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New Year’s Special: 2020 Through the Language Lens

Words and Actions

Release Date: 01/15/2021

Language in Business, Language at Work show art Language in Business, Language at Work

Words and Actions

Wait a minute. Why does ‘corporate consultant’ sound more prestigious than ‘business consultant’? Or does it? Do they mean the same thing? How does organizational communication differ from corporate or business communication? And what topics, genres and text types should textbooks on communication in these settings tackle when the genres themselves are blended? Welcome to the challenges of three authors revising a textbook on the power of language in business(?), now turned into a podcast episode and made even more interesting with Wittgenstein and Jonathan Clifton joining the writing...

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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Language Discrimination show art The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Language Discrimination

Words and Actions

Raves, poker nights and Marvel movies – no costs or effort were spared in this final episode on CSR to raise awareness about one of the most pervasive manifestations of discrimination: accentism. In the presence of experts, we uncover what is hidden beneath the surface, and just when we thought we would never judge someone based on the sound waves they produce, we dare(d) ourselves and you to eat the pudding…   Long Notes: More information, a full transcript and academic references on wordsandactions.blog. We start episode 28 by critically reflecting on anti-discrimination efforts...

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Language awareness in the age of AI show art Language awareness in the age of AI

Words and Actions

ChatGPT & company are here to stay. And so are linguists. Find out why in our exploration of the capabilities and shortcomings of generative AI and how it will affect the competences of lecturers, students and practitioners in business communication and beyond. Via tricks and tips on how to integrate these powerful text production tools in and outside the classroom, W&A once again underscores the crucial importance of language awareness and the human touch in the digital era. The discussion will take us past proper prompt engineering,  output analysis, digital sweatshops and...

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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Ecolinguistics show art The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Ecolinguistics

Words and Actions

Prepare to meet some ignorant pigs and silly cows in our second episode on CSR... Together with an expert in ecolinguistics, we will explore the discursive construction of our ideology-laden relationship to nature (and animals in particular!) via the analysis of presuppositions and metaphors, going from tepid COP27 implementation plans on global heating to Chinese self-serving CSR reporting. It will become painfully clear how and why language matters and you'll find out more about your ecosomatic awareness.    As always, you can find more information, references to research and a...

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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Responsible Communication show art The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Responsible Communication

Words and Actions

All good things come in threes. Or more. Add a Chief Sustainability Officer, a body positive Barbie doll,  a purple inclusive M&M and an actual expert in applied ethics and you get a lively discussion on true colours, washings and genuine CSR efforts in the first episode of our new mini-series (it comes in threes) on corporate social responsibility. Have a listen and find out more, including how energy companies account for their profits and your bills via legitimisation strategies.   More information about the podcast and  a full...

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Selling Hard and Soft show art Selling Hard and Soft

Words and Actions

Are you one of those people who is always tricked into doing or buying things you don’t want? Do you want to find out how they do it or how to do it yourself? You’re in luck! If you listen to this episode, you will find out all about it! You will even get free access to all the other W&A episodes on language in business, politics and beyond and you’ll discover that your current annoyance and reluctance by reading this is caused by genre awareness. Do it now or regret it later! #hardselltacticsshamelesslybroughttoyoubuyW&A.   The episode, as always, is accompanied by a blog...

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Language and Identity Online show art Language and Identity Online

Words and Actions

Your identity is a right old mess. As is ours, mind you… and don‘t get us started on Marcus Rashford! In this episode we delve into the different layers and facets of identity construction in digital space. Via small stories, solo selfies and networked narratives, we offer ways to inspect different senses of selves as they are created in online environments. The journey will take us past talking dogs, overpowering teacher personas (yes, we are talking about ourselves!) socially constructed bosses, and walking gods. And we will get started on Marcus Rashford.   For...

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Language and Technology show art Language and Technology

Words and Actions

Yesterday’s sci-fi has become today’s reality. Join us as we venture our way into the ever-growing domain of Language Technology in which we discover and discuss current and future developments in speech recognition, automated literary translation, opinion mining and open domain chatbot applications. Not only do we find ourselves having cheeky chats with clever cars and critical conversations with experts,  we also ponder over the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence and assess our position as linguists (and one alleged Professor of Disco Studies) in view of these...

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Translation and Interpreting When the Stakes are High show art Translation and Interpreting When the Stakes are High

Words and Actions

We eavesdrop on police interrogations, wire-tapping and immigration interviews, and sneak on a Keolis bus (on board entertainment: The Interpreter) to explore the complex processes of translation and interpreting in high stakes contexts. Joining us are a forensic linguist, an expert in asylum seeking procedures and a researcher on multimodal translation, who illustrate the pervasive impact of translators as important decision-makers that may affect the future, safety and prosperity of people and businesses.

