28.3843, Review: Sociolinguistics: Meier, Yanaprasart, Lüdi (2016)

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Subject: 28.3843, Review: Sociolinguistics: Meier, Yanaprasart, Lüdi (2016)

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Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 15:02:54
From: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky [zsubrinszky.zsuzsanna at uni-bge.hu]
Subject: Managing Plurilingual and Intercultural Practices in the Workplace

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-5213.html

EDITOR: Georges  Lüdi
EDITOR: Katharina  Höchle Meier
EDITOR: Patchareerat  Yanaprasart
TITLE: Managing Plurilingual and Intercultural Practices in the Workplace
SUBTITLE: The case of multilingual Switzerland
SERIES TITLE: Multilingualism and Diversity Management 4
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky, Budapest Business School

REVIEWS EDITOR: Robert A. Coté

SUMMARY

This publication entitled ‘Managing Plurilingual and Intercultural Practices
in the Workplace: The case of multilingual Switzerland’ edited by Georges
Lüdi, Katharina Höchle Meier, and Patchareerat Yanaprasart, is the fourth in
the John Benjamins Publishing Company’s Prestige Series “Multilingualism and
Diversity Management”, which sets out to show in what way and under what
conditions multilingualism can be an advantage for companies, European
institutions, and higher education. The contributions in this volume stem from
different lines of research conducted in Switzerland and represent both a
continuation and an advancement of the European DYLAN project. As a
quadrilingual country where massive immigration, workforce mobility, and
globalisation coexist, Switzerland offers an ideal laboratory for studying
phenomena linked to multilingualism and cultural diversity. The book’s six
chapters look at various multilingual settings from different perspectives and
with a focus on various topics, from multinational companies to individual
migrant women, from vocational training to websites and power relations in
interaction. This book will prove useful to company managers, professional
trainers and students of business and intercultural communication. 

Chapter 1, ‘Introduction’ by Georges Lüdi, Katharina Höhle Meier, and
Patchareerat Yanaprasat explains the context of their research, the
relationship with the DYLAN-project as well as the conceptual framework and
key concepts (e.g., endolingual vs. exoliningual and monolingual vs.
plurilingual strategies), language choice in multilingual settings, cultural
diversity in the workplace, social representations and ideologies in
relationships and the multiplicity of voices in corporate culture. Their aim
is to understand how managers and employees meet the challenge of
communication in professional contexts and how it forces the analyst to
combine different methods and to develop a multifaceted conceptual grid.

Chapter 2, ‘Power in the Implementation of Plurilingual Repertoires’ is a
collaborative work by Georges Lüdi, Katharina Höhle Meier, Fee Steinbach
Kohler and Patchareerat Yanaprasat on oral interactions in various DYLAN
terrains. The focus lies on the ways participants make use of their linguistic
repertoires in order to regulate the exercise of power and to maximise
participative processes at section, scientific and editorial meetings, as well
as at other various communication events. The authors conclude that when
discussing the enhancement or reduction of the status of languages, it is
concern for efficiency rather than fairness that dictates accommodation to
speakers of other languages.

In Chapter 3, ‘From language regimes to multilingual practices in different
settings’, five smaller studies on a variety of topics are collated. In
Subchapter 3.1, ‘The case for multinational companies’, Georges Lüdi presents
a case study on aspects of language management in <Pharma A> that revisits and
expands the findings collected throughout the DYLAN period. The areas
discussed include the dominant discourse of the company, alternative
communicative strategies in mixed teams and the variability of language choice
in a multilingual setting. What emerged from the analysis is that
language-mixing turns out to be a common mode of communication in this
international workplace despite the fact that top-down language management do
influence individual’s linguistic behaviour and perceptions.

The purpose of Subchapter 3.2, ‘Interactional negotiation of linguistic
heterogeneity: Accommodation practices in intercultural hotel
service-encounters’ by Stefano A. Losa and Peter Varga is to understand the
real relationship work in front desk service encounters involving linguistic
and cultural diversity between service providers and customers. By adopting an
interactional perspective and by taking into account verbal dimensions, they
aim at highlighting the interactional and communicative work that service
providers and customers jointly accomplish in order to achieve successful
service transactions in intercultural and multilingual service encounters.

In Subchapter 3.3, ‘Language regime in the Swiss armed forces between
institutional multilingualism, the dominance of German, English, and situated
plurilanguaging’,  Lüdi takes up the results of a research project by a Basel
team in the framework of the National Research Program (NRP) 56 and those of
the Master’s thesis by Gabriele Wittlin at the University of Fribourg (2011)
about an emblematic multilingual Swiss institution: the armed forces. It
combines reflections on the language regime as far as regulations exist and on
the ways plurilingual members cope with settings where people from different
language regions have to cooperate during training and exercises.

