This case study contributes to research on language ideologies and language planning in the business sector by exploring the planning phase of an internal communication project. Managers and communication specialists at a global industrial company were interviewed and recorded while participating in workshops. The data comprised communication in both English and Swedish, while the planned intranet was to include several other languages. Using a theoretical framework of language ideologies and mediated discourse analysis, the transcribed data were analysed to understand how language ideologies and discourses were negotiated and how participants positioned themselves. Findings reveal a dominant ideology of language hierarchy, placing English at the top, along with discourses of inclusion and efficiency. Negotiation was played out between notions of language as problem and language as resource, with an ideal of monolingualism (“a simpler world”) in the background. Participants used discursive resources such as narratives and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages to negotiate ideological positions. Two professionals stood out by taking different positions: a Swedishspeaking terminologist and a native English-speaking communication specialist. Drawing on their respective historical bodies, they used unofficial policy documents as resources in the negotiation. The study highlights the need for language specialists in global organisations.

I projektet Vad säger skolans väggar undersökte skolelever, lärare och forskare hurskolans demokratiska uppdrag samspelar med språkliga och visuella budskap i skolmiljön. Ett tjugotal skolklasser i låg- och högstadiet deltog genom att fota av, analyseraoch rapportera in skyltar, anslag, teckningar, klotter och annat längs väggarna i sinaskolor. Därefter genomförde forskarna en vetenskaplig analys av elevernas bilder.Projektet var ett samarbete mellan forskare inom språk- och utbildningsvetenskap vidStockholms universitet och Uppsala universitet, och den ideella föreningen Vetenskap& Allmänhet. Projektet var en del av vetenskapsfestivalen ForskarFredag som ingår iEuropean Researchers’ Night, och genomfördes med stöd från EUs forsknings- ochinnovationsprogram Horisont Europa.Vetenskapligt ansvariga för Vad säger skolans väggar var forskarna Mona Blåsjö, professor i svenska vid Institutionen för svenska och flerspråkighet på Stockholms universitetoch Charlotte Engblom, lektor i didaktik med inriktning svenska och docent i svenskaspråket vid Uppsala universitet.Projektet inleddes med en pilotundersökning i maj 2024. Därefter genomfördes en meromfattande materialinsamling som en del av ForskarFredag 1 september–20 oktober2024. Denna rapport presenterar resultaten från analysarbetet som genomfördes underhösten och vintern 2024–2025.

Communication professionals have a paramount role in global crisis. What did they learn during the covid pandemic that could be used in future global crisis? The aim of this article is to identify and analyze strategy changes among communicators in municipalities and how their conceptions of communicated knowledge transformed during the pandemic. Retrospective interviews and textual material are analyzed with a framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis in combination with Legitimation Code Theory. The analysis shows that the work of the communicators was characterized by collaboration with other professional groups and the civil society, and that the complexity and important time aspects during this crisis gave birth to semi-new, reinvented, discursive tools in the shape of text genres. The communicators' conceived relevant knowledge as concept-driven and developed the conception that conveyance of knowledge should be thoroughly planned in a way that takes complexity into account.

In the communications of modern organizations, text sharing and knowledge management are mainly digital. The digital systems that frame many types of communication consist of, e.g., intranets and document sharing software that are occasionally exchanged for new systems. Employees have to adjust to modified routines and learn new systems, and management has to make decisions about digital systems and how these are to be integrated with work processes and knowledge management. In this article, we contribute to research on work-life literacies by highlighting the increasingly frequent issue of digital text sharing in modern workplaces through the study of commercial companies, mainly through ethnographic observations and interviews. The theoretical framework comes from New Literacy Studies where literacy practices, i.e., common patterns of using reading and writing, form a key concept. Moreover, the sociolinguistic concept of metadiscourse is applied in order to uncover the reflexive orientation of participating professionals towards digital text sharing. The results show that these professionals relate the combination of digital text sharing and technological and organizational change to problems, obstacles and potential risks; ambitions of enhancing digital text sharing may exclude certain groups, and changes in digital text sharing systems per se may cause professionals to lose control. These risks are often associated with access to information: a person who cannot access information in their organization has a lower degree of agency or power over their situation. The results are discussed in light of theories concerning modern work life from New Literacy Studies.

Recently, changes in working life have become a prominent topic in academic researchas well as professional literature and public discussions. It has been recognized thatthe contexts and conditions of work have become more transient and unpredictabledue to global changes and megatrends related to, for example, migration, techno-logical developments, and transforming values and lifestyles as the world becomesincreasingly interconnected through the flows of information, workforces, materialsand ideas (see e.g. Blommaert 2013; Gratton 2011; Sarangi 2011). In light of thistransformation, changing working life can be seen as a cluster of change processes thatinfluence the labour market and workplace organizations in various ways.

