Words and Actions

Words and Actions

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Words and Actions episodes

  • Language and Identity Online

    Your identity is a right old mess. As is ours, mind you… and don't get us started on Marcus Rashford! In this episode we delve into the different layers and facets of identity construction in digital space. Via small stories, solo selfies and networked narratives, we offer ways to inspect different senses of selves as they are created in online environments.

    The journey will take us past talking dogs, overpowering teacher personas (yes, we are talking about ourselves!) socially constructed bosses, and walking gods. And we will get started on Marcus Rashford.

    For further info and a full transcript please head over to: wordsandactions.blog

    In this episode,right at the beginning, we reminisce about previous episodes. You may want to listen (again) to episodes on crisis communication (S1E6) and on negotiations (S2E19). Later we mention two other episodes S1E7 on storytelling and S1E11 on impression management.

    We start our topic, computer-mediated communication and identity, with Erika telling us about the very early days of the Internet. We also mention Peter Steiner's 199 cartoon "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog", which has become so famous that it has its own Wikipedia entry. We then go on to introduce the theory for this episode, namely Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall's work on identity construction through spoken interaction:

    Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse studies, 7(4-5), 585-614

    Erika gets due credit from Bernard and Veronika for her work on constructing identities in digital spaces, e.g.:

    Darics, E., & Gatti, M. C. (2019). Talking a team into being in online workplace collaborations: the discourse of virtual work. Discourse Studies, 21(3), 237-257.

    Still in the introduction, Bernard mentions a study on whether women prefer female bosses.

    We contrast this global study with one that addresses very specific contexts.

    Talking about how identity can be indexed in online interaction, Veronika mentions a recent PhD thesis completed at Lancaster University. A bit later, Bernard refers to influencers and mentions the case of Dotan, a Dutch singer and influencer podcaster who was less than authentic. Veronika's current research on how online identity construction works in political discourse is part of a multi-authored book on which she is lead author and that is currently under review with the publisher (so fingers crossed!). The title is Voices of Supporters: Populist parties, social media and the 2019 European elections. The interview guest for this episode is Alexandra Georgaopoulou, a professor at King's College London who is known for her work on so-called "small stories" and their function in constructing identities, including online. Information on the Ego Media project, which studied the impact of new media on forms and practices of self-presentation, can be found at https://www.ego-media.org/. There is a forthcoming digital publication from the project with Stanford University Press.

    Moving on to the analysis part of the episode, we look at the social media profiles of footballer, author and campaigner Marcus Rashford: @MarcusRashford (Twitter), marcusrashford (Instagram), _marcusrashford (TikTok). The fan account in TikTok is rashford10marcus. All three accounts feature a logo based on his initials:

    In analysing the posts, we draw on a matrix first proposed for how CEOs present themselves online:

    Jameson, D. A. (2014). Crossing public-private and personal-professional boundaries: How changes in technology may affect CEOs' communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 77(1), 7-30.

    And that's it for this episode - see you again next time!

    46 min
  • Language and Technology
    Yesterday's sci-fi has become today's reality. Join us as we venture our way into the ever-growing domain of Language Technology in which we discover and discuss current and future developments in speech recognition, automated literary translation, opinion mining and open domain chatbot applications. Not only do we find ourselves having cheeky chats with clever cars and critical conversations with experts, we also ponder over the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence and assess our position as linguists (and one alleged Professor of Disco Studies) in view of these developments. For more information, references and a full transcript please visit wordsandactions.blog In this episode we start our discussion of language and technology with voice recognition. Bernard mentions a general bias towards female voices, as discussed in this paper: Edworthy J., Hellier E., & Rivers J. (2003). The use of male or female voices in warnings systems: a question of acoustics. Noise and Health, 6(21): 39-50. Pitch range is also important, as demonstrated in the experiment on using different voices for sat navs that Erika mentions: Niebuhr, O., & Michalsky, J. (2019). Computer-generated speaker charisma and its effects on human actions in a car-navigation system experiment: or how Steve Jobs' tone of voice can take you anywhere. In Misra S. et al. (eds) Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 11620: 375-390. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24296-1_31 Moving from acoustics to culture, the following paper discusses how male voices are perceived as more authoritative: Anderson R.C., & Klofstad, C.A. (2012). Preference for leaders with masculine voices holds in the case of feminine leadership roles. PLoS ONE, 7(12): e51216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051216 It is worth sharing a few more auto-captioning gems in the lectures of Veronika and her colleagues at Lancaster University: "my grammar is leaving me" → "my grandma is leading me" "n-sizes" → "incisors" "Hardaker and McGlashan" → "heartache and regression" "institutional" → "it's too slow" (truth!) "masculine" → "mass killer" (bit harsh) On readability, Bernard mentions an example from accounting, namely the obfuscation hypothesis. The following paper on the topic is considered the first accounting study that uses automated textual analysis with a very large sample to address readability: Li, F. (2008). Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence. Journal of Accounting & Economics, 45: 221–247. doi:10.1016/j.jacceco.2008.02.003

