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 article analyses the discursive construction of mobile, multilingual humanitarian workers at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from a critical sociolinguistic perspective. In the light of fluctuating linguistic requirements and needs, I focus on the trajectories of ICRC delegates as a window onto the different values…

The opposition between learning as a process of self-cultivation ("Bildung") and learning as a form of vocational training for the workplace ("Ausbildung") is becoming ever more deeply entrenched in the twenty-first-century university. In language education in particular, the distinction between these two competing aims…

The dominant analytical approaches to Lingua Franca English interactions are largely influenced by a structuralist orientation that prioritizes verbal resources in localized face-to-face contexts. This article argues that recent developments in globalization, mobility, and digital communication call for a more complex orientation to the focus and…

In this chapter, I examine the problematic issue of identifying as a 'linguist' for graduates who have studied languages, in an employability context. I challenge them to reframe their identity as 'global graduates', with reference to the competencies outlined in the "Global Graduates into Global Leaders" report (NCUB, 2011). In the…

Increased trade, commerce and business transactions at the international level are placing a substantial demand upon working professionals and college students who must learn English, the lingua franca of international business, in order to thrive in a competitive global workplace. Learning English as a second language (L2) can be a daunting task…

This article examines Language Policy documents within higher education institutions in Sweden. Its main focus is on how national language policies and policies for internationalization of the higher education are reinterpreted as local language policy. The analysis of ideologies surrounding the prescribed language(s) in meetings of decision…

The United States is formally represented around the world by approximately 14,000 Foreign Service officers and other personnel in the U.S. Department of State. Roughly one-third of them are required to be proficient in the local languages of the countries to which they are posted. To achieve this language proficiency for its staff, the State…

Authentic materials, if appropriate to the learning situation, might turn the classroom environment into a more engaging place, where motivation might be generated through the performance of meaningful tasks. This article describes how a Text-Based Instruction approach can provide the basis for the design of an ESP syllabus based on relevant,…

This article presents an exploration of the work of family engagement in a racially- and linguistically-diverse, high-poverty, urban school district in a state of continuous neoliberal reform. Drawing from qualitative research methods, it is argued that family engagement is being reshaped by the imperatives of educational neoliberalization while,…

The article examines the importance of bridging the gap between America's collective cultural heritage and its citizens who speak a language other than English, and how this can be fostered and encouraged through foreign language and immersion programs, international education, and study abroad. Effectively addressing this disparity in order to…

Departing from the dominant trend of favoring flexibility, flattened relations, and deterritorialization in featuring the transnational, this autoethnographic inquiry theorizes and exemplifies how the gravity of place may give rise to the evolvement of scholarship in the context of transnational mobility. I examine my own career trajectory to…

This article explains how research "on" practitioners can be turned into research "for and with" practitioners (Cameron, Frazer, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992, p. 22) by including these practitioners in the research teams. Methodologically, it draws on two decades of multimethod research and knowledge transformation at the…

This conceptual paper advances the notion of "English as corporate language" in the multilingual reality of multinational companies (MNC) with novel insights from the English as lingua franca (ELF) paradigm of sociolinguistics. Inspired by Goffman, Erving. 1959. "The presentation of self in everyday life." New York: Doubleday.…

The paper considers whether bilingualism has an economic value in Slovenia's two ethnically mixed regions, or whether its value is more related to identity, and restricted primarily to the personal, educational and cultural spheres. Specifically, it asks whether bilingualism is rewarded on the labour market and what local people think about this…