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 table. Tune in if you want answers and more questions on the language game as we are playing it.

For more information, references and a full transcript please visit our website: wordsandactions.blog   In this episode on business (or is it corporate?) communication textbooks, we cannot help mention the one we wrote ourselves and are currently revising. The first edition of Language in Business, Language at Work is available here.

ChatGPT answered Bernard’s question “Is there a difference between business communication and corporate communication?”:  “Yes, there is a distinction between business communication and corporate communication, although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The differences lie in their scope, focus, and the context in which they are applied:

Business Communication:     • Scope: Business communication is a broader term that encompasses all types of communication within a business environment. This includes communication between employees, between different departments, with customers, and with external stakeholders.     • Focus: Business communication focuses on the day-to-day exchange of information, ideas, and messages to facilitate the smooth functioning of a business. It includes various forms of communication, such as emails, memos, reports, meetings, and presentations.     • Audience: The audience for business communication can be internal (within the organization) or external (outside the organization), and the content can range from operational details to marketing messages.

Corporate Communication:     • Scope: Corporate communication is a subset of business communication that specifically deals with the communication strategies and activities of an organization as a whole. It involves managing and conveying a consistent corporate identity and message.     • Focus: Corporate communication is strategic and often focuses on shaping the public image of the organization, maintaining a positive reputation, and managing relationships with external stakeholders, such as investors, customers, the media, and the public.     • Audience: The primary audience for corporate communication is often external stakeholders, but it also includes internal stakeholders. It aims to create a favorable perception of the company and ensure that its values and messages align with its overall business goals.

We also searched for the phrases ‘business communication’, ‘corporate communication’ and ‘organizational communication’ in large corpora of American and British English in general. Here is part of concordance (see glossary) from the British National Corpus 2014.

Still in the introduction, we then look at a critique of economic textbooks, drawing on the work of our interview guest from episode 26 (the language of corporate social responsibility Part 2): Stibbe, A. (2020). Ecolinguistics and economics: The power of language to build worlds. WEA Commentaries, 10(3), 2-7. In the  interview, Jonathan Clifton challenges the idea that “in a court of law, or in a civil court, whosoever is right is going to win, and whosoever is wrong is going to lose”. Instead he says, success depends on “how successful lawyers or defendants or witnesses, expert witnesses can marshal resources to make a convincing argument”. This echoes a scene in the film Anatomy of a Fall (2023): when the suspect assures her lawyer that “I did not kill him”, her lawyer replies: “That is not the point.” The film is much recommended - courtroom dramas don’t get better than this! Jonathan’s book is broad in scope, ranging from legal language to football punditry. As for the latter, he mentions the popular BBC programme Match of the Day, which is hosted by former player and outspoken commentator Gary Lineker.

In the final part of the episode, we first look at advice for email writing from this textbook: Hartley, P., Marriott, S., & Knapton, H. (2023). Professional and Business Communication: Personal strategies for the post-digital world. (3rd ed.) Routledge. The authors of that textbook in turn quote: Kelly, S. (2019). Computer Mediated Communication for Business: From theory to practice. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.  

That’s it for this episode - see you next time!

 

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 in the workplace, which, unless they change the organisational culture, all too often do not have the desired or even an adverse effect. We then move on to the notion of intersectionality, which linguist and writer Kat Gupta has likened to a deck of cards.

The fascinating finding that feelings of non-belonging are neurologically similar to physical pain is reported here:

Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The pain of social disconnection: examining the shared neural underpinnings of physical and social pain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(6), 421-434.

Moving on to the language aspect of workplace discrimination, Bernard entions Erin Carrie’s  and Rob Drummond’s Accentism Project, which, among other things, is a real treasure trove of testimonials.  

For a light touch, we look at how film characters are stereotyped through their accents - who could forget Babs and Rocky from Chicken Run?

In another corner of the cinematic universe, the villain with a British Received Pronunciation accent is so common that he has sparked parodies in advertising. In real life, however, this particular accent is nearly extinct:

Lindsey, G. (2019). English after RP: Standard British pronunciation today. Springer.