    We then go on to talk about sentiment analysis, which is used to find out about, for example, brand perceptions or patient satisfaction. Here is an example of the latter:

    Hopper, A. M., & Uriyo, M. (2015). Using sentiment analysis to review patient satisfaction data located on the internet. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 29(2): 221-233. DOI 10.1108/JHOM-12-2011-0129

    In the context of this episode, we want to distinguish between corpus linguistics and computational linguistics. Although language corpora are used to train systems in machine learning, corpus linguists engage in the computer-assisted analysis of large text collections, often combining automated statistical analysis with manual qualitative analysis. A company using such mixed corpus linguistic methods to provide their customers with insights about their products and services is Relative Insight. (We did not receive any funding from them for this episode, but they are a spin-off company that started at Lancaster University.) A critical evaluation of another area of computational linguistics, topic modelling, written by two corpus linguists is:

    Brookes, G., & McEnery, T. (2018). The utility of topic modelling for discourse studies: A critical evaluation. Discourse Studies, 21(1): 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445618814032

    (Incidentally, the above paper is also based on data about patient satisfaction.)

    The PhD thesis on automatic irony detection that Bernard mentions was written by Cynthia Van Hee and is available here.

    The second interview quest is another one of Bernard's colleagues from Ghent University, Orphée De Clercq. Her recent publications include:

    De Bruyne, L., De Clercq, O., & Hoste, V. (2021). Annotating affective dimensions in user-generated content. Language Resources and Evaluation, 55(4): 1017-1045. De Clercq, O., De Sutter, G., Loock, R., Cappelle, B., & Plevoets, K. (2021). Uncovering machine translationese using corpus analysis techniques to distinguish between original and machine-translated French. Translation Quarterly, 101: 21-45.

    And finally, we talk to Doris Dippold from the University of Surrey in the UK. Her work on chatbots can be found in:

    Dippold, D., Lynden, J., Shrubsall, R., & Ingram, R. (2020). A turn to language: How interactional sociolinguistics informs the redesign of prompt: response chatbot turns. Discourse, Context & Media, 37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100432

