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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.