Current projects

Language and impact in/as business

Researchers and practitioners recognize the dual role of language as a technical skill in the workplace and as a saleable commodity in the marketplace. In fields such as marketing, translation, tourism, customer service and communication training, language work has now become central to economic globalization (Boutet 2012). In many other fields, demands for accountability require professionals to document their practices, resulting in the textualization of work (Tusting 2010). However, to expose (and exploit) the impact of language use in and as business, it is essential that we understand its added symbolic values, standardization, visionary myths, encoded power struggles, group boundaries, regulations for the flow of people, goods and information, auguries of changes to come or engraved relics of changes past (Czerniawska, 1997).

The panel (proposed to present at "i-mean 4 @ Warwick" 9-11 April 2015) would like to explore the impact of language use in professional contexts as this relates to:

• actors and agents (clients, colleagues, stakeholders)
• traditional, emergent and innovative genres, practices and features
• the creation of economic value
• research on language and communication

If you are interested in participating please get in touch. We welcome abstracts at this point, but also tentative suggestions, or ideas for more specific themes or discussion formats.

e.darics@aston.ac.uk
tom.vanhout@uantwerp.be

Timing:

• 1 December 2014: deadline for panel proposals
• 15 December 2014: panel acceptance ;-) announced
• 31 January 2015: deadline for submitting abstracts
• 9-11 April 2015: I-mean conference @ Warwick University

References:

• Czerniawska, F. (1997) Corporate Speak: The Use of Language in Business. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
• Boutet, J. (2012) Language workers: emblematic figures of late capitalism. In A. Duchene & M. Heller (Eds). Language in late capitalism. Pride and profit. (pp. 207-229) London: Routledge.
• Tusting, K. (2010) Eruptions of interruptions: managing tensions between writing and other tasks in a textualized childcare workplace. In D. Barton and U. Papen (Eds.) The anthropology of writing: understanding textually mediated worlds. (pp. 67-89). London: Continuum.

Digital Business Discourse

A book edited by Dr Erika Darics (University of Portsmouth)

Summary
In spite of the prevalent use of computer-mediated communication modes in today’s professional workplaces, up till now the language and language use of these mediated modes have only received scant attention, particularly if compared to publications on computer-mediated business communication within cognate fields of business communication, information and organizational sciences.

Although discourse-focussed research of organisational or business communication has become more prevalent in the last decade following the realisation that the close, language-centred analysis of naturally occurring interactions is a fruitful method to shed light on the complexities of interactions in the professional workplace, business discourse research up till now seemed to have neglected interactions that take place via mediated communication channels.

Recent publications on business discourse either only scarcely register computer-mediated discourse, or struggle to meaningfully combine the findings of the scholarship of organizational studies and linguistic/computer-mediated discourse studies. The proposed volume of Digital Business Discourse is aimed to fill this gap by bringing together research addressing the interactional practices enabled by the various mediated communication modes currently used in the professional workplace or virtual work teams.

Forthcoming in 2015