Abstract
This paper examines how the shift to knowledge and innovation economy has created new sites for the commodification of language and communication in the context of organizational consulting. The data come from a consultant-led development and training program of the management teams of a Finnish educational organization. In the study, the year-long training was videotaped (45 h) and followed ethnographically. By using rhetorical discourse analysis as a method, we examine how the consultant-led training activities present the role of language and communication in changing working life. The results show how the activities factualize the transformation of work and the centrality of language in this transformation. They conceptualize language and communication as key elements of professional competence and resources for organizational improvement. Moreover, they construct causal relations between organizational success and the ability to assess and modify one’s own communicative behavior. With its focus on language awareness and contextual variation the training differs from settings examined in previous studies where the mechanisms of commodification are based on standardization practices. In conclusion, we reflect the training programs both as indicators and vehicles for social change and discuss how they act as spaces where the new worlds of work are discursively construed.
Funding source: Suomen Kulttuurirahasto
Appendix: Transcription conventions
. | Falling intonation |
? | Rising intonation |
↑ | Rise in pitch |
word | Emphasis |
>word< | Faster pace than surrounding talk |
<word> | Slower pace than surrounding talk |
wo- | Word cut off |
@word@ | Change in sound quality |
$word$ | Smiley voice |
.hh | Inbreath |
hh | Outbreath |
heh | Laughter |
(0.5) | Pause in seconds |
(.) | Micropause: less than 0.2 s |
[ | Beginning of overlapping talk |
* | Beginning of embodied action |
points | Embodied action |
(word) | Talk not clear |
(-) | Talk not heard |
((words omitted)) | Transcriber’s remarks |
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Workplace communication in flux: from discrete languages, text genres and conversations to complex communicative situations
- Orienting to the language learner role in multilingual workplace meetings
- Negotiating belonging in multilingual work environments: church professionals’ engagement with migrants
- Changing participation in web conferencing: the shared computer screen as an online sales interaction resource
- Policing language in the world of new work: the commodification of workplace communication in organizational consulting
- “It’s not the same thing as last time I wrote a report”: Digital text sharing in changing organizations
- Regular Articles
- “It sounds like elves talking” – Polish migrants in Aberystwyth (Wales) and their impressions of the Welsh language
- Exploring lexical bundles in low proficiency level L2 learners’ English writing: an ETS corpus study
- Kingdom of heaven versus nirvana: a comparative study of conceptual metaphors for Christian and Buddhist ideals of life
- Linguistic multi-competence in the community: the case of a Japanese plural suffix -tachi for individuation
- Accent or not? Language attitudes towards regional variation in British Sign Language
- Validating young learners’ plurilingual repertoires as legitimate linguistic and cultural resources in the EFL classroom
- A corpus-based study of LGBT-related news discourse in Thailand’s and international English-language newspapers
- Academic emotions in giving genre-based peer feedback: an emotional intelligence perspective
- Detecting concealed language knowledge via response times
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Workplace communication in flux: from discrete languages, text genres and conversations to complex communicative situations
- Orienting to the language learner role in multilingual workplace meetings
- Negotiating belonging in multilingual work environments: church professionals’ engagement with migrants
- Changing participation in web conferencing: the shared computer screen as an online sales interaction resource
- Policing language in the world of new work: the commodification of workplace communication in organizational consulting
- “It’s not the same thing as last time I wrote a report”: Digital text sharing in changing organizations
- Regular Articles
- “It sounds like elves talking” – Polish migrants in Aberystwyth (Wales) and their impressions of the Welsh language
- Exploring lexical bundles in low proficiency level L2 learners’ English writing: an ETS corpus study
- Kingdom of heaven versus nirvana: a comparative study of conceptual metaphors for Christian and Buddhist ideals of life
- Linguistic multi-competence in the community: the case of a Japanese plural suffix -tachi for individuation
- Accent or not? Language attitudes towards regional variation in British Sign Language
- Validating young learners’ plurilingual repertoires as legitimate linguistic and cultural resources in the EFL classroom
- A corpus-based study of LGBT-related news discourse in Thailand’s and international English-language newspapers
- Academic emotions in giving genre-based peer feedback: an emotional intelligence perspective
- Detecting concealed language knowledge via response times