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11 - Sociolinguistic Awareness in Business Professionals

Breaking Stereotypes and Language Myths

from Part III - Language Awareness in Education and Training

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

By
Louise Mullany
Edited by
Erika Darics
Erika Darics
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

The chapter focuses on an innovative set of methods and approaches designed to change the manner in which business professionals view language and communication practices in their global workplaces. Despite the advances made within linguistics, particularly within the fields of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, where large banks of empirical evidence of real-life workplace research have been systematically analysed, very little of this robust linguistic evidence finds its way into practical applications in workplace training. Too often, business training materials are based on outdated and inaccurate stereotypes about language at work, or flawed frameworks, such as ‘neurolinguistic programming’, which at best is based on pseudo-scientific knowledge and devoid of any real foundation of how any language system works. Other training methods include role-plays of how people think they communicate. In order to get the sociolinguistics of the workplace research firmly embedded as a form of applied linguistics in action, the chapter reports on the practical methods and approaches taken as part of an initiative at the University of Nottingham, Linguistic Profiling for Professionals.

Keywords

communication trainingsociolinguisticslanguage stereotypes
Type
Chapter
Information
Language Awareness in Business and the Professions , pp. 204 - 224
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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