Multilingualism at Work

This volume focuses on work situations in Europe, North America and South-Africa, such as academic, medical and public sector, or business settings, in which participants have to make constant use of more than one language to cooperate with partners, clients, or colleagues. Central questions are how the social and linguistic organization of work is adapted to the necessity of using different languages and how multilingualism impinges on the communicative outcome of different types of discourse or genres. Thus, the authors are all interested in multilingual practices 'at work', which is to say how different forms of multilingual communication are managed, flexibly adjusted to, acquired, and/or improved in a given workplace setting that often calls for particular implicit or explicit language policies. Thus, this volume contributes to the study of workplace communication in a globalized world by drawing on different types of authentic data.

Mariana Lazzaro-Salazar, Victoria University of Wellington, in Discourse Studies 13(6): 815-817, 2011:
This book is certainly worthwhile reading for researchers interested in intercultural workplace communication as well as language policy and multilingualism. Finally, several of the research projects explored in some of these chapters will certainly inspire future research in, for instance, the importance of relevant interpreter training that addresses cultural- and activity-specific issues of particular contexts of workplace interaction.