Language awareness and language workers

Abstract

This paper argues that linguistic awareness and skills are essential requirements for professionals whose work centres on language as a process and product. Brought about by the commodification of language in developed economies, language work such as brand consulting, text design or online marketing requires linguistic knowledge, resources and skills that many current teaching material do not provide. Extracts from interviews with a diverse group of language workers allow for first insights into their kind and level awareness, but also show that they are more concerned about what they perceive as a lack of language awareness in their clients and suggests a non-linear model of teaching and learning relations between academic linguists, language workers, clients and students. The paper further discusses the options that applied linguists in academia have if they want to work with/as language workers and argues that engaging with language work(ers) can be an opportunity to bring critical language awareness and discourse analytical skills to bear on professional practice and training.

Language Management in Humanitarian Contexts: Unscheduled Migration

“…The study results underline the need for enhancing institutional actors' awareness of language issues significance for unscheduled migration management. Earlier studies pointed out the importance of non-linear model of communication among different "language-concerned" stakeholders whose work "centers on language as a product" (Koller, 2018). The research data makes it possible to state that language management reference to undocumented migrants should rest on the interaction among global, regional, and national language orders within the communities involved; a similar point with regard to a particular country outside the EU was mentioned earlier (Zhou and Xiaomei, 2017).…”

Tread Carefully: Managing Identities and Expectations in High-Tech Industry–Academia Collaborations

“…In this article, we try to reach beyond the description of the processes as they happen (Langley et al, 2013) and to understand "how one's choice of linguistic features shapes social and interpersonal relations in communicative events" (Weninger & Kan, 2013). With the current stress on the instrumental validation of knowledge associated with an industrial paradigm, we can expect that these choices will shed light on how identities are managed in conversation and how they are reflected in the (presumably unequal) distribution of power (Koller, 2017).…”

“…We argue that the ability to use these characteristics requires a sense of critical discourse. By this, we mean that the speaker not only recognizes certain linguistic features as characteristics of the discourse, including relations of unequal power timreview.ca (Koller, 2017), but also knows how to use those linguistic features to mold the social relationship of the collaboration. We will discuss three interactional patternsproviding purpose, joint alignment, and motivationthat occur during the meetings and explain how and why these patterns further shape the identity of academic partners by giving them a sense of empowerment.…”

“…Academic and industrial partners inevitably have to meet up to discuss, align, and contest past achievements and future progress. It is thus "a process of joint spoken and written labor" (Urciuoli & LaDousa, 2013), with language as the central medium of work (Koller, 2017), and meetings are ways of getting things done (Lehtinen & Pälli, 2011) -of making innovation work. In line with previous research on meetings (e.g., Angouri & Marra, 2011;Drew & Heritage, 1992;Lehtinen & Pälli, 2011;Nielsen, 2013), we consider such meetings to be embedded in the social and organizational context of a group or team, and in the wider social or Industry-academia collaborations are in continual flux.…”

Language as raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as product: effects of linguistic production on job categories in outsourced call centres

“…The importance of language skills in informational capitalism has been emphasised in recent decades (Castells, 1996;Kelly-Holmes and Mautner, 2010;Duchêne and Heller, 2011;Koller, 2017;Holborow, 2018). In this context, language as an embodied asset is a form of labour power subject to monitoring and assessment and, therefore, potentially objectivised through standardisation, frequently by means of scripts and protocols (Urciuoli and LaDousa, 2013).…”