Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the debate on what is a learning organization (LO). The author proposes that pragmatist philosophy may be a source of inspiration in this endeavor. Design/methodology/approach: The author revisits a 25-year-old case study in which the process of implementing an LO in a public enterprise was observed. This…

In order to communicate effectively in the workplace, the professional translators, interpreters, communication, and public relations specialists make linguistic choices that help them achieve their goals. One way to teach them how to reach the appropriate linguistic decisions is through the discipline of Pragmatics. The originality of the present…

The goal of the present study is to explore bilinguals' intercultural style of requesting in a workplace setting and thereby contribute to the understanding of bilingual pragmatic competence. The relatively unexplored intercultural style hypothesis suggests that bilinguals show a unique pragmatic pattern related to but distinct from the contact…

This study reports on the development and evaluation of a prototype for an interactive, self-access computer application titled Words at Work that was developed by the authors. Words at Work aims to raise adult English language learners' (ELLs') pragmatic awareness in the English-medium workplace. The study focuses in particular on the pedagogic…

Purpose: Politeness markers (PMs) are words that enhance cooperativity in dialogue and are an essential component of professional/work communication. Persons with moderate/severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) underuse PMs in connected speech and have employment stability issues. The voicemail elicitation task (VET) is a standardized computerized…

The Ministry for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada includes employment-related language training in its current initiatives. This article aims to contribute to the topic of teaching soft skills for job interviews and job retention, as informed by research from the fields of business and applied linguistics, including pragmatics, as well…

The paper offers insight into pragmatic aspects of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and potential implications for intercultural communication by presenting the results of research into rapport carried among Czech, English and German university students. The three cultural groups were compared in terms of their cultural independence in rapport…

Translingual practice is an emergent theoretical perspective which emphasizes the capacity and disposition for meaning-making across linguistic boundaries. Following on studies of globalized workplaces that have focused on lingua franca English, this article explores translingual practice as represented in interview and blog narratives recounted…

This article discusses and compares how Chinese and English postgraduate students manage a harmonious relationship with university instructors by managing rapport and doing relational work in their academic request emails. The rapport-management strategies were explored and then further evaluated in relation to the taxonomies of relational work…

In the research literature on interactional competence in talk among second language speakers and their coparticipants, this volume of "Pragmatics & Interaction" is the first to focus on interaction in Japanese. The chapters examine the use and development of interactional practices in a wide range of social settings, from everyday…