan man who works as a cleaner in Finland. This case illustrates on a micro-scale the impact of the new economy on a worker in a company that has outsourced its cleaning services. Theoretically and methodologically, the study applies van Lier’s (2004) ecological approach to language learning and Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus analysis. The analysis of interaction order shows that within outsourced cleaning services, the cleaner is isolated from the work community around him and communication between him and clients is relayed through intermediaries. Consequently, only occasional opportunities arise for interaction in L2 in the workplace. Examples of work situations that offer affordances for linguistic action are analysed in depth to find out how work-related language learning could be supported. However, the pedagogical value of such affordances might be rather low, and hence, as it often offers very limited opportunities for developing second language skills, cleaning may be a dead-end job.

Available online: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-201602101538

Linguistic diversity is growing in labour markets throughout Europe, including Finland, where cleaning is the most common job for immigrants. This paper explores material scaffolding provided for second language users in tasks involved in cleaning work. The notion of ‘scaffolding’ refers to temporary and adaptive support, and here the emphasis is especially on ‘material scaffolding’, that is, material artefacts and body movements employed in mentoring. The theoretical framework of the study is van Lier’s (2004) ecological perspective on language learning, and a discourse-ethnographic perspective of nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004) is adopted to analyse the ethnographic data collected at two work sites. Scaffolding is regarded as a nexus of social practices in which participants, interaction orders and mediational means intersect. The social actions in work encounters are explored to show how space, body movements and material artefacts are employed in work-related communication. The observations on these two work sites suggest that cleaning work can be successfully performed with a beginner’s level in the work language as long as guided support is available, and especially if the multiple material mediational means in the immediate surroundings are utilized in scaffolding.

This paper examines opportunities for language learning in a cleaning job, which is a typical entry-level job for immigrants. An ethnographic case study approach is taken to investigate examples of the conditions that allow or prevent language learning for the focal participant, a sub-Saharan man who works as a cleaner in Finland. This case illustrates on a micro-scale the impact of the new economy on a worker in a company that has outsourced its cleaning services. Theoretically and methodologically, the study applies van Lier’s (

This paper investigates the fluctuating value of Arabic when constructed as a linguistic resource for multilingual, "languaged" workers in a counselling centre for refugees in Austria and in an international humanitarian agency operating in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Drawing on a variety of ethnographic data (observations, interviews and documents), our analyses of the institutionalised division of labour and of workers' narrative positioning show how workers in both organisations discursively construct this linguistic resource as being of ambivalent value in their positioning vis-à-vis their colleagues, for their careers and in work interactions. Stratifying and empowerment effects are interwoven in the varying and coexisting values of Arabic.

In the introduction to the special issue " Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces " , we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for the study of governmentality as a viable and growing approach in critical sociolinguistic research. As such, in this introduction , we first discuss key concepts germane to our interrogations, including the notions of governmentality, languaging, peripherality and language worker. We proceed to map out five ethnographically and discourse-analytically informed case studies. These examine diverse actors in different settings pertaining to the domain of work. Finally we chart how the case studies construe the issue of languaging the worker through a governmentality frame.

Cleaning is often the survival employment that migrants can get in their new home country. Ideally, the workplace can be a site for integration and language learning. This article explores how two migrants working as cleaners in Finland narrate their work-related Finnish language learning trajectories. The research is designed by applying nexus analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), which focuses on social action in the intersection of interaction order, participants' life experience s, and discourses in place. The social action in focus here is investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which means a commitment to developing language skills to achieve one's aspirations. The article also analyses how language learners position themselves and are positioned by others, because positioning affects access to meaningful learning opportunities. Positioning analysis by Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) in a small stories approach is applied to analyse the key participants' oral narratives told in the context of ethnographic research interviews. Follow-up interviews conducted a year later are analysed to show how positioning changes over time. The study illustrates that investment in work-related language learning is meaningful when occupational development and language learning can be purposefully combined. However, migrants are positioned as a potential workforce in low-level jobs and their expertise is often ignored, which means that investments in language learning might not pay off in career develo pment. Supporting educated migrants in finding appropriate employment would facilitate goal-oriented language learning.

ABSTRACT Talk about food at work is typically overlooked as peripheral, just like other relationally-oriented discourse (e.g. small talk and humour). Drawing on a data set of workplace interactions recorded in formal and informal settings, we demonstrate how food talk erodes and troubles formality boundaries. The distinctive distribution of food talk at the boundaries of workplace interaction creates a duality: because it occurs at boundaries, food talk is regarded as irrelevant; when it occurs in non-boundary positions, it has the interactional effect of reducing formality, regardless of its legitimacy as a business topic. In practice, food talk “indexes” boundaries and informality. Each time it occurs at boundaries, or creates informality, this indexicality is reinforced. We demonstrate just how food talk indexes informality in meeting talk.

In the introduction to the special issue " Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces " , we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for the study of governmentality as a viable and growing approach in critical sociolinguistic research. As such, in this introduction , we first discuss key concepts germane to our interrogations, including the notions of governmentality, languaging, peripherality and language worker. We proceed to map out five ethnographically and discourse-analytically informed case studies. These examine diverse actors in different settings pertaining to the domain of work. Finally we chart how the case studies construe the issue of languaging the worker through a governmentality frame.

Strömmer, Maiju A nexus analysis of Finnish language learning in cleaning work Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2017, 118 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities ISSN 1459-4323; 336 (print) ISSN 1459-4331; 336 (PDF)) ISBN 978-951-39-7264-6 (print) ISBN 978-951-39-7265-3 (PDF) This dissertation focuses on Finnish language learning opportunities in cleaning work, which is the most common job for immigrants in Finland. The study investigates what opportunities and constraints there are for Finnish language learning in cleaning work, how a work community supports language learning, and what factors facilitate or constrain investment in language learning at work. Language learning opportunities are explored from an ecological approach as affordances – the reciprocal relations between an individual and his/her social and physical environment. The study also explores the scaffolding provided by the work community and investment in second language learning. Nexus analysis based on the resear...