Linguistic stereotyping and accentism can have harsh consequences, for how competent someone is perceived to be to how much investor money they can attract or the severity of court sentence

Our second guest, Annelise Ly, mentions the metaphor of culture as an onion with layers. This idea goes back to Geert Hofstede’s work on national cultures in the workplace:

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International differences in work-related values. London: Sage.

While still influential, Hofstede’s work has been the subject of much criticism, and other metaphors have been proposed:

Fang, T. (2005). From “onion” to “ocean”: Paradox and change in national cultures. International Studies of Management & Organization, 35(4), 71-90.

In the final part of the episode, we use Mats Deutschmann’s RAVE resource to test our own stereotypes around accents. Mats and his colleague Anders Steinvall have written about how to use the resource to counter prejudice: 

Deutschmann, M., & Steinvall, A. (2020). Combatting linguistic stereotyping and prejudice by evoking stereotypes. Open Linguistics, 6(1), 651-671.

We encourage you to give it a go yourself, it’s quite an eye-opener.

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 critical citizenship.

You can find more information, references and a full transcript on wordsandactions.blog. In this episode we mention a number of  language-related AI applications, including DALL-E, which generates images from language prompts; Scite, which identifies references supporting or questioning research findings; ELSA, which stands for English Language Speech assistant and is meant to help language learners; Wordtune, which can rewrite texts i different “tones”; and the codings apps Copilot and CodeWhisperer, which convert language inputs into code. 

Some examples of how the AI-powered version of the Bing search engine produces answers that are troubling or face-threatening are mentioned in this article. 

Our interview guest, Andreas van Cranenburgh, refers to how OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, uses low-paid content moderators in developing countries, often exposing them to traumatic content. This practice was described in Time Magazine.  

Following the interview, we talk about how the notion of communicative competence needs to be extended for interactions with chatbots.  Hymes’ original formulation of communicative competence dates from six years after the first ever chatbot, Eliza, was developed. (It is not known if he was aware of it.) The creator of that application, Joseph Weizenbaum, named it after Eliza Doolittle, the character in Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (later made into the musical and film My Fair Lady). In that modern take on the Greek myths of the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with one of his statues, a linguistics professor teaches a working-class woman how to sound upper-class. Are chatbots the malleable female creations of male developers? And why does Erika, a female user, think of ChatGPT as a man? As they say, there is a paper in that. 

And finally, here is the ChatGPT-generated text we analyse in the last part of the episode:

Dear [Customer Name],

Thank you for reaching out to us. We understand that high energy prices can be frustrating and we want to help. We're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Our company's energy prices are affected by a number of factors, including changes in the global energy market and increasing demand for energy. However, we are committed to finding ways to help our customers manage their energy costs. We recommend some simple steps to conserve energy, such as turning off lights when they're not in use, adjusting your thermostat, and using energy-efficient appliances. Additionally, we offer a number of energy-saving programs that could help you save money on your energy bills. We value your feedback and appreciate your loyalty. If you have any further concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Best regards,

[Your name] 

Our next episode will conclude the mini-series in CSR - see you then!

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 full transcript on https://wordsandactions.blog. In the introduction, we mention the Yale Programme for Climate. Its most recent survey of  on public attitudes to climate change dates from 2022 and includes the following two maps. The different colours indicates the percentage of the population thinking that climate change will have a direct impact on them.

The article on metaphors in climate change discourse is

Atanasova, D., & Koteyko, N. (2017). Metaphors in Guardian Online and Mail Online opinion-page content on climate change: War, religion, and politics. Environmental Communication, 11(4), 452-469.

This article gives a good overview of war metaphors more generally: 

Flusberg, S. J., Matlock, T., & Thibodeau, P. H. (2018). War metaphors in public discourse. Metaphor and Symbol, 33(1), 1-18.

We also talk about a chapter in the following book: 

Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the Brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology. Benjamins.

The cue for our discussion about presuppositions in proverbs about pigs is taken from this article by our interview guest: 

Stibbe, A. (2003). As charming as a pig: The discursive construction of the relationship between pigs and humans. Society & Animals, 11(4), 375-392.

