Language practice in the multilingual workplace: A Confucius Institute in Macau
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[1] University of Macau
University of Macau
RAE de Macao (China)
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[2] University of South Wales
University of South Wales
Pontypridd, Reino Unido
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- Localización: Círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación, ISSN-e 1576-4737, Nº. 86, 2021 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Monograph: Multilingualism at work in China), págs. 43-54
- Idioma: inglés
- Títulos paralelos:
- 多语言工作场所中的语言实践: 基于澳门孔子学院的个案研究
- Enlaces
- Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
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Resumen
This article reports on an ethnographic study that investigated language practice in a multilingual workplace, a Confucius Institute in Macau. In the study we collected multiple data from five staff members through participatory observations, open-ended interviews, and field notes, to examine their language practice in the Institute. The analysis revealed that multiple languages were chosen to fulfill different purposes on different occasions. Specifically, Putonghua served as the working language of the Institute, English emerged as an auxiliary language along with Putonghua, and Cantonese was used as a group language for native-Cantonese speaker staff. This study also identified that the staff members adopted multilingualism (flexibly using different languages) and English as a lingua franca for communicating with learners outside the classroom, as important strategies for dealing with tasks in encounters with language diversity, divergence between spoken communication and written communication, and lack of multilingual competence. These findings suggest that the stakeholders in Confucius Institutes need to pay more attention to the language practice in these multilingual settings, and provide resources and support to enhance the staff’s bilingual/multilingual communication competence
