In the twenty-first-century working professionals need to possess strong Interactional Competence to handle professional communication in intercultural contexts (PCIC). However, the relationship among the three PCIC constituents -- culture, workplace and interaction -- is undertheorized in current research. This leaves PCIC practitioners…

This investigation uses conversation analysis (CA) to document, in very close detail, how participants-in-interaction manage and organize repair practices in moments when linguistic repair becomes conditionally relevant in conversational or 'chatting' phases of online dyadic L2-learning interactions between a tutor and tutee. Specifically, this…

In this dissertation project, I examine how professionals in the South use their Southern United States English (SUSE) to communicate in business situations. My goals are to (1) understand how regional language variety rhetorically shapes written professional communication and (2) establish a pedagogical framework for business writing that attunes…

This article investigates how learned interactional practices from an instructional setting may be utilized in the workplace setting. I examine how the same novice in a pharmacy employed the practices of sequential organization in role-played patient consultations in the classroom and in subsequent actual patient consultations in a clerkship. I…

There has been to date a long tradition of research in workplace discourse. The bulk of the research has focused on professional white-collar workplaces, but a handful of studies have examined working-class settings such as factories and building sites. This area of research has, however, been concerned with interactions involving co-workers.…

This article explores how a group of teaching-oriented academics--College English (CE) teachers in China--negotiate their collective identity at the workplace amid research discourse. Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework focusing on the interrelationship between discourse, practice, and social networks, the study reveals the field of…

This paper investigated the language resources needed for communication in Vietnam's import/export services and the level of alignment with the associated English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. To examine the communicative practices used in this workplace, the study employed methods of semi-structured interviews and a collection of 48 emails…

This article examines language trainers as language workers in an Austrian language education company. The study interrogates what the trainers' discourses, ideologies and practices about the nature of their work are, and how these reside within the logic and discursive practices of their employer. A close analysis of interview, ethnographic and…

Foreign language education primarily aims to cultivate learners' competence to communicate in an additional language. However, the meaning of communication competence is not entirely transparent, especially given the current neoliberal valorization of communication in the knowledge economy. The meaning of communication can be scrutinized in two…

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners' development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and…

In this piece I explore the concept of 'growth' in English teaching. Starting with John Dixon's 'growth' model, I argue that, by re-imagining his ideas in current contexts, practitioners might re-focus and re-invigorate the priorities of English teaching. Dominant conceptions of 'growth' are explored, along with their influence on teacher working…

Despite growing interest in the rhetorical features of e-mail correspondence, this is the first study to examine the request strategies in e-mails written by native English-speaking professionals from a variety of industries in the United States. This study uses Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper's (1989) speech act framework to analyze the request…

Phenomenograhy, as an approach to educational research, began appearing in publications early in the 1980s with the predominant form of data drawn from semi-structured interviews. As a qualitative approach, it is used to describe the variations in people's experiences through their own discourse and for analyzing meaning that people ascribe to…

Canada, like other first-world countries, relies in large part on professional immigrants trained in other cultures and languages to complement its workforce in a wide range of professions, including medicine. International medical graduates (IMGs) who are nonnative English-speaking (NNES) and who have trained in different medical contexts are…

In the 21st century concerns about workplace language and literacy skills, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, continue to drive education and testing policy in many OECD countries. Employers tend to adopt deficit assumptions about service workers' skills, conflating social identities and language and literacy, which can blind…