The origin of the German phrase ‘Schwein gehabt’ meaning having been lucky is not entirely clear, but may go back to a mediaeval custom to give a pig as a consolation prize to someone who had lost in a competition. 

The idea that pigs are filthy is also expressed in the film Pulp Fiction (1994), where animals consumed by humans are compared to pets. The different ways in which humans relate to animals are put into stark contrast in this row of shops in a small English town.

Our discussion of presuppositions draws on 

Polyzou, A. (2015). Presupposition in discourse: Theoretical and methodological issues. Critical Discourse Studies, 12(2), 123-138.

Our interview guest, Arran Stibbe, is the founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association and runs a free online course called The Stories We Live By. During the interview, Veronika mentions Buy Nothing Day in Britain, which is on the last Friday in November (but feel free to buy nothing on any day of the year!). 

The seminal work in ecofeminism was

Daly, M. (1978). Gyn/Ecology: The metaethics of radical feminism. Beacon Press. 

while a recent article focuses on the language angle is 

Appleby, R., & Pennycook, A. (2017). Swimming with sharks, ecological feminism and posthuman language politics. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 14(2-3), 239-261.

In the analysis part of the episode, we report on the work on CSR reporting by a number of researchers from China. We mention some recent work that a previous interview guest, Matteo Fuoli, has done with Annika Beelitz, on the discourse of energy companies

In the analysis part of the episode, we report on the work on CSR reporting by a number of researchers from China. We mention some recent work that a previous interview guest, Matteo Fuoli, has done with Annika Beelitz, on the discourse of energy companies.  

Fuoli, M. and Beelitz, A. (2022). Framing the path to net zero: A corpus analysis of carbon disclosures by the world’s largest corporate emitters, 2011-2020. Paper presented at the 6th Corpora and Discourse international conference. 26-28 August, Bertinoro/Italy.

The text we analyse is the 2021 CSR report by China Southern Airlines 2021.

The complete report is available both in Chinese and in English. 

Finally, we’d like to mention that Erika, Veronika and Bernard are working on the second edition of the Language in Business, Language at Work textbook (Bloomsbury, 2018), which will feature a new chapter on CSR. 

See you again for the third and final part of this mini-series!

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 transcript can be found on wordsandactions.blog. In this episode early in the introduction, Erika cites two definitions. She first cites the definition of sustainability in a 1987 report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (a sub-organisation of the United Nations) called “Our Common Future”. It can be found here. The second definition is on corporate social responsibility and taken from the website Investopedia.  The examples we give of CSR in action, including attempts that backfired, are body-positive Barbie dolls, the “inclusive” and desexualised M&M candy figures and a now (in)famous Benetton advert. The latter is  reproduced in Erika’s and Veronika’s textbook Language in Business, Language at Work (Macmillan Higher Education, 2018; the second edition will have Bernard as the third author. Still in the introduction, we also mention this article on the social responsibility of business, the reference to which can be found on our website.  Every summer, the Pride season in Western countries now comes with many examples of “pinkwashing”, where companies claim to be queer-friendly, but either don’t have relevant policies or even have practices that go against LGBT equality. Some examples from 2022 can be found here. 

Towards the end of the introduction, Veronika talks about legitimation as a discourse strategy, based on these works by van Leeuwen and Reyes.

We then proceed to the interview with Garrath Williams. On the links between ‘responsible’ and ‘response’, the Oxford English Dictionary has the following to say (shortened – the OED has lots of detail):

Etymology: < Anglo-Norman responssable, ressponsable, Anglo-Norman and Middle French responsable answerable, entitled to an answer …, answerable, required to answer …, that responds, that constitutes a reply (15th cent.), apparently < classical Latin respōns- , past participial stem of respondēre respond v. … probably < classical Latin respōnsāre to reply 

While we mention but do not elaborate on the Drink Responsibly campaign in the UK, someone else has, in a 2014 report on alcohol and the night-time economy. 

During our analysis of the ExxonMobil press release, we wonder if the company has a Chief Sustainability Officer. The answer is no but it has had an external sustainability advisory panel since 2009.    In episode 26, we’ll talk about language and the environment – see you then!