    56 min
  • Translation and Interpreting When the Stakes are High
    We eavesdrop on police interrogations, wire-tapping and immigration interviews, and sneak on a Keolis bus (on board entertainment: The Interpreter) to explore the complex processes of translation and interpreting in high stakes contexts. Joining us are a forensic linguist, an expert in asylum seeking procedures and a researcher on multimodal translation, who illustrate the pervasive impact of translators as important decision-makers that may affect the future, safety and prosperity of people and businesses. For more information, references and a full transcript head over http://wordsandactions.blog. This episode opens with one of the guests, Krzysztof Kredens, talking about the machine metaphor for translating and interpreting, which still dominates the non-linguistic understanding of those professions. It can be linked to the famous Shannon-Weaver model of communication: first proposed by mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon in 1948 (and later popularised by fellow mathematician Warren Weaver), it conceives of communication as involving a sender or encoder, a message and a receiver or decoder. Message transmission can be affected by channel and noise. Because human communication does not follow the rules of mathematics, this model has often been criticised as inappropriate and even distorting. Erika calls it a destructive metaphor, citing Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. London: Routledge. Our discussion of equivalence in translation draws on the following two works: Baker, M. (2011). In Other Words: A coursebook on translation. London: Routledge. Koller, W. (1995). The concept of equivalence and the object of translation studies. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 7(2), 191-222. Listeners of a certain age may remember, if not Nikita Khrushchev's wrongly interpreted words from an address at the Polish embassy in Moscow (1956), then perhaps Sting citing them in his song Russians (1985). When discussing pragmatic equivalence, we give an example of a direct vs. indirect speech act: in the former, a directive is used to make a request ('Sit down') while in the latter, the speaker uses a rogative form to realise the request function ('Would you like sitting down?'). Bernard reels off a whole list of films involving translators and interpreters; the excerpt from The Interpreter (2005) that we enact can be found at 1:40. If you would like to watch films with a language and linguistics angle, follow @LinguistsMovies on Twitter for updates on their virtual watchalong nights. Our main interview guest for the episode is Katrijn Maryns, whose relevant publications include: Jacobs, M., & Maryns, K. (2021). Managing narratives, managing identities: Language and credibility in legal consultations with asylum seekers. Language in Society, 1-28. Maryns, K. (2014). The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure. London: Routledge. Maryns, K. (2017). The use of English as ad hoc institutional standard in the Belgian asylum interview. Applied Linguistics, 38(5), 737-758. In the final part of the analysis, Victoria Nydegger Schrøder analyses the values statement of the headquarters and local subsidiaries of global transport operator Keolis. You can see the screenshots on our blog: http://wordsandactions.blog Victoria kindly mentions two publications by Erika and Veronika (we did not tell her to!): Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2018). Language in Business, Language at Work. London: Palgrave. Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2019). Social actors "to go": An analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 82(2), 214-238. In her analysis, Victoria, among other things, comments on the use of 'we' and how it can refer to different groups of people throughout a text and often stay ambiguous. This feature of corporate discourse has also been observed by Veronika: Koller, V. (2009). Corporate self-presentation and self-centredness: A case for cognitive critical discourse analysis. In: Pishwa, H. (ed.) Language and Social Cognition: Expression of the social mind. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 267-287. In our next episode, we will discuss machine translation and other applications in language technology - see you then!
    47 min
  • Multilingualism
    "I'm not hungry. One egg is an oeuf". Is the author funny? Debatable. Is the author multilingual? Ça dépend. In this multi-voiced episode on multilingualism we tackle different interrelated aspects ranging from translanguaging over accommodation to effectiveness and proficiency and we cast more light on multilingual settings and the role of BELF in them. In the process, we make Bernard eat humble pie by interviewing a very, very multilingual person and we raise multilingual voices to stop cruelty against animals, topped off with nice examples on language accommodation. Bon appétit! The Words and Actions podcast features and accompanying website, http://wordsandactions.blog. Here we publish a blog post that goes with the podcast, including references to research and a full transcript. Episode 20 features various researchers who attended the 2021 regional conference (Europe, Middle East and Africa) of the Association for Business Communication, The programme and abstracts are available here. In the introduction, we talk about the notion of translanguaging. The following references are central papers and overviews: Bradley, J., Moore, E., & Simpson, J. (2020). Translanguaging as Transformation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Conteh, J. (2018). Translanguaging. ELT Journal, 72(4), 445-447. García, O., & Wei, L.. (2014).Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism, and education. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Wei, L. (2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 9-30. Williams, C. (1996). Secondary education: Teaching in the bilingual situation. In C. Williams, G. Lewis, & C. Baker (eds), The Language Policy: Taking stock. Llangefni: CAI, pp. 39–78 We also talk about communication accommodation theory (CAT) and return to that phenomenon in the analysis part of the episode. Here is a recent overview of the theory: Zhang, Y. B., & Giles, H. (2018). Communication accommodation theory. In Y. Y. Kim (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (pp. 95-108). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,pp. 95-108. Another concept that is central to this episode is (Business) English as a lingua franca. One scholar who has written prolifically on accommodation in ELF is Jennifer Jenkins, most recently in this publication: Jenkins, J. (2021). Accommodation in ELF: Where from? Where now? Where next? In Walkinshaw, I. (ed), The Pragmatics of ELF. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Available here. Still in the introduction, Bernard offers a definition of BELF that is based on this paper: Louhiala-Salminen, L., Charles, M., Kankaanranta, A. (2005). English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: Two case companies. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 401-421. Our interview guest is Gladys Nyarko Ansah, an expert in multilingualism from the University of Ghana. Here are some of her publications, including the one on linguistic landscapes, which she talks about in the interview: Anderson, J.A., Wiredu, J.F., Ansah, G.N., Frimpong-Kodie, G., Orfson-Offei, E., & Boamah-Boateng, D. (2020). A linguistic landscape of the central business district of Accra. Legon Journal of the Humanities, 31(1), 1-35. Afrifa, G.A., Anderson, J.A., & Ansah, G.N. (2019). The choice of English as a home language in urban Ghana. Current Issues in Language Planning, 20(4), 418-434 Ansah, G.N. (2014). Cognitive models of anger in Akan: A conceptual metaphor analysis. Cognitive Linguistic Studies, 1(1), 131-146 In the hosts' reflection on the interview, Veronika mentions 'sounds being swapped around'; the technical term for this is metathesis. In the analysis , Veronika contributes two examples from this study: Rogerson-Revell, P. (2010). "Can you spell that for us nonnative speakers?" Accommodation strategies in international business meetings. The Journal of Business Communication, 47(4), 432-454.

