Prof. Eric FRIGINAL, Department of English and Communication

Linguistic features of (mis)communication in professional, multimodal workplaces: Patterns from corpora and their language policy implications. AELFE-LSPPC International Conference, Zaragoza, Spain. 21st annual conference of the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes (AELFE) and the 7th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Languages for Specific Purposes & Professional Communication Association (LSPPC), University of Zaragoza, Spain, Zaragoza, Spain, 20-28 June 2023.

Abstract
For more than two decades now, I have been exploring real-world, recorded, and transcribed texts (i.e., corpora) of professional communication from domains such as global aviation, healthcare, outsourced customer service call centers, tourism and hospitality, the international maritime industry, and talk in multicultural and multimodal workplaces. In this presentation, I discuss the important role of applied corpus linguistics as a methodological approach in language and social research, contributing linguistics-based explications of workplace discourse with critical language policy and pedagogic implications. Applied corpus linguistics is understood to include the use of corpus resources, techniques, and tools in order to, for example, examine patterning in public discourses so as to obtain novel understandings of how language is used and construed in specific contexts (Thompson & Friginal, 2020). My theoretical and analytical framework emphasizes the identification of discursive practices from corpora across sociocultural structures and task dimensions of talk in these settings, focusing especially upon speakers’ understanding of role-relationships, discoursal goals and objectives, cultural and/or racial identities, and power dynamics at work (Baker, 2021; Friginal, 2020; Vine, 2020). I will share and discuss results of interrelated studies exploring corpus patterns and distributions and their macro and micro societal and policy implications, especially highlighting emerging mismatches between linguistic realities and industry expectations.