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 post on wordsandactions.blog, where we publish additional resources, and importantly for this episode, the images we discuss. 

In this episode on ‘selling, hard and soft and everything in between’, we want to raise advertising literacy by showing and identifying how language and semiotics are used in marketing to influence people’s buying behaviour. In the introductory chat, it soon becomes obvious that advertising is everywhere in different shapes and forms and that all three hosts have succumbed to it: we even shamelessly do it on the podcast itself (can you spot all instances?) and we have to admit to having bought clothes, paintbrushes and ice-cream ourselves, fuelled by subtle and less subtle advertising. In the introduction, Erika refers to Arran Stibbe’s work, in which he analyses the discourse in textbooks on economics. We then move on to elusive types of advertising, where the genre is bended and blended with others so it is harder to spot. Veronika starts with an example of so-called native advertising. Later, Bernard mentions the study below about the phenomenon:

Apostol, N.-E. (2020). What is known about native advertising in editorial contexts? A descriptive literature review. Journal of Media Research 37, 59-81.

Veronika also refers to product placement and illustrates how the appearance of the Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses in the Tom Cruise blockbusters Top Gun and Maverick boosted sales (and US Navy applications). 

Non-conventional and blended advertisements are often referred to with blended (or ‘portmanteau’) words as well: advertorials, infomercials, shopatainment. The last of these includes live sellers on video channels. A recent MA dissertation at Lancaster University addresses the phenomenon from a language point of view

Tan, K. (2021). A corpus-based analysis on the language in Chinese livestream sales. MA dissertation, Lancaster University. 

This case study of one live seller shows that, unsurprisingly, verbs and nouns closely related to purchase and discount are frequently used in livestream sales (‘buy’, ‘get’, ‘coupon’). In addition, live sellers use evaluative nouns (‘beauties’) and personal pronouns like ‘everybody’, ‘we’, etc. to address the customers. Repetitions or interactions with audiences can also be noticed. Hard and soft advertising strategies are applied in livestream sales together, to attract and persuade customers. In the run-down of advertising types, we also refer to basic distinctions that are often made, such as hard selling and soft selling (see title of this episode) and reason vs. tickle, which are also covered in Bernstein’s and Cook’s works. Bernard refers to the typical features of hard selling as the very recognizable aggressive tactics that centralise the product and its features and benefits, while playing on the scarcity principle and fear of missing out. Veronika’s son, Feranmi Ayo Omoniyi, would like to be given full credit for all his research into hard-selling tactics in computer games – thank you! 

Erika mentions that soft selling plays more on emotions, stories, atmosphere and associations, with the possessor reflecting the possessed. Still in the introduction, we also mention Bhatia’s colony of promotional genres, which features both central and more peripheral members. We then move on to the interview with Joe McVeigh, who is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki in Finland. You can also find him on Twitter: @EvilJoeMcVeigh (ignore the account handle, he is very nice!). In the analysis we look at an example each that we brought - these can be found at wordsandactions.blog! And that’s it - see you next time for the start of season 4!

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 further info and a full transcript please head over to: wordsandactions.blog

In this episode,right at the beginning, we reminisce about previous episodes. You may want to listen (again) to episodes on crisis communication (S1E6) and on negotiations (S2E19). Later we mention two other episodes S1E7 on storytelling and S1E11 on impression management.  

 

We start our topic, computer-mediated communication and identity, with Erika telling us about the very early days of the Internet.  We also mention Peter Steiner’s 199 cartoon “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”, which has become so famous that it has its own Wikipedia entry.  We then go on to introduce the theory for this episode, namely Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall’s work on identity construction through spoken interaction:

 

Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies, 7(4-5), 585-614

 

Erika gets due credit from Bernard and Veronika for her work on constructing identities in digital spaces, e.g.:

 

Darics, E., & Gatti, M. C. (2019). Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: the discourse of virtual work. Discourse Studies, 21(3), 237-257.

 

Still in the introduction, Bernard mentions a study on whether women prefer female bosses.

