English as an international language of science and its effect on Nordic terminology: the view of scientists

This chapter is concerned with attitudes to English as an international language of science among Nordic scientists. It reports on a questionnaire completed by 200+ physicists, chemists and computer scientists at universities in five Nordic countries: Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The purpose is two-fold: First, it investigates if claims made primarily by representatives of the national language councils about a lack of local language terminology are corroborated by scientists themselves. It is found that Nordic scientists do believe that local language terminology is missing, but the extent to which they consider this problematic or a cause for concern varies. Second, the study compares attitudes across the five national contexts. Previous studies have documented that attitudes towards English held by the general public in the Nordic community can be ranked on a continuum with Icelanders being the most purist and Danes the least (Kristiansen and Sandøy 2010; Kristiansen 2010). This continuum is not replicated among Nordic scientists. Some possible reasons are discussed as well as some implications for language policy

Fup og fakta i debatten om domænetab [Truisms and fallacies in the debate about domain loss]

I Nyt fra Sprognævnet 2008/2 skelner Ole Ravnholt på frugtbar vis mellem to forskellige betydninger af det omdiskuterede fænomen ’domænetab’. I dette indlæg bygger jeg videre på denne skelnen i et forsøg på at forstå hvad det egentlig er man frygter når man taler om ’domænetab’. Samtidig beskriver jeg et igangværende forskningsprojekt på Center for Internationalisering og Parallelsproglighed (CIP) ved Københavns Universitet som har til formål at undersøge hvorvidt ’domænetab’, hvad det så end er, er eller kommer til at blive en realitet

Epilogue: Ways Forward for Global English

In closing this special issue, I seek to pull out some similarities and disjunctures that have emerged in the contributions to this special issue in order to consider how the study of global English might fruitfully be moved forward. I want to begin, however, by emphasizing, as Mufwene also finds himself needing to do, that my position “is not a denial of social injustice”, in fact, quite the contrary. Clearly, injustice is everywhere: in grotesque levels of inequality in the distribution of wealth, resources and privilege at global, national and community level. People across the world have their life and livelihood torn apart by war, poverty, famine, exploitation, violence, discrimination, many without the prospect of ever bettering their life. The global climate emergency and pandemics also strike unequally, exacerbating existing inequalities. Like so many others, I am not blind to such injustices and inequalities. Rather, what I have sought to convey, is an uncertainty over the power of linguistics in accounting for and addressing this injustice

Lexical variation at the internationalized university: are “indexicality” and “authenticity” always relevant?

Relatório de estágio do Mestrado Integrado em Ciências Farmacêuticas apresentado à Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Coimbr

Vocatives as rationalized politeness: Theoretical insights from emerging norms in call centre service encounters

This study offers an extension of existing politeness theories by illuminating how changes in politeness conventions come about as a result of contextual specificities. Despite a surge in mediated service encounters, few studies to date have considered the linguistic enactment of politeness in call centres, mainly due to restrictions on access. Drawing on a linguistic ethnography of an onshore call centre in Scotland and data in the form of authentic service interactions, interviews, on-site observations, and institutional documents, the study combines quantitative and qualitative discourse analytic techniques to explore how the call centre-specific tension between efficiency and customer care is managed in theory and practice. It is found that while the institution accords equal importance to efficiency and customer care, in actual service interactions, agents prioritize efficiency. Furthermore, in the few cases where agents do orient to customer care, vocatives appear to be used as a shortcut; documenting the emergence of a novel – rationalized – type of politeness. The study contributes the theoretical insight that new politeness conventions emerge, not so much because of the imposition of one culture on another, but because they are shaped by the particular context in which they arise