Language awareness in multilingual and multicultural organisations

This chapter points out the research conducted on language issues in multilingual and multicultural organizations from a diversity of theoretical traditions, as this is a highly interdisciplinary field of research. It provides a brief discussion of some of the most prominent lines of investigation, with emphasis on how the role of language and awareness of language issues have been tackled. The chapter addresses a fairly wide picture of how the study of issues of communication, language policy and language use within and around culturally/linguistically heterogeneous organizations. It discusses four fundamental concepts that cross-cut research in this interdisciplinary area: culture, miscommunication, diversity management and training. The analytical insistence on miscommunication has construed diversity as a problem to be 'fixed' through the implementation of a series of strategies that have often received the label of 'diversity management'. Closely linked to the construct of 'diversity management' is the idea of training as a way of 'handling' diversity-caused relational and communicative difficulties.