We contrast this global study with one that addresses very specific contexts.

 Talking about how identity can be indexed in online interaction, Veronika mentions a recent PhD thesis completed at Lancaster University. A bit later, Bernard refers to influencers and mentions the case of Dotan, a Dutch singer and influencer podcaster who was less than authentic. Veronika’s current research on how online identity construction works in political discourse is part of a multi-authored book on which she is lead author and that is currently under review with the publisher (so fingers crossed!). The title is Voices of Supporters: Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections.  The interview guest for this episode is Alexandra Georgaopoulou, a professor at King’s College London who is known for her work on so-called “small stories” and their function in constructing identities, including online. Information on the Ego Media project, which studied the impact of new media on forms and practices of self-presentation, can be found at https://www.ego-media.org/. There is a  forthcoming digital publication from the project with Stanford University Press.

Moving on to the analysis part of the episode, we look at the social media profiles of footballer, author and campaigner Marcus Rashford: @MarcusRashford (Twitter), marcusrashford (Instagram), _marcusrashford (TikTok). The fan account in TikTok is rashford10marcus. All three accounts feature a logo based on his initials: 

 In analysing the posts, we draw on a matrix first proposed for how CEOs present themselves online:

 

Jameson, D. A. (2014). Crossing public-private and personal-professional boundaries: How changes in technology may affect CEOs’ communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 77(1), 7-30.

 

And that’s it for this episode - see you again next time!

 

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 developments.     For more information, references and a full transcript please visit wordsandactions.blog In this episode we start our discussion of language and technology with voice recognition. Bernard mentions a general bias towards female voices, as discussed in this paper: Edworthy J., Hellier E., & Rivers J. (2003). The use of male or female voices in warnings systems: a question of acoustics. Noise and Health, 6(21): 39-50.  Pitch range is also important, as demonstrated in the experiment on using different voices for sat navs that Erika mentions:  Niebuhr, O., & Michalsky, J. (2019). Computer-generated speaker charisma and its effects on human actions in a car-navigation system experiment: or how Steve Jobs’ tone of voice can take you anywhere. In Misra S. et al. (eds) Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 11620:  375-390. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24296-1_31  Moving from acoustics to culture, the following paper discusses how male voices are perceived as more authoritative:  Anderson R.C., & Klofstad, C.A. (2012). Preference for leaders with masculine voices holds in the case of feminine leadership roles. PLoS ONE, 7(12): e51216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051216 It is worth sharing a few more auto-captioning gems in the lectures of Veronika and her colleagues at Lancaster University:  "my grammar is leaving me" →  "my grandma is leading me" “n-sizes” → “incisors” “Hardaker and McGlashan” → “heartache and regression” “institutional” → "it's too slow" (truth!) “masculine” → "mass killer" (bit harsh)   On readability, Bernard mentions an example from accounting, namely the obfuscation hypothesis. The following paper on the topic is considered the first accounting study that uses automated textual analysis with a very large sample to address readability: Li, F. (2008). Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence. Journal of Accounting & Economics, 45: 221–247. doi:10.1016/j.jacceco.2008.02.003 

 

We then go on to talk about sentiment analysis, which is used to find out about, for example, brand perceptions or patient satisfaction. Here is an example of the latter:

 

Hopper, A. M., & Uriyo, M. (2015). Using sentiment analysis to review patient satisfaction data located on the internet. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 29(2): 221-233. DOI 10.1108/JHOM-12-2011-0129

 

In the context of this episode, we want to distinguish between corpus linguistics and computational linguistics. Although language corpora are used to train systems in machine learning, corpus linguists engage in the computer-assisted analysis of large text collections, often combining automated statistical analysis with manual qualitative analysis. A company using such mixed corpus linguistic methods to provide their customers with insights about their products and services is Relative Insight. (We did not receive any funding from them for this episode, but they are a spin-off company that started at Lancaster University.) A critical evaluation of another area of computational linguistics, topic modelling, written by two corpus linguists is: 

 

Brookes, G.,  & McEnery, T. (2018). The utility of topic modelling for discourse studies: A critical evaluation. Discourse Studies, 21(1): 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445618814032

 

(Incidentally, the above paper is also based on data about patient satisfaction.)

