Linguists and language workers

In this paper, I address two connected topics: firstly, the relationships between linguists working in academia and language professionals, such as communication managers and consultants, in other sectors; and secondly, how a strong emphasis on knowledge exchange and impact in British higher education policy has led to increased collaboration between academic and non-academic language workers, but also to a realignment of traditional academic values with the interests of practitioners. The investigation is partly based on published reflections – mostly by linguists – on collaborating with (language) professionals in other sectors, and partly on insights from 13 interviews with language workers in consulting, communications and campaigning. The interviews are manually analysed for thematic categories and, where relevant, for pragmatic meanings in the context of the interview situation and conversational interaction. Findings suggest conflicts around registers and timescales, along with concerns over data and the relevance of academic interests. Crucially, language professionals show little concern about collaborating with academics, leading to an imbalance in interests. I supplement the evidence with personal observations on the opportunities and obstacles that are present when straddling academic and non-academic work, as well as with a discussion of how a unidirectional realignment of values changes the nature of academic work.

Using a patient decision aid about insulin treatment in type 2 diabetes clinics

The Candlin Researcher AwardThe low uptake of insulin leaves many Malaysians with type 2 diabetes at risk of developing complications. To improve decision making about insulin treatment, a patient decision aid (PDA) was developed for use with patients. However, although it is generally accepted that PDAs can support informed and shared decision making, there is limited discursive data showing how they are used in doctor–patient consultations. This paper reports on activity analysis of clinic consultations in which a PDA about insulin treatment was used. Eleven consultations with diverse participants conducted in three healthcare settings in Malaysia were systematically mapped to identify structural, interactional and thematic patterns. Two main phases of Assessment and Treatment were identified, with doctors generally participating more than patients. Mapping of the Treatment phase showed that structural patterns depended on two main factors: whether patients had read the PDA and whether they responded negatively or positively towards insulin. While mapping is only a preliminary stage of activity analysis, the findings offer insights into structural, interactional and thematic patterns in PDA use at the level of the whole consultation. They also point towards key areas for closer analysis of discursive practices.

Managing information, interaction and team building in nurse shift-change handovers

Whilst there is a wealth of literature on medical handovers, discourse analytic work based on recorded interactional data on these pivotal speech events in health care is less prevalent. This case study of a shift-change nursing handover at a UK hospital Medical Assessment Unit (MAU) takes a microanalytical perspective on nurses’ talk and interaction, which enables us to examine its structural and functional complexity at utterance level. Our methodological approach comprises observations, one semi-structured interview with senior nursing staff (and many informal conversations with various staff), and in total twelve audio-recordings of interactions during, and around, the twice-daily shift-change handovers. By adopting ‘a multiple goals in discourse’ perspective and the framework of activity analysis, we demonstrate the nurses’ interactional management of multiple discourse and activity roles and pursuance of goals that transcend the medically and institutionally crucial transmission of information. This shows the nurses’ orientation to the handover task as not only a structured institutionally regulated event, but also one that tolerates more spontaneous activities that can potentially contribute to team cohesion and staff well-being.

Practising applied linguistics and the change agenda

Forum Discussion

Semiotic vagueness as a tool for goal fulfilment

Over the past 15 years, ‘platform of values’ texts presenting core values have become common in most Swedish public authorities. This article presents a study of how this genre is understood and used in professional practices. The aim is to show how semiotic vagueness in such texts serves a number of previously under-researched purposes in public organizations, including, rather paradoxically, concrete goal achievement. The framework of critical genre analysis enables the analytical process to move from text to practice, and further to the superordinate level of professional culture. Three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts; a focus group discussion with seven senior civil servants/managers; and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants from three public authorities. The findings suggest that vagueness serves as a means to exercise managerial control through the promotion of interpretative work and continuous, identity-related dialogues on value related issues. The article argues that even though such uses of the ‘platform of values’ genre may be functional in neo-bureaucratic organizations, it is also problematic when semiotic vagueness is used as a tool for concrete actions such as internal promotions.