Subchapter 3.4, ‘The plurilingual challenges at the workplace for
Spanish-speaking migrant women’ is authored by Linda Grimm-Pfefferli, who
wrote a Ph.D. thesis on linguistic loyalty and the forms of plurilingualism of
Hispano-American women living in bi-national partnerships in Basel
(Grimm-Pfefferli, 2014). Despite the stereotyped notion that migrants end up
speaking only the host language (see Appel and Muysken, 1987; Bright, 1992),
each of the women interviewed in her study makes use in her work environment
of a broad repertoire that includes the native language, the host language,
and other languages.

Finally, Subchapter 3.5, ‘Doctor, are you plurilingual? Communication in
multilingual health settings’ by Georges Lüdi, Nathalie Asensio and Fabia
Longhi, analyses plurilingual communication between different stakeholders in
the healthcare process from the participants’ perspective as documented in
questionnaires administered to nurses, interviews between staff members and
patients, and audio-recorded interactions. The fact that many doctors and
nurses do not speak the local language well constitutes a number of
complications, namely, language difficulties in linguistically mixed medical
teams and between staff members and local patients, who require the medical
staff to speak the local language.

Chapter 4, ‘Visual manifestations of institutional multilingualism’ focuses on
two distinct visual manifestations of multi/-plurilingualism. In Subchapter
4.1, ‘Diversity management on corporate websites’, Yanaprasart analyses the
language choices of multinational companies and the way they cope with the
multilingual reality of global business expansion and an increasingly
multilingual public through their websites. The analysis concerns the
commercial aspect of the Internet, a link between the marketing strategy and
language policy, multilingual communication on the web, and the website
localisation. The author shows that there is a growing challenge for companies
to decide if, and under what conditions the choice of a mono- or multilingual
corporate websites may not impede the effectiveness and expansion of
businesses.

Subchapter 4.2, ‘The Semiotic landscape of a company between linguistic
management and practice’ by Lüdi deals with the meaning actors attribute to
language choices in four SMEs, how social actors conceive the mostly
multilingual semiotic space in the workplace as part of their professional
practice, and whether, and how, companies regulate, prescribe, enforce or
reduce its dynamics. The focus lies on the presence, design and meaning of
signs of different types (verbal inscriptions, icons) on the premises of
companies. It is argued that signs are ways of organising the workplace for
users as they are more or less explicitly overlaid by linguistic ideologies,
“with value, be it social, cultural, political, moral, economic or otherwise”
(Javorsky and Thurlow, 2009, 11).

In Chapter 5, ‘The challenge of the management diversity’, Patchareerat
Yanaprasart presents the partial results of a follow-up project lasting two
years funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under the supervision of
Anne-Claude Berthoud. Her research set out to identify the advantages and
drawbacks of linguistic diversity in the Swiss multilingual business context
and to understand the development of local diversity management initiatives
and practices as described by the social actor. Subchapter 5.1,
‘Organisational diversity management’ deals with the following questions:
Under what conditions can diversity and inclusion provide a strategic business
advantage for companies? How can organisations best manage and balance the
need for divergence and convergence? While acknowledging that “mixing” is a
great breeding ground for creativity, the informants all agree that an
environment made of tolerance and respect has to be created. In terms of
people management, organisations must not only be clear and convinced of their
values (institutional dimension) but also select their members for their
task-related abilities (operative dimension).

Subchapter 5.2, ‘Language diversity management’ addresses the questions how
companies cope with the multilingual reality of today’s business contexts,
whether they develop any formal language policy and strategies to facilitate
effective communication internally and externally, and if so, with what
philosophy and what form of management. Even if language is person-bound, the
language issue is too important to be left at the individual level, and
managerial actions can influence individual action, which strongly relates to
specific settings. Subchapter 5.3, ‘Diversity management: Language and
culture’ explores the relationship between language and culture when promoting
multilingual inclusiveness in such a way that the mixed teams’ members best
exploit their diverse skills. The findings demonstrate that a ‘multilingual
inclusiveness culture’ is the one that better values people who are capable of
speaking many languages, thus overcoming unconscious biases and naturalising
stereotypes.

Chapter 6, ‘The perspective of professional training’ links research on
distinct workplaces with an educational perspective and didactic outcomes,
which implies a close interaction between researchers and practitioners.
Subchapter 6.1, ‘Transnational vocational traineeships in the multilingual
Upper Rhine region’ by Katharina Höchle Meier aims to analyse in depth the
representations of traineeships by various actors, i.e. the discourses of
trainees and company managers, the status of apprenticeship, how vocational
traineeships can be encouraged, why young people take part in traineeships,
the benefits of traineeships, language acquisition as well as intercultural
experience during exchanges. The analysis shows that what mattered to managers
mattered less to trainees; what mattered to a French manager mattered less to
a Swiss one; and what mattered to apprentices mattered less to students. All
in all, the traineeships were a learning experience for all the trainees that
was manifested in a polyphonic discourse.