 

The PhD thesis on automatic irony detection that Bernard mentions was written by Cynthia Van Hee and is available here. 

 

The second interview quest is another one of Bernard’s colleagues from Ghent University, Orphée De Clercq. Her recent publications include: 

 

De Bruyne, L., De Clercq, O., & Hoste, V. (2021). Annotating affective dimensions in user-generated content. Language Resources and Evaluation, 55(4): 1017-1045. De Clercq, O., De Sutter, G., Loock, R., Cappelle, B., & Plevoets, K. (2021). Uncovering machine translationese using corpus analysis techniques to distinguish between original and machine-translated French. Translation Quarterly, 101: 21-45.

 

And finally, we talk to Doris Dippold from the University of Surrey in the UK. Her work on chatbots can be found in: 

Dippold, D., Lynden, J., Shrubsall, R., & Ingram, R. (2020). A turn to language: How interactional sociolinguistics informs the redesign of prompt: response chatbot turns. Discourse, Context & Media, 37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100432

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.   For more information, references and a full transcript head over http://wordsandactions.blog.   This episode opens with one of the guests, Krzysztof Kredens, talking about the machine metaphor for translating and interpreting, which still dominates the non-linguistic understanding of those professions. It can be linked to the famous Shannon-Weaver model of communication: first proposed by mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon in 1948 (and later popularised by fellow mathematician Warren Weaver), it conceives of communication as involving a sender or encoder, a message and a receiver or decoder. Message transmission can be affected by channel and noise.   Because human communication does not follow the rules of mathematics, this model has often been criticised as inappropriate and even distorting. Erika calls it a destructive metaphor, citing  Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. London: Routledge.  Our discussion of equivalence in translation draws on the following two works:  Baker, M. (2011). In Other Words: A coursebook on translation. London: Routledge. Koller, W. (1995). The concept of equivalence and the object of translation studies. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 7(2), 191-222. Listeners of a certain age may remember, if not Nikita Khrushchev’s wrongly interpreted words from an address at the Polish embassy in Moscow (1956), then perhaps Sting citing them in his song Russians (1985).   When discussing pragmatic equivalence, we give an example of a direct vs. indirect speech act: in the former, a directive is used to make a request (‘Sit down’) while in the latter, the speaker uses a rogative form to realise the request function (‘Would you like sitting down?’).   Bernard reels off a whole list of films involving translators and interpreters; the excerpt from The Interpreter (2005) that we enact can be found at 1:40. If you would like to watch films with a language and linguistics angle, follow @LinguistsMovies on Twitter for updates on their virtual watchalong nights.  Our main interview guest for the episode is Katrijn Maryns, whose relevant publications include: Jacobs, M., & Maryns, K. (2021). Managing narratives, managing identities: Language and credibility in legal consultations with asylum seekers. Language in Society, 1-28. Maryns, K. (2014). The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure. London: Routledge. Maryns, K. (2017). The use of English as ad hoc institutional standard in the Belgian asylum interview. Applied Linguistics, 38(5), 737-758. In the final part of the analysis, Victoria Nydegger Schrøder analyses the values statement of the headquarters and local subsidiaries of global transport operator Keolis. You can see the screenshots on our blog: http://wordsandactions.blog   Victoria kindly mentions two publications by Erika and Veronika (we did not tell her to!): Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2018). Language in Business, Language at Work. London: Palgrave. Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2019). Social actors “to go”: An analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 82(2), 214-238. In her analysis, Victoria, among other things, comments on the use of ‘we’ and how it can refer to different groups of people throughout a text and often stay ambiguous. This feature of corporate discourse has also been observed by Veronika: Koller, V. (2009). Corporate self-presentation and self-centredness: A case for cognitive critical discourse analysis. In: Pishwa, H. (ed.) Language and Social Cognition: Expression of the social mind. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 267-287. In our next episode, we will discuss machine translation and other applications in language technology - see you then!    