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Multilingualism show art Multilingualism

Words and Actions

“I’m not hungry. One egg is an oeuf”. Is the author funny? Debatable. Are they multilingual? Ça dépend. In this multi-voiced episode on multilingualism we tackle interrelated aspects ranging from translanguaging over accommodation to effectiveness and proficiency and we cast light on multilingual settings and the role of BELF in them. In the process, we make Bernard eat humble pie by interviewing a very, very multilingual person and we raise multilingual voices to stop cruelty against animals.

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More Episodes

Yes, we are glad to see the back of 2020. But so much happened over those 12 months that we think it warrants a special New Year’s episode. We invited four guests to come with us on a tour of the year, from Brexit Day to university strikes, Black Lives Matter and the US elections. Oh, and we also mention that pandemic that just went and upended everyone’s lives.

Please visit our blog, www.wordsandactions.blog for information about our guests, further links and resources. In this episode we start our review of 2020 by talking about the language use around Brexit. Anyone interested in that topic can find relevant publications listed in Veronika’s bibliography-in-progress on Brexit and language, which is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fZClWyLA-_tmfdspLAVel9YKt3Xkm8E2YbBXw_14PaA/edit. Sten Hansson’s publications on the topic are:

Hansson, S. (2019). Brexit and blame avoidance: Officeholders’ discursive strategies of self-preservation. In Koller, V., Kopf, S., & Miglbauer, M. (eds) Discourses of Brexit. London: Routledge, pp. 191-207. (see also this blog post: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/11/20/the-rhetoric-of-self-preservation-brexit-and-blame-avoidance/)

Hansson, S., & Kröger, S. (2020). How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation: the case of post-referendum Brexit discourses. British Journal of Politics and International Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120974009

Veronika at one point mentions prison metaphors in the Brexit debate (e.g. ‘free from the shackles of the EU’), which she has written about here:

Koller, V. (2020). Analysing metaphor in discourse. In Hart, C. (ed.) Researching Discourse: A guide for students. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 77-96. 

Our subjective look back on 2020 continues with the university strikes in Britain early that year. We talk to Liz Morrish, who was a speaker at some of the events around the industrial action. Her critical studies of contemporary universities, in the UK and elsewhere, are collected in her blog Academic Irregularities (https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/) and have also resulted in a book she wrote with fellow linguist Helen Sauntson: 

Morrish, L., & Sauntson, H. (2019). Academic Irregularities: Language and neoliberalism in higher education. Abingdon: Routledge. 

Liz mentions various frameworks for evaluating research, teaching and knowledge exchange at British universities, known respectively as REF, TEF and KEF. 

Inevitably, our review of 2020 takes us to March and the arrival of Covid-19 in Europe. We look at the pandemic through the metaphor lens (pun very much intended) and talk to Paula Pérez Sobrino, one of the founders of the #ReframeCovid initiative. The collection of alternatives to the war metaphor for Covid-19 is available to view and download here: bit.ly/ReframeCovid – the link also leads to a form where listeners/readers can submit further examples. A group of scholars involved with the initiative have started to write about some aspects of metaphors for Covid-19 and about the initiative itself:

Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (forthcoming). The #ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World. (see also this roundtable discussion: https://media.inn.no/Mediasite/Channel/raam2020/watch/944ce34e07c94f459b6d7825cc4ba0871d)  

Pérez Sobrino, P., Semino, E., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Koller, V., & Olza, I. (forthcoming). Acting like a hedgehog in times of pandemic: Metaphoric creativity in the #ReframeCovid collection. Metaphor and Symbol.

Semino, E. (2021). “Not soldiers but fire-fighters”: Metaphors and Covid-19. Health Communication, 36(1), 50-58. (see also this blog post: http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/a-fire-raging-why-fire-metaphors-work-well-for-covid-19/

2020 was an eventful year and we could not fit all important events into the episode. In the summer, the killing of George Floyd by police in the US led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and protests against racism and racist violence around the world. In Britain, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol, inspiring the poem Hollow by Bristol City Poet Vanessa Kisuule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3DKfaK50AU&t=2s 
Detractors of the BLM movement sometimes counter that ‘All lives matter’, but this misunderstands the pragmatic meaning of the original statement: ‘Black lives matter’ is not an answer to the question ’Whose lives matter?’ but to the question ‘Do black lives matter?’. 

In the final interview, we reflect on the US elections and talk to Ulrike Schneider, co-editor of a book on the language of Donald Trump (which should win a prize for best book cover of the year!):

Schneider, U., & Eitelmann, M. (eds) (2020). Linguistic Inquiries into Donald Trump’s Language: From 'fake news' to 'tremendous success'. London: Bloomsbury. 

In our conversation, we touch on Trump’s use of Twitter; after the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, Twitter suspended the President’s account indefinitely on grounds of incitement to violence. 

This brings Words & Action’s special New Year’s episode to a close, but we hope you will stay with us over the course of the year!