Communicative Practices at Work

Multimodality and Learning in a High-Tech Firm
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-78309-045-7
Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 390 g

Reihe: Multilingual Matters

This book examines communicative practices in a circuit-board manufacturing plant in California's Silicon Valley, where the employees come from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds, their activities involve the use of high-tech equipment and their practices are shaped by, and sometimes contest, local and global forces. Analyses of the data show that learning occurs optimally when workers make strategic use of both their home languages and English within an ecology of semiotic systems. The book demonstrates the importance of accounting for multilingual practices in studies of multimodality. Through detailed ethnography it brings the reader to a better understanding of learning-in-practice in work environments, where the complexities and accelerated growth of new technologies along with a globalized world produce new forms of multilingual and multimodal communication.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kleifgen, Jo Anne

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Mehrsprachigkeit
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Personalwesen, Human Resource Management
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Bereichsspezifisches Management Office Management, Büroorganisation
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Theorizing Communicative Practices at Work

2. Genesis, Inc. and Its People

3. Multimodal Interaction on the Assembly Floor

4. Doing Social Work: Power Relations in Interaction

5. Globalizing Forces and Quality Control Certification

6. Learning-in-Practice

7. Conclusion: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Communicative Practices at Work

Über Autor(innen)

Kleifgen, Jo Anne
Jo Anne Kleifgen is Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Education and a founder of the Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research has focused on multilingual/multimodal practices in school and the workplace. She has authored and edited several books, and her work is widely published in language journals and book chapters. She directed funded research projects on using new media to support Latinx adolescents’ language and literacy development. Recently, she supervised the evaluation of a program bringing classrooms in the US and Middle-East/North Africa together for online collaborative learning. She has been a member of the Executive Committee of the International Linguistic Association since 1991, has served twice as president, and is its current vice president. She serves on several editorial boards and has been a visiting scholar at universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Jo Anne Kleifgen is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Her publications include Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Language Learners (with Ofelia García; Teachers College Press, 2010) and Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness (with George C. Bond; Multilingual Matters, 2009).