“I’m not hungry. One egg is an oeuf”. Is the author funny? Debatable. Is the author multilingual? Ça dépend. In this multi-voiced episode on multilingualism we tackle different interrelated aspects ranging from translanguaging over accommodation to effectiveness and proficiency and we cast more 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, topped off with nice examples on language accommodation. Bon appétit!   The Words and Actions podcast features and accompanying website, http://wordsandactions.blog. Here we publish a blog post that goes with the podcast, including references to research and a full transcript.  Episode 20 features various researchers who attended the 2021 regional conference (Europe, Middle East and Africa) of the Association for Business Communication, The programme and abstracts are available here.  In the introduction, we talk about the notion of translanguaging. The following references are central papers and overviews:  Bradley, J., Moore, E., & Simpson, J. (2020). Translanguaging as Transformation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Conteh, J. (2018). Translanguaging. ELT Journal, 72(4), 445-447. García, O., & Wei, L.. (2014).Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism, and education. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Wei, L. (2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 9-30. Williams, C. (1996). Secondary education: Teaching in the bilingual situation. In C. Williams, G. Lewis, & C. Baker (eds), The Language Policy: Taking stock. Llangefni: CAI, pp. 39–78 We also talk about communication accommodation theory (CAT) and return to that phenomenon in the analysis part of the episode. Here is a recent overview of the theory:  Zhang, Y. B., & Giles, H. (2018). Communication accommodation theory. In Y. Y. Kim (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (pp. 95-108). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,pp.  95-108.  Another concept that is central to this episode is (Business) English as a lingua franca. One scholar who has written prolifically on accommodation in ELF is Jennifer Jenkins, most recently in this publication: Jenkins, J. (2021). Accommodation in ELF: Where from? Where now? Where next? In Walkinshaw, I. (ed), The Pragmatics of ELF. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Available here.   Still in the introduction, Bernard offers a definition of BELF that is based on this paper:  Louhiala-Salminen, L., Charles, M.,  Kankaanranta, A. (2005). English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: Two case companies. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 401-421. Our interview guest is Gladys Nyarko Ansah, an expert in multilingualism from the University of Ghana. Here are some of her publications, including the one on linguistic landscapes, which she talks about in the interview: Anderson, J.A., Wiredu, J.F., Ansah, G.N., Frimpong-Kodie, G., Orfson-Offei, E., & Boamah-Boateng, D. (2020). A linguistic landscape of the central business district of Accra. Legon Journal of the Humanities, 31(1), 1-35.  Afrifa, G.A., Anderson, J.A., & Ansah, G.N. (2019). The choice of English as a home language in urban Ghana. Current Issues in Language Planning, 20(4), 418-434 Ansah, G.N. (2014). Cognitive models of anger in Akan: A conceptual metaphor analysis. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 1(1), 131-146 In the hosts’ reflection on the interview, Veronika mentions ‘sounds being swapped around’; the technical term for this is metathesis.  In the analysis , Veronika contributes two examples from this study: Rogerson-Revell, P. (2010). “Can you spell that for us nonnative speakers?” Accommodation strategies in international business meetings. The Journal of Business Communication, 47(4), 432-454.

Bernard reproduces an example from a talk at the ABC conference, which illustrates productive phonetic accommodation, i.e making the sounds of spoken language more like that of the interlocutor. Receptive phonetic accommodation is often taught as part of listening skills; here are some alien resources for this: 

The Speech Accent Archive (http://accent.gmu.edu)

The English Listening Library Online (www.elllo.org)

My English Voice (http://myenglishvoice.com)

YouGlish (http://youglish.com) 

Finally, Erika draws on paper by Jane Lockwood and Ying Song:

Lockwood, J., & Song, Y. (2020). Understanding each other: Strategies for accommodation in a virtual business team project based in China. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(1), 113-144. 

The next episode will continue with the theme of different languages, looking at high-stakes translating and interpreting - see you again!

