In the current era of globalisation, big-C Culture loses analytical purchase. However, research, as well as intercultural training and education, continues to take for granted a more or less fixed idea of culture. This volume updates intercultural communication, both its theory and its application, by utilising a theory of scales in order to understand how culture gets contextualised as speakers communicate and negotiate meaning with each other. As succinctly captured in the title of this volume, it is suggested that research can ‘downscale culture’ analytically: culture might be, but also might not be, relevant in an interaction. The 14 chapters brought together here explore the possibilities of such downscaling from a wide range of core themes in intercultural communication studies and from various research traditions, including interactional sociolinguistics, critical geography, conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, textual analysis, multimodal analysis and nexus analysis.

Church in Life breaks fresh ground by proposing a new framework for thinking about innovation in the church, by arguing that starting new ecclesial communities should be at the centre of the church’s life and thought, and by offering new theology and methodologies for church planting. Church planters will find in it the theoretical and practical resources for a radical missional ecclesiology, while theologians will find a nuanced reworking of the purpose and nature of the church.

This innovative collection brings together contributions from established and emerging scholars highlighting the "appliability" of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the ways in which theoretical and analytical conclusions drawn from its applications can inform and advance the study of language. The book discusses SFL’s theoretical foundations and development in recent years to demonstrate its evolution into a more effective analytical tool. Building on this theoretical framework, the volume showcases the theory’s applications in case studies exploring four sub-disciplines of language study: multilingual studies; translation studies; language learning and language teaching; and genre analysis. This all-inclusive volume demonstrates both Systemic Functional Linguistics’ efficacy as a means of theoretical analysis, but also its value as a unique approach to the study of language and meaning, making this an indispensable resource for researchers and scholars in applied linguistics, discourse analysis, genre studies, translation studies, and multilingualism.

This collection bridges the gap between research and practical applications by showcasing the latest research developments on business English as a lingua franca and the ways in which they might better inform language teaching practice. Featuring contributions from both established and emerging researchers in the field, this book brings together research findings on business and workplace English pedagogy with a focus on addressing issues and challenges around spoken communicative needs in the workplace. The volume explores spoken communication in the business context across a diverse range of settings and media, including oral presentations, small talk, meetings, business negotiations, and interviews. Taken together, the book offers an up-to-date synthesis of research on key topics at the intersection of spoken workplace communication and language teaching toward facilitating more engaged, empirically grounded business English as a lingua franca teaching. This book will be of particular interest for students and scholars in business communication, workplace communication, and English for specific purposes.

This book presents the narratives and voices of young, mostly male practitioners of hip hop culture in Delhi, India. The author suggests that practitioners understand hip hop as both a thing that can be appropriated and authenticated, made real, in the local and global context and as a way that enables them to transform their lives and futures in the rapidly globalising urban environments of Delhi. The dancers, artists, musicians and cultural theorists that feature in this book construct a multitude of voices in their narratives to formulate their ‘own’ transcultural voices within global hip hop. Through a combination of linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the book addresses issues including gender and sexuality, identity construction and global culture.

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.

This volume serves as an in-depth investigation of the diversity of means and practices that constitute (dis)identification and identity construction in social media. Given the increasing prevalence of social media in everyday life and the subsequent growing diversity in the types of participants and forms of participation, the book makes the case for a rigorous analysis of social media discourses and digital literacy practices to demonstrate the range of semiotic resources used in online communication that form the foundation of (dis)identification processes. Divided into two major sections, delineating between the (dis)identification of the self across various social categories and the (dis)identification of the self in relation to the "other", the book employs a discourse-ethnographic approach to highlight the value of this type of theoretical framework in providing nuanced descriptions of identity construction in social media and illuminating their larger, long-term societal and cultural implications. This volume is a key resource for researchers, and students in sociolinguistics, discourse studies, computer-mediated communication, and cultural studies.