In Subchapter 6.2, ‘PluriMobil meets DYLAN-Practical resources for supporting
plurilingual and intercultural learning in vocational student mobility’,
Mirjam Egli Cuenat and Katharina Höchle Meier present ready to use pedagogical
resources, so called lesson plans or learning scenarios, geared towards
fostering sustainable plurilingual and intercultural learning in mobility.
These are available for five educational levels: teacher training, primary,
lower secondary, upper secondary school, and upper secondary vocational
school. The PluriMobil resources brought together with the DYLAN’s results may
help to clarify the learning objectives for the instructors and/or other
persons in charge of the training of the apprentices as well as for the
learners themselves by reinforcing the link between research and practice.

Finally, Chapter 7, ‘Conclusions’ by Lüdi, Höchle Meier and  Yanaprasart
highlights selected results and discusses their political and economic
relevance. The authors claim that the approach to the question of languages in
the workplace has been basically ethnographic (tape recordings, interview
excerpts and official documents), but also multi-methodological. The focus of
the different pieces of research in the book was manifold; it concerned, among
others, the various ways in which plurilingual repertoires are mobilised in
linguistically mixed settings, the forms of how linguistic diversity – and the
cultural diversity in which multilingualism is rooted – can be managed by
organisations, the language representations or ‘ideologies’ underlying
language management and use and the growing importance of English and the way
it is perceived.

EVALUATION

This volume undoubtedly represents a major contribution to the understanding
of plurilingual practices in the workplace. The book's preface clearly
outlines and underscores the rationale for a volume of this nature, and the
authors have successfully achieved the goals set for the publication of this
book as it opens the way to new ways of acting, in terms not only of research
but also of disseminating knowledge among institutional and political actors.
In analysing numerous highly relevant examples, the volume helps to create a
new paradigm in which multilingualism is seen less as a subject for analysis
than as a resource, an instrument that enhances the quality of both processes
and their output.

The chapters presented in this volume are multiple, allowing reference to a
wide variety of communication strategies in contexts of linguistic diversity.
On the one hand, a special focus is put on the best practices of diversity
management and language regimes with particular attention paid to the
interplay between official languages and English, and to the ways of
leveraging diversity awareness, fostering cultural inclusiveness, and
enhancing intercultural learning in vocational education and training. On the
other hand, the chapters examine at close range the ways actors’ plurilingual
repertoires are developed and how their use is adapted to particular
objectives and specific conditions. Being observed in several types of
multilingual professional settings, the plurilingual strategies, including
English as lingua franca, are particularly examined in terms of power
relations and processes of inclusion or exclusion.
I find the visual manifestations (i.e. photos of signs) of institutional
multilingualism in Subchapter 4.2 very impressive, as they show clearly the
linguistic landscape (German, French, Italian, English) that surrounds the
members of the company in the workplace.

One of the most interesting sections of the book is Chapter 5, which
demonstrates language and cultural diversity at a pharma multinational company
with the “diversity dimensions wheel” (p. 222.). In the wheel, each dimension
adds a layer of complexity to individual identity displayed with different
colours, and it is the dynamic interaction among all the different layers
within the dimensions that exerts an impact on the values, expectations and
beliefs that a person has. This wheel was adapted and used afterwards as a
benchmark by Public Service to deal with its own organisational diversity.

The link between theoretical hypotheses and language practices is fully
observed in Chapter 6, where an example of a lesson plan (p. 299) and a
mobility-learning scenario (p. 303) are presented indicating the targeted
competences and the tools used, which will be very useful for future
vocational trainers.

The findings in the book demonstrate that in our globalised world where
professional mobility is considered a key feature, companies and their
employees must find solutions to cope with diversity, not only linguistic but
also cultural.
 
Overall this edited volume is an asset to the field of professional
communication to a wide range of subjects dealing with institutional
multilingualism and intercultural practices.

REFERENCES

Appel, R. & Muysken, P. 1987. Language Contact and Bilingualism. London:
Edward Arnold.

Bright, W. (ed.) 1992. International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics,
Vols 1-4. New York: Oxford University Press.

Grimm-Pfefferli, L. 2014. Loyauté(s) linguistique(s) et forms du
plurilinguisme dans des familles binationales:des femmes hispano-américaines á
Bâle, une étude de cas. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Basel, Institute d’études
françaises et francophones.

Javorsky, A. & Thurlow, C. (eds.). 2009. Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image,
Space. London: Continuum.

Wittlin, G. 2011. Et si l’armée Suisse était plurilingue? MA Thesis,
Université de Fribourg/Freiburg.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky is Associate Professor in the English Department at
Budapest Business School, Faculty of International Management and Business.
Her research interests include ESP (English for Specific Purposes and EAP
(English for Academic Purposes, diplomatic discourse and intercultural
communication. She has published on business communication, intercultural
communication and politeness issues in business emails.





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