For more info and a transcript please head over to www.wordsandactions.blog. In the introduction to this episode on negotiations, we mention the haggling scene in the Monty Python film Life of Brian (1979). Treat yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iZjxSGca8 On a more serious note, we mention this academic definition of negotiations:  Roloff, M.E., & Jordan, J.M. (1992). Achieving negotiation goals: the “fruits and foibles” of planning ahead. In L.L. Putnam and M.E. Roloff (eds)  Communication and Negotiation. Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 21-45.  A popular book on the subject is  Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2012). Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in. 3rd ed. London Random House.  If you would like to see a nice collection of metaphors in different types in negotiation, have a look at  Smith, T. H. (2005). Metaphors for navigating negotiations. Negotiation Journal, 21(3), 343-364. [See what the author did there?] More on non-violent communication can be found at https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/. Erika and Veronika have given an account of who ‘we’ can refer to in this paper:  Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2019). Social actors ‘to go’: An analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 82(2), 214-238.  Erika also mentions a study that shows just how important language use, including use of pronouns, is in negotiations: Neu, J., & Graham, J. L. (1995). An analysis of language use in negotiations: The role of context and content. In K. Ehlich and J. Wagner (eds) The Discourse of Business Negotiation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 243-272. We close the first part of the episode with another film reference, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). You can watch the scene with the Swiss bankers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndTbiDQjbiE  We conduct the first of two interviews for this episode with Judith Large, a professional negotiator and academic. Her experience of post-war Sri Lanka is captured in  Large, J. (2016). Pushback: Sri Lanka’s dance with global governance. London: Zed Books.  Different accounts of the peace negotiations in Indonesia, including Judith’s, are collected in this 2008 publication:  https://www.c-r.org/accord/aceh-indonesia Between interviews, we talk about different strategies used by negotiators to manipulate others into agreement, not necessarily for our listeners to apply them but to become aware of them and, where appropriate, counter them. We discuss “salami slicing”, “lowballing” and “disrupt and reframe”; for the last one, see Davis, B. P., & E.S. Knowles (1999). A disrupt-then-reframe technique of social influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(2), 192-199. Other than that, the following two strategies are often mentioned: Foot in the Door: The negotiator starts with a small request before gradually increasing their demands. Doing so increases the likelihood that a respondent will agree to the later request. This strategy is based on the principle of compliance:  Freedman, J.L., & S.C. Fraser (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202.  The authors found that if an initial request to put up a small signpost outside one’s home (‘Drive safely’) was followed by the request to put up a much larger sign, 55% of respondents would comply, compared with 20% compliance if asked for the larger sign straightaway.  Door in the Face: The negotiator makes a large request that the respondent will most likely turn down. This request is followed by a second, more reasonable request. Studies show that the second request is more frequently complied with than if that same, smaller request is made in isolation: Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & B.L. Darby (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206-215.  The authors’ example is a request to be a regular blood donor vs the request to donate blood only once. When exposed to both requests, 50% of subjects complied with the second request while a mere 32% complied when they were only presented with the second, smaller request.  Parents and carers may be interested in this application of the two techniques described above:   Chan, A.C., & T.K. Au (2011). Getting children to do more academic work: Foot-in-the-door versus door-in-the-face. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6), 982-985 [Spoiler: Door-in-the-face works best.] Across studies though, both are equally effective:  Pascual, A., & N. Guéguen, N. (2005). Foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face: A comparative meta-analytic study. Psychological Reports, 96(1), 122-128.  Our own meta-analysis is based on a clip of us preparing this episode and having a negotiation ourselves. You can hear us reach agreement here: https://youtu.be/m7Lci3jCiyM By analysing our own talk during preparation, we take our listeners to the backstage of Words & Actions. You can watch a bite-sized introduction to sociologist Erving Goffman’s notion of frontstage and backstage communication here (narrated by Stephen Fry, no less!): https://youtu.be/6Z0XS-QLDWM​  Finally, at two points in the episode we mention zero-sum thinking, a notion from psychology that is often applied in economics and consumer behaviour research. A recent article is  Johnson, S., Zhang, J., & F. Keil (2018). Psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking. Available at https://psyarxiv.com/efs5y/   Another topic that kept popping up throughout was translation and multilingualism. We will address it in our next episode – see you for that!