Teacher agency in pragmatic pedagogy

Despite the existence of a large body of research on pragmatic instruction, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and assessing pragmatic competence have received scant attention. The present study sought to investigate Persian-speaking EFL teachers’ beliefs and perceived knowledge about pragmatic instruction and assessment and their self-reported instructional practice. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was administered to 204 EFL teachers and 30 of these teachers also participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that even though the teachers were aware of the importance of pragmatics, they did not consider themselves highly competent in teaching the subject to learners or in the assessment of learners’ pragmatic abilities. The most frequent method they reported having used was pragmatic corrective feedback. Further, the teachers believed that their colleagues and institute directors also gave little weight to the improvement of learners’ pragmatic abilities, and they further argued that textbooks and exams, while containing some pragmatics-related sections, failed to enhance and measure learners’ pragmatic knowledge. These results have critical implications for teachers’ pragmatic awareness in their professional development and for the inclusion of more explicit pragmatic activities in textbooks.

Plurilingual discourse competence

We present a didactic model for the multidimensional analysis of discourse genres as situated practices, illustrated through the study of a transactional conversation in Spanish. This model represents a basis for developing and assessing the discourse competence of plurilingual adult language learners (Spanish-, Catalan-, French- or English-learning university students) acquiring a minimal competence to participate in academic events (lectures, seminars and workshops), as well as to cope with everyday needs in a foreign city. For proficiency in the use of language in context, students must be aware of the three dimensions which define a discourse genre: the sociocultural, the pragmatic and the textual, each entailing specific criteria and indicators of achievement. Special focus is placed on the sociocultural dimension because of its underlying importance for the teaching and learning of discourse genres. One factor especially relevant in this dimension is the community of practice to which the learners belong as autonomous social agents and in which they critically and consciously engage in learning activities.

Mobilizing knowledge

Many linguistic studies have analyzed the ways in which reported speech is used to mobilize knowledge in academic writing, but there have been far fewer such studies of knowledge mobilization in non-academic genres. This study analyzes the functions of reported speech in a Canadian quasi-judicial public inquiry report, a genre that is intertextually situated between research genres (through academic expert witnesses) and policy genres (through its role in making policy recommendations to the government). All instances of explicitly marked citation and reported speech in the commission report were identified and coded by function. The findings show citation and reported speech had specific functions that contributed to knowledge mobilization by discursively creating evidence, transporting worldviews and values, and changing knowledge status in the legal genres. The analysis also raises theoretical questions in linguistics, resulting in the argument that reported speech is not a static, formal category but a discursive status negotiated by the participants.

Between fear and confidence

The phenomenon of news automation is viewed ambivalently by news professionals, who understand that it promises to give journalists more time to focus on their key activities but who also fear job losses and perceive new ethical questions relating to its use. Although automated news production methods refer to software or algorithmic processes that convert structured data into text or visual representations, a ‘robot’ metaphor is often used to describe the activity. Does this metaphor influence the mediatic discourses of journalists when they write about automated news within their professional context? How do they give meaning to the information? Do they observe an enunciative withdrawal? The present corpus-based research focuses on 300 headlines published online in English and French in a variety of countries over eight years. The findings show that journalists do not limit themselves to facts when they write about a subject connected to them, and that although in this instance the two groups studied do share some preoccupations, there are nuances between them. Those nuances lie in the opposition between the expression of feelings of fear (of losing their jobs or professional identity) and the expression of feelings of confidence (in the future or in progress). It was also found that the use of robot metaphors influenced these trends but in opposite directions.

Writing as a critical moment in professional discourse

Written texts mediate action and serve as accounts of action in most contemporary professional domains. Echoing Candlin’s call for applied and social linguists to explore ‘critical moments’ in discourse, I argue that ‘writing’ constitutes just such a critical moment, because of its contested position in professional domains and the dominant ideology underpinning writing evident both in ‘intellectual’ (academic) and ‘expert’ (professional) orientations. A key challenge is to find ways of understanding writing which are not constrained by existing ‘intellectual’ and ‘expert’ orientations and which can contribute to useable knowledge for professional practice. I draw on specific examples from ethnographically oriented research projects with professionals in two domains (academia and social work) to illustrate how a dominant ideology of writing is enacted. This enactment is explored further by focusing on ICT-mediated ‘expert systems’ in social work, illustrating how an increasingly used, specific technology of writing is impacting professional practice. I conclude by considering the difficulties and possibilities of collaboratively building usable knowledge about writing for professional practice.