ABSTRACT The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore the implications of the analysis for a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the community of practice framework.

Talk about food at work is typically overlooked as peripheral, just like other relationally-oriented discourse (e.g. small talk and humour). Drawing on a data set of workplace interactions recorded in formal and informal settings, we demonstrate how food talk erodes and troubles formality boundaries. The distinctive distribution of food talk at the boundaries of workplace interaction creates a duality: because it occurs at boundaries, food talk is regarded as irrelevant; when it occurs in non-boundary positions, it has the interactional effect of reducing formality, regardless of its legitimacy as a business topic. In practice, food talk “indexes” boundaries and informality. Each time it occurs at boundaries, or creates informality, this indexicality is reinforced. We demonstrate just how food talk indexes informality in meeting talk.

Although a multilingual and multicultural work environment increases the diversity and exchange of experiences, it can also create and increase language barriers. This qualitative study explored language barriers in a multilingual Saudi hospital through 37 interviews of physicians, nurses, other healthcare workers, and patients. The resulting analysis revealed several causes of, consequences of, and solutions to overcome language barriers in the hospital workplace. The results are presented in three main sections. The first section presents the causes of language barriers due to multilingualism and discusses barriers related to patients, healthcare workers, and hospital policy in turn. The second section presents the negative consequences of language barriers for patients and healthcare workers. The last section discusses solutions and strategies the interviewees have used in the hospital to overcome language barriers, and solutions related to language, accent and dialect, or cultural barriers in turn.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the English language needs of business major students at the undergraduate level. The impetus for the research was therefore the need to explore ways of identifying the students' English language needs for academic purposes as viewed by the students, their language teachers and business lectures. In particular, the author was interested in conducting what various researchers Al-Khatib (2005), Al Mamun and Rahman (2017) and Forey (2004) indicated that bridging the gap between the objectives of educational institutions and English language skills required in the academia will prepare students to meet their real-world needs and expectations. It should be noted that, it is a requirement in Saudi Arabia that students who wish to participate fully in the business environment require greater control of the English language for their future careers. A mixed-methods approach was employed, involving both quantitative and qualitative (naturalistic) data and data analysis. Participants included business students (n = 254), language teachers (n = 20), and business lecturers (n = 3). Analysis of data from numerous sources (questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) indicated differences among the participants about perceptions of English language needs for academic purposes, but in general it was clear that the English language programme in its current form is not meeting the students' language needs.

"This thesis considers what I call lexical planning initiatives for Welsh – formal attempts to codify and standardise Welsh words. Welsh has been subjected to lexical planning – and purification – attempts for a number of centuries, with lexicographers seeking to coin and standardise Welsh-equivalent words for concepts that have initially emerged through contact with English (and other prestigious languages). Lexical planners have redoubled their efforts in the last fifty years, but especially since 1993, largely as a result of the language revitalisation movement. Lexical planning efforts can be envisaged as attempts to influence the acquisition and use of any lexical resources, but they often focus on specific subject matters, especially from modern or emergent domains or disciplines. Such initiatives are often referred to as terminology planning/standardisation.

My research considers the implementation of these planning initiatives, focusing on spoken language data at two research sites: the broadcast media and an office-based workplace. Taking a two-pronged approach to analysis, I ask whether, how and why Welsh speakers use planned lexis. First, I consider the extent to which the lexical content is in keeping with the stipulations of lexical planners in their codification texts. This approach is chiefly quantitative, drawing broadly on corpus linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics. Secondly, taking a more context- and practice-focused, as well as critical approach, I undertake an interaction analysis of the in situ use of lexical resources. From this perspective, we gain a picture of the underlying, sometimes conflicting, ideologies and discourse priorities that motivate lexical choice. This approach considers lexical planning initiatives not as implemented top-down, but embedded in their social milieu.

Finally, I consider the implications of my research for the broader revitalisation effort, asking to what extent lexical planning initiatives, as they are currently imagined and conducted, complement other language planning endeavours, and whether and how they might be reconsidered."

The process of apprenticeship is one means of entering a new profession. Along with the technical skills entailed in learning a new job, apprentices need to acquire proficiency in appropriate ways of communicating in order to construct a convincing professional identity. Data collected on a New Zealand building site provides evidence of the extent of the situated learning in which building apprentices engage. Becoming an accepted member of the community of practice centrally involves learning to recognize and respond appropriately to a wide range of differently encoded directives, for instance. But membership also entails developing an understanding of more subtle interactional norms, such as acceptable topics of small talk and appropriate forms and quantities of humour on the job. This article examines evidence that suggests these understandings develop gradually as apprentices move from peripheral to core status in their chosen professional community of practice. We also explore t...

This article investigates the covert language policy and micro-language planning practices of one female Brazilian-American entrepreneur, Magda, within her multilingual cleaning company. Because Magda is plurilingual (Spolsky 2004), she is able to draw on her metalinguistic awareness and multicompetence in order to facilitate communication between her working-class migrant employees and her English-speaking clients as well as engage in what we call “inter-employee brokering”. Magda’s position as the company’s primary language broker enhances her authoritative power in both employer-employee and company owner-customer relations. The current study addresses the need to look into language practices and micro language planning within local contexts (Nekvapil and Nekula 2008) as well as blue-collar workplaces (Holmes 2011; Lønsmann and Kraft forthcoming), which in one way reflect macro social structures, class differences and asymmetrical power relations concerning language use, but also emphasize a deviation from these macro-level patterns through the value placed on Portuguese as the lingua franca within the cleaning company.