    Bernard reproduces an example from a talk at the ABC conference, which illustrates productive phonetic accommodation, i.e making the sounds of spoken language more like that of the interlocutor. Receptive phonetic accommodation is often taught as part of listening skills; here are some alien resources for this:

    The Speech Accent Archive (http://accent.gmu.edu)

    The English Listening Library Online (www.elllo.org)

    My English Voice (http://myenglishvoice.com)

    YouGlish (http://youglish.com)

    Finally, Erika draws on paper by Jane Lockwood and Ying Song:

    Lockwood, J., & Song, Y. (2020). Understanding each other: Strategies for accommodation in a virtual business team project based in China. International Journal of Business Communication, 57(1), 113-144.

    The next episode will continue with the theme of different languages, looking at high-stakes translating and interpreting - see you again!
    46 min
  • Negotiations
    For more info and a transcript please head over to www.wordsandactions.blog. In the introduction to this episode on negotiations, we mention the haggling scene in the Monty Python film Life of Brian (1979). Treat yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2iZjxSGca8 On a more serious note, we mention this academic definition of negotiations: Roloff, M.E., & Jordan, J.M. (1992). Achieving negotiation goals: the "fruits and foibles" of planning ahead. In L.L. Putnam and M.E. Roloff (eds) Communication and Negotiation. Newbury Park: Sage, pp. 21-45. A popular book on the subject is Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2012). Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in. 3rd ed. London Random House. If you would like to see a nice collection of metaphors in different types in negotiation, have a look at Smith, T. H. (2005). Metaphors for navigating negotiations. Negotiation Journal, 21(3), 343-364. [See what the author did there?] More on non-violent communication can be found at https://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/. Erika and Veronika have given an account of who 'we' can refer to in this paper: Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2019). Social actors 'to go': An analytical toolkit to explore agency in business discourse and communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 82(2), 214-238. Erika also mentions a study that shows just how important language use, including use of pronouns, is in negotiations: Neu, J., & Graham, J. L. (1995). An analysis of language use in negotiations: The role of context and content. In K. Ehlich and J. Wagner (eds) The Discourse of Business Negotiation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 243-272. We close the first part of the episode with another film reference, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). You can watch the scene with the Swiss bankers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndTbiDQjbiE We conduct the first of two interviews for this episode with Judith Large, a professional negotiator and academic. Her experience of post-war Sri Lanka is captured in Large, J. (2016). Pushback: Sri Lanka's dance with global governance. London: Zed Books. Different accounts of the peace negotiations in Indonesia, including Judith's, are collected in this 2008 publication: https://www.c-r.org/accord/aceh-indonesia Between interviews, we talk about different strategies used by negotiators to manipulate others into agreement, not necessarily for our listeners to apply them but to become aware of them and, where appropriate, counter them. We discuss "salami slicing", "lowballing" and "disrupt and reframe"; for the last one, see Davis, B. P., & E.S. Knowles (1999). A disrupt-then-reframe technique of social influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(2), 192-199. Other than that, the following two strategies are often mentioned: Foot in the Door: The negotiator starts with a small request before gradually increasing their demands. Doing so increases the likelihood that a respondent will agree to the later request. This strategy is based on the principle of compliance: Freedman, J.L., & S.C. Fraser (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(2), 195-202. The authors found that if an initial request to put up a small signpost outside one's home ('Drive safely') was followed by the request to put up a much larger sign, 55% of respondents would comply, compared with 20% compliance if asked for the larger sign straightaway. Door in the Face: The negotiator makes a large request that the respondent will most likely turn down. This request is followed by a second, more reasonable request. Studies show that the second request is more frequently complied with than if that same, smaller request is made in isolation: Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & B.L. Darby (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 206-215. The authors' example is a request to be a regular blood donor vs the request to donate blood only once. When exposed to both requests, 50% of subjects complied with the second request while a mere 32% complied when they were only presented with the second, smaller request. Parents and carers may be interested in this application of the two techniques described above: Chan, A.C., & T.K. Au (2011). Getting children to do more academic work: Foot-in-the-door versus door-in-the-face. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6), 982-985 [Spoiler: Door-in-the-face works best.] Across studies though, both are equally effective: Pascual, A., & N. Guéguen, N. (2005). Foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face: A comparative meta-analytic study. Psychological Reports, 96(1), 122-128. Our own meta-analysis is based on a clip of us preparing this episode and having a negotiation ourselves. You can hear us reach agreement here: https://youtu.be/m7Lci3jCiyM By analysing our own talk during preparation, we take our listeners to the backstage of Words & Actions. You can watch a bite-sized introduction to sociologist Erving Goffman's notion of frontstage and backstage communication here (narrated by Stephen Fry, no less!): https://youtu.be/6Z0XS-QLDWM​ Finally, at two points in the episode we mention zero-sum thinking, a notion from psychology that is often applied in economics and consumer behaviour research. A recent article is Johnson, S., Zhang, J., & F. Keil (2018). Psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking. Available at https://psyarxiv.com/efs5y/ Another topic that kept popping up throughout was translation and multilingualism. We will address it in our next episode – see you for that!
    47 min
  • Meetings and Conflicts

