Language and Intercultural Communication in the Workplace: critical approaches to theory and practice
Loading...
Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Abstract
McLuhan (1964) foresaw a time where cultures would be united through technology in what he called the global village. This would be the new form of social organization that would inevitably unite the entire world into one great social, political, and cultural system (Baran & Davis, 2009). It is argued in much of the literature on the intercultural workplace that with an increasingly globalized community comes an increasingly globalized and diverse workforce. As Blommaert (2010) correctly puts it, the world has increasingly become interconnected and is marked by more and more mobility of both people and commodities, including language and faith (italics added). Thus, one’s faith – like one’s culture and language – accompanies the individual wherever the person goes. Consequently, faith, in this sense, should also be part of the globalization debate as much as other sociocultural and economic topics.
Description
From language classrooms to outdoor markets, the workplace is fundamental to socialisation. It is not only a site of employment where money is made and institutional roles are enacted through various forms of discourse; it is also a location where people engage in social actions and practices. The workplace is an interesting research site because of advances in communication technology, cheaper and greater options for travel, and global migration and immigration. Work now requires people to travel over great geographical distances, communicate with cultural ‘others’ located in different time zones, relocate to different regions or countries, and conduct business in online settings. The workplace is thus changing and evolving, creating new and emerging communicative contexts.
This volume provides a greater understanding of workplace cultures, particularly the ways in which working in highly interconnected and multicultural societies shape language and intercultural communication. The chapters focus on critical approaches to theory and practice, in particular how practice is used to shape theory. They also question the validity and universality of existing models. Some of the predominant models in intercultural communication have been criticised for being Eurocentric or Anglocentric, and this volume proposes alternative frameworks for analysing intercultural communication in the workplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication.
Keywords
Citation
Ladegaard, H.J., & Jenks, C. (Eds.). (2017). Language and Intercultural Communication in the Workplace: Critical approaches to theory and practice (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315468174