International Perspectives on Language and Work

This volume expands the definitions of language and work in researching their mutual influences. It considers language as a working tool, a vector of occupational identity, and so on, and work as the needed daily interrelation tasks, communication constraints and so on. The volume covers various national contexts: India, France, Argentina, Morocco, Portugal, Brazil, Singapore, French West Indies, and Kenya-Ouganda. The diversity of countries and linguistic spaces presented here enriches the perspectives in terms of transferring the insights from one situation to another. The specific cases discuss, among others, how an occupation may be structured by language use; how language embeds occupations within certain social contexts; challenges of teaching in multilingual classrooms; and how language affects therapeutic discourse and communication between patients and doctors. The chapters provide detailed contexts and backgrounds so that readers can enjoy entering into each context and seeing similarities and differences with their own research field to incorporate the findings into their own research. This volume is intended for sociologists interested in professionalisation, industrial and occupational sociology, sociology of work, public health, and management research.