    Are you suffering from zoom fatigue, meeting migraines or the occasional shark bite? Have a listen to our next episode and find out more about office diary sweet spots, biochronology, meeting categorizations and how to deal with sharks in conflict resolution. As always, we bring in the expert advice of an academic and we'll discuss the added value of the Quaker peace testimony with a workplace mediator. In the analysis, we're heading for the deep waters of the notorious Handforth parish council meeting. There will be blood.

    For more info and a transcript head over to www.wordsandactions.blog. Episode 18 is on meetings and conflicts, so for the academically minded among our listeners, here are three sources of linguistic and conversation analytical research into meetings:

    Handford, M. (2010). The language of business meetings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Incidentally, Michael Handford was our first ever interview guest, way back in episode 1.]

    Handford, M., & Koester, A. (2019). The construction of conflict talk across workplace contexts: (Towards) a theory of conflictual compact. Language Awareness, 28(3), 186-206.

    Holmes, J., & Marra, M. (2004). Leadership and managing conflict in meetings. Pragmatics, 14(4), 439-462.

    The study about "collaboration overload" that Bernard cites at the beginning of the episode is reported on here. The second study he refers to, by online scheduling service When Is Good, is reported on here. (Note that the article also mentions the Quaker practice of starting a meeting with silence, which anticipates our first interview later in the episode.) Erika follows up on this with a study that demonstrates how the time of day when an earnings conference call is scheduled can influence the positivity (or lack thereof) of analysts' and managers' tone:

    Chen, J., Demers, E., & Lev, B. (2018). Oh what a beautiful morning! Diurnal influences on executives and analysts: Evidence from conference calls. Management Science, 64(12), 5461-5959. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2888

    It's important to note that meetings take very different forms, involve different people and have different purposes. We describe a diagram which can be found on our website www.wordsandactions.blog.

    Moving on to conflicts, Erika and Veronika have written about types and stages of conflicts, and about people's conflict styles, in chapter 9 of their textbook:

    Darics, E., & Koller, V. (2018). Language in Business, Language at Work. London: Palgrave Macmillan Education.

    You can test your own conflict resolution style with the Thomas-Kilmann questionnaire.

    In the first interview, with coach and workplace mediator Allegra Stone, we talk about how her Quaker beliefs influence her work. Quakers in Britain have published a toolkit about engaging with conflict that is based on their peace testimony.

    Our second interview guest, Bernadette Vine, is a member of the Language in the Workplace project at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (Te Herenga Waka, Aotearoa). A few of her recent publications are:

    Lazzaro-Salazar, M., Marra, M., Holmes, J., & Vine, B. (2015). Doing power and negotiating through disagreement in public meetings. Pragmatics and Society, 6(3), 444-464.

    Vine, B. (ed.) (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Vine, B. (2020). Introducing Language in the Workplace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    In the last part of the episode, we analyse the now infamous Handforth parish council meeting from February 2021. In the next episode, we'll be looking at the related topic of negotiations.

