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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
info_outlineAre you suffering from zoom fatigue, meeting migraines or the occasional shark bite? Have a listen to our next episode and find out more about office diary sweet spots, biochronology, meeting categorizations and how to deal with sharks in conflict resolution. As always, we bring in the expert advice of an academic and we’ll discuss the added value of the Quaker peace testimony with a workplace mediator. In the analysis, we’re heading for the deep waters of the notorious Handforth parish council meeting. There will be blood.
For more info and a transcript head over to www.wordsandactions.blog.
Episode 18 is on meetings and conflicts, so for the academically minded among our listeners, here are three sources of linguistic and conversation analytical research into meetings:
Handford, M. (2010).
The language of business meetings.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Incidentally, Michael Handford was our first ever interview guest, way back in episode 1.]
Handford, M.,
& Koester, A. (2019). The construction of conflict talk across workplace contexts: (Towards) a theory of conflictual compact.
Language
Awareness,
28(3),
186-206.
Holmes, J., &
Marra, M. (2004). Leadership and managing conflict in meetings. Pragmatics,
14(4),
439-462.
The study about “collaboration overload” that Bernard cites at the beginning of the episode is reported on here.
The second study he refers to, by online scheduling service When Is Good, is reported on here.
(Note that the article also mentions the Quaker practice of starting a meeting with silence, which anticipates our first interview later in the episode.) Erika follows up on this with a study that demonstrates how the time of day when an earnings conference call is scheduled can influence the positivity (or lack thereof) of analysts’ and managers’ tone:
Chen, J., Demers, E., & Lev, B. (2018). Oh what a beautiful
morning! Diurnal influences on executives and analysts: Evidence from conference calls.
Management Science, 64(12),
5461-5959.
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2888
It’s important to note that meetings take very different
forms, involve different people and have different purposes. We describe a diagram which can be found on our website
www.wordsandactions.blog.
Moving on to conflicts, Erika and Veronika have written about types and stages of conflicts, and about people’s conflict styles, in chapter 9 of their textbook:
Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2018).
Language in Business, Language at Work. London: Palgrave Macmillan Education.
You can test your own conflict resolution style with the Thomas-Kilmann questionnaire.
In the first interview, with coach and workplace mediator Allegra Stone, we talk about how her Quaker beliefs influence her work. Quakers in Britain have published a toolkit about engaging with conflict that is based on their peace testimony.
Our second interview guest, Bernadette Vine, is a member of the Language in the Workplace project at Victoria University
of Wellington, New Zealand (Te Herenga Waka, Aotearoa). A few of her recent publications are:
Lazzaro-Salazar, M., Marra, M., Holmes, J., & Vine,
B. (2015). Doing power and negotiating through disagreement in public meetings. Pragmatics and Society, 6(3),
444-464.
Vine, B. (ed.) (2018).
The Routledge Handbook of
Language in the Workplace. Abingdon: Routledge.
Vine, B. (2020).
Introducing Language in the
Workplace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In the last part of the episode, we analyse the now infamous Handforth parish council meeting from February 2021. In the next episode, we’ll be looking at the related topic of negotiations.