Translation and interpreting in the workplace are not always performed by translationprofessionals in planned situations. In this article, collective ad hoc-translation/interpreting by non-translators in a workplace meeting is analyzed. The analysis gives an example of ad hoc-translation that take place in work life situations: there are no distinct divisions between different roles, or between source text and target text, and there are no clear borders between translation and interpreting, since both written texts and verbal interaction are present. The study confirms recent problematizations of conceptions of translation and interpreting in real life situations and highlights the role of digital tools in non-professional workplace translation.

Calls have been raised for more research on the use of texts and other types of in real-life communicationin real-life situations, which are often complex and hybrid. This study is based on data from a meeting at a hospital ward where a Key Account Manager from a pharmaceutical business informs staff about a medical product during their lunch hour. Mediated discourse analysis is applied to map the mediating trajectories of the texts used in the meeting and to reveal the role of people in this mediation. The analysis shows that the situation can be regarded as a mediation of a discourse concerning the marketing of medical products and of actual legaltexts, stating that pharmaceutical businesses cannot offer doctors values such as expensive dinners. Besides a PowerPoint document, other material resources and practices such as a modest meal contribute to the situation. In the texts, a medical-scientific discourse, a commercial discourse and an administrative discourse are mixed. Doctors’ actions of prescribing the productare anticipated by the Key Account Manager’s actions of 1) constructing an ‘historical body’ of trust, 2) emphasizing certain textual messages at the same time and offering these texts in adurable material form. This manner of simultaneous and/or durable material forms is introduced as discursive layering. The study presents an empirical case of how ‘big discourses’ are mediated into local actions which, in turn, are targeted to affect future actions.

In modern business organizations, digital practices are enacted daily, often when sharing texts, which is crucial for knowledge management. How professionals experience digital text sharing is an issue that is often overlooked. In this paper, we focus on a relatively new aspect of business digital literacy: the literacy practice of digital text sharing in workplaces. Our analysis was conducted on ethnographic data from business organizations. The results show that sociomaterial aspects are enacted by professionals by discussing 1) the protection of borders of their own and other organizations, and 2) the status and digital location of texts. The analysis highlights two means of expressing agency that indicate conflicting norms: joking and showing strong emotions. The study places the hitherto backgrounded literacy practice of digital text sharing in workplaces in the foreground, proposes methods for studying this phenomenon, and highlights issues concerning digital text sharing that should be addressed by organizations.

Professionals working in international companies in Sweden are expected to speak, read, and write in Swedish and English in their daily work. This article discusses professional writing in different languages. Through the use of methods from linguistic ethnography, we aim to enrich the understanding of workplace literacy by studying writing and texts in multilingual business contexts. Our results show that professionals are expected to navigate between a translanguaging mode and a more monolingual mode in everyday communication. Also, when they opt for producing monolingual texts, literacy practices that surround those texts are often multilingual. Moreover, they imagine a future, secondary audience for their texts, often resulting in the choice of English for reaching out, or in the choice of Swedish as a way of keeping matters local. Knowing when to choose a translanguaging mode or a more monolingual mode is a necessary skill or competence in this type of workplace. Our results also show that the use of multimodal resources includes the material placement of texts, and that old materialities such as pen and paper are still essential. Different linguistic and semiotic resources are used, including resources from academic, business and personal discourse.

Modern work life includes many digital tools, of which the shared digital calendar has attracted little attention in applied linguistics. The framework for this study is mediated discourse analysis applied to ethnographic data from one workplace and eight contextual interviews from eight other workplaces. The data were analyzed 1) qualitatively, using Wertsch’s (1998) concepts for agency, and 2) quantitatively, through an SFG (Systemic Functional Grammar) analysis of the interviews. The quantitative analysis reveals a high degree of agency. The qualitative analysis shows that discourses of managerialism, globalization, democratization and “flat organizations” can be mapped to the digital calendar. The calendar is also related to other text media such as whiteboards and time report systems, where squares with colors and writing constitute the discursive shapes that are common to the digital calendar. The ability to search and book meetings in the calendars of others is an affordance, although regulated through digital or verbal access. In this and other ways, the individual is strongly connected to the digital tool. The boundary between private and public has been challenged by digital tools. Social actors can resist, e.g., by non-compliance in using the digital calendar, thus increasing their sense of agency. Additional features include the ability to combine different media and develop practices that are not directly offered by the design of the tool. The digital tool both widens the agency of the actors, e.g., in keeping a great deal of information connected to one meeting, and delimits it, e.g., in sometimes rendering individuals helpless to what they see in their own calendars.