    50 min
  • The language of Entrepreneurship (3): Creativity in language and visual communication

    In this episode we talk about creativity in language and visual communication. We published many of the images and logos we mention on our website, http://wordsactions.blog. Here you can find the full transcript, too. In the first part of the episode, Erika mentions the following study on how colour influences investment decisions: Chan, C. R., & Park, H. D. (2015). How images and color in business plans influence venture investment screening decisions. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(5), 732-748. Veronika published some of her work on the links between colour and language in this article: Koller, V. (2008a). 'Not just a colour': Pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication. Visual Communication, 7(4), 433-461. Moving on to individual logos, here are the Toblerone bear and the crest of the city of Bern. Veronika's research on city brands, including a categorisation of their logos, was published as Koller, V. (2008b). 'The world in one city': Semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding. Journal of Language and Politics, 7(3), 431-450. We specifically mention the logos of three places where we live or were born, resp.: Ghent (Belgium), Dunaszerdahely (Slovakia) and Stroud (UK). We also discuss what changes in logos and type fonts can signalise, and Veronika mentions the case of Lancaster University, which had such a change in 2014. Some fonts can indeed elicit strong reactions, as evidenced on the website comicsanscriminal.com. The form and connotations of type fonts were theorised by Theo van Leeuwen: van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Towards a semiotics of typography. Information Design Journal, 14(2), 139-155. For a general interest read, try this book: Garfield, S. (2010). Just My Type: A book about fonts. London: Profile Books. Bernard then reveals a different side of himself when he talks about the irregular type fonts and idiosyncratic spelling used by heavy metal bands. At the end of the first part, we talk about names for a company and Erika mentions a study showing a correlation between length of a domain name and visits to a website. In the interview, Chris Arning mentions, among other works that have influenced him: Jakobson, R. (1981). Linguistics and poetics. In Selected Writings. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 18-51. In the third part of the episode, we analyse linguistic creativity on the website visiticeland.com. This is not an overview website but one to be explored through interacting with it, so have a look. Erika observed that the designers seemed to have followed a model developed under the name of 'brand linguistics': Carnevale, M., Luna, D., & Lerman, D. (2017). Brand linguistics: A theory-driven framework for the study of language in branding. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(2), 572-591. The red thread for this episode has been travel. You can take a flight of fancy and read about the language and semiotics of luxury destinations here Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2012) Elite mobilities: The semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege. Social Semiotics, 22(4), 487-516 or learn about Gosia Drewniok's research on the language branding of luxury hotels here – happy travels and see you again for the next episode.

    40 min
  • New Year's Special: 2020 Through the Language Lens

    Yes, we are glad to see the back of 2020. But so much happened over those 12 months that we think it warrants a special New Year's episode. We invited four guests to come with us on a tour of the year, from Brexit Day to university strikes, Black Lives Matter and the US elections. Oh, and we also mention that pandemic that just went and upended everyone's lives.

    Please visit our blog, www.wordsandactions.blog for information about our guests, further links and resources. In this episode we start our review of 2020 by talking about the language use around Brexit. Anyone interested in that topic can find relevant publications listed in Veronika's bibliography-in-progress on Brexit and language, which is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fZClWyLA-_tmfdspLAVel9YKt3Xkm8E2YbBXw_14PaA/edit. Sten Hansson's publications on the topic are:

    Hansson, S. (2019). Brexit and blame avoidance: Officeholders' discursive strategies of self-preservation. In Koller, V., Kopf, S., & Miglbauer, M. (eds) Discourses of Brexit. London: Routledge, pp. 191-207. (see also this blog post: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/11/20/the-rhetoric-of-self-preservation-brexit-and-blame-avoidance/)

    Hansson, S., & Kröger, S. (2020). How a lack of truthfulness can undermine democratic representation: the case of post-referendum Brexit discourses. British Journal of Politics and International Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148120974009

    Veronika at one point mentions prison metaphors in the Brexit debate (e.g. 'free from the shackles of the EU'), which she has written about here:

    Koller, V. (2020). Analysing metaphor in discourse. In Hart, C. (ed.) Researching Discourse: A guide for students. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 77-96.

