Language awareness and language workers

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that linguistic skills and awareness are essential requirements for professionals whose work centres on language as a product. Brought about by the commodification of language in developed economies, language work such as brand consulting, text design or online marketing requires linguistic knowledge and resources that many current teaching materials do not provide. Extracts from interviews with a diverse group of language workers allow for first insights into their kind and level of language awareness, but also show that they are more concerned about what they perceive as a lack of language awareness in their clients. This finding suggests a non-linear model of teaching and learning relations between academic linguists, language workers, clients and students. The paper further discusses the options that applied linguists in academia have if they want to work with/as language workers and argues that engaging with language work(ers) can be an opportunity to bring critical language awareness and discourse analytical skills to bear on professional practice and training.

KEYWORDS:

• Commodification of language
• critical language awareness
• language workers
• learning and teaching relations

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Crispin Thurlow, whose invitation to a research symposium on language work in Bern (January 2016) initiated this study. Further thanks are due to the organisers of the Association of Language Awareness annual conference in Vienna (July 2016), whose invitation to give a plenary lecture helped me focus the research. Finally, I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. More junior jobs involve being a mystery shopper in the linguistic landscape to check correct signage or checking possible brand names for their appropriateness in a different language.

2. It is worth pointing out that this quote is from the same interviewee who stated that language workers rely mostly on intuition.

3. A colleague has irreverently referred to this formula as ‘you whinged – we cringed’ (Greg Myers, personal communication, November 1, 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Veronika Koller

Veronika Koller is Reader in Discourse Studies at Lancaster University/UK. Her research interests include corporate discourse, health communication, and language and sexuality, with her current work focusing mostly on the discourse of cancer charities. Outside academia, Veronika is also a senior associate analyst with consulting company Linguistic Landscapes.