    Our subjective look back on 2020 continues with the university strikes in Britain early that year. We talk to Liz Morrish, who was a speaker at some of the events around the industrial action. Her critical studies of contemporary universities, in the UK and elsewhere, are collected in her blog Academic Irregularities (https://academicirregularities.wordpress.com/) and have also resulted in a book she wrote with fellow linguist Helen Sauntson:

    Morrish, L., & Sauntson, H. (2019). Academic Irregularities: Language and neoliberalism in higher education. Abingdon: Routledge.

    Liz mentions various frameworks for evaluating research, teaching and knowledge exchange at British universities, known respectively as REF, TEF and KEF.

    Inevitably, our review of 2020 takes us to March and the arrival of Covid-19 in Europe. We look at the pandemic through the metaphor lens (pun very much intended) and talk to Paula Pérez Sobrino, one of the founders of the #ReframeCovid initiative. The collection of alternatives to the war metaphor for Covid-19 is available to view and download here: bit.ly/ReframeCovid – the link also leads to a form where listeners/readers can submit further examples. A group of scholars involved with the initiative have started to write about some aspects of metaphors for Covid-19 and about the initiative itself:

    Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (forthcoming). The #ReframeCovid initiative: From Twitter to society via metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World. (see also this roundtable discussion: https://media.inn.no/Mediasite/Channel/raam2020/watch/944ce34e07c94f459b6d7825cc4ba0871d)

    Pérez Sobrino, P., Semino, E., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Koller, V., & Olza, I. (forthcoming). Acting like a hedgehog in times of pandemic: Metaphoric creativity in the #ReframeCovid collection. Metaphor and Symbol.

    Semino, E. (2021). "Not soldiers but fire-fighters": Metaphors and Covid-19. Health Communication, 36(1), 50-58. (see also this blog post: http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/a-fire-raging-why-fire-metaphors-work-well-for-covid-19/)

    2020 was an eventful year and we could not fit all important events into the episode. In the summer, the killing of George Floyd by police in the US led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and protests against racism and racist violence around the world. In Britain, the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol, inspiring the poem Hollow by Bristol City Poet Vanessa Kisuule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3DKfaK50AU&t=2s Detractors of the BLM movement sometimes counter that 'All lives matter', but this misunderstands the pragmatic meaning of the original statement: 'Black lives matter' is not an answer to the question 'Whose lives matter?' but to the question 'Do black lives matter?'.

    In the final interview, we reflect on the US elections and talk to Ulrike Schneider, co-editor of a book on the language of Donald Trump (which should win a prize for best book cover of the year!):

    Schneider, U., & Eitelmann, M. (eds) (2020). Linguistic Inquiries into Donald Trump's Language: From 'fake news' to 'tremendous success'. London: Bloomsbury.

    In our conversation, we touch on Trump's use of Twitter; after the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, Twitter suspended the President's account indefinitely on grounds of incitement to violence.

    This brings Words & Action's special New Year's episode to a close, but we hope you will stay with us over the course of the year!

    45 min
  • The language of entrepreneurship (2): Pitches and presentations

    In the second part of our mini-series on the language of entrepreneurship, we enter the dragon's den, meet an angel and look for gold among the crowds. Episode 15 is all about business pitches and how (not) to use language to find investors. We talk to an expert about how to pitch across cultures, get helpful advice from a venture capitalist and analyse a crowdfunding video.

    For further details and a full transcript please visit our website at wordsandactions.blog. This episode was sponsored by BSEEN, a support programme for students and graduates who want to start their own business: www.b-seen.biz

    In the first part of the episode, we talk about the difference between written and spoken grammar, analysing parts of a Dragon's Den pitch to show why it sounds so unnatural. Here is an excerpt:

    "We are here today today to introduce Ting-a-tang and ask for an investment of a 100,000 pounds for a 20% share in our business. Looking for love is a big business in the UK. By the year 2010 it is estimated that 45% of the UK's adult population will be single. Today 75% of singletons are actively dating, spending a whopping £8 billion per year in their search for someone special. And so Ting-a-tang was born, to provide a unique and distinctive symbol for single people. Just as wearing a wedding ring showing that you are in a partnership, now you can wear a Ting-a-tang to reveal your single status."

    In the first of two interviews, we speak to Dennis Davy, whose publications include

    Daly, P., & Davy, D. (2016a). Crafting the investor pitch using insights from rhetoric and linguistics. In Alessi, G., & Jacobs, G. (eds) The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 182-203.

    Daly, P., & Davy, D. (2016b). Structural, linguistic and rhetorical features of the entrepreneurial pitch. Journal of Management Development, 35(1), 120-132. .

    Davy, D., & Daly, P. (2020). French entrepreneurial pitches in English: Analysis of linguistic errors and perceptions of error gravity. In González-Araujo, V., Álavarez-Delgado, R-C., & Sancho-Rodríguez, A. (eds) Ethics in Business Communication: New challenges in the digital world. Brussels: Peter Lang, pp. 33–48.

    At the end of the interview, Dennis mentions research into Dragon's Den versions in languages other than English. Here are two examples about the Spanish version:

    Fernández-Vázquez, J. S., & Álvarez-Delgado, R. C. (2019). The interaction between rational arguments and emotional appeals in the entrepreneurial pitch. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 26(3), 503-520.

    García-Gómez, A. (2018). Dragons' Den: Enacting persuasion in reality television. Discourse, Context & Media, 21, 1-9.

    Our second interview guest, Alex Toft, is Head of Minerva Business Angels. Information for both entrepreneurs and investors is available at https://minerva.uk.net/. .

    In the final part of the episode, we analyse a video for a crowdfunding campaign. The videos is available here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1341606466/lets-clean-up-canadas-climate-and-energy-debate

    Erika's work on the text type of crowdfunding is from her most recent volume. At the time of publishing this post (15/12/2020) it is in press but if you would like a copy, do email her.

    Parhankangas, A. and Darics, E. (in press) Linguistic style and crowdfunding success among social and commercial entrepreneurs: An example of a language study in the field of entrepreneurship. In E. Darics (ed.) Language awareness in business and the professions. Cambridge University Press

    In the final episode on language and entrepreneurship, we will look at creativity in selling ideas, services and products - see you then!

    46 min
  • The Language of Entrepreneurship (1): Talking about Entrepreneurship

    From Steve Jobs strutting the stage at Apple to that hairdresser with the quirky name on your local high street: in this episode, we start a new mini-series on the language of entrepreneurship. We look at intrapreneurs, social entrepreneurs and mumpreneurs, talk to an entrepreneur with a background in linguistics and analyse how language is used in a business plan. Whether you're thinking of starting your own business, want to help people do so or can look back on years of running your own company — this episode is for you.

    Visit our website for a full transcript and further references: https://wordsandactions.blog

    We begin the first episode of the new mini-series on the language of entrepreneurship by discussing associations with, and definitions of, entrepreneurs. Bernard quotes one definition from Investopedia, a website for investors: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/entrepreneur.asp

    We then go on to talk about local businesses and what they call themselves. Bernard mentions various categorisations of entrepreneurs and how one type may not regard the other as a "real" entrepreneur.

    One category of entrepreneur is the 'mumpreneur'. For academic work on mumpreneurs, and female entrepreneurs more widely, see:

    Surangi, H. A. K. N. S., & Ranwala, R. S. (2018). A discourse analysis of research texts on mumpreneurs. Kelaniya Journal of Management, 7(1), 1-12. http://doi.org/10.4038/kjm.v7i1.7550.

    Ahl, H. (2006). Why research on women entrepreneurs needs new directions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 30(5), 595-621.

    Marlow, S., & McAdam, M. (2013), Gender and entrepreneurship: Advancing debate and challenging myths; exploring the mystery of the under‐performing female entrepreneur. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 19(1), 114-124. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552551311299288

    We continue the first part of the episode by talking about the value set on entrepreneurial thinking and attitudes, especially at universities. Veronika mentions examples from the hosts' employers:

    University of Ghent (Bernard): Centre for Student Entrepreneurship, https://www.durfondernemen.be/en/

    Aston University (Erika): Start-up support for graduate entrepreneurs, https://b-seen.biz

    Lancaster University (Veronika): Entrepreneurs in Residence, https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/business/community/entrepreneurs-in-residence/

    During the interview with Munene Khoza, Veronika mentions an interview study she did with language professionals. Here's the reference:

    Koller, V. (2017). Language awareness and language workers. Language Awareness, 27(1-2), 4-20.

    The business plan we analyse in the final part of the episode, and other examples, can be found at https://www.startups.com/library/expert-advice/top-4-business-plan-examples

    See you again for the next part of the mini-series on the language of entrepreneurship!

    45 min

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A podcast about how language matters in business, politics and beyond.