2020

We are very excited to announce that the next EELC conference will be held at the University of Oslo on 24-25 September, 2020.

Visit the conference website: www.uio.no/EELC8 for more information.

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Linguistic Ethnography and Organisations, 3rd April 2020, Lancaster University

We are inviting contributions to a one-day colloquium on ‘Linguistic ethnography and organisations’, to be held at Lancaster University on 3^rd April 2020, as part of the programme of events organised by the Linguistic Ethnography Forum.

There is a growing body of research that uses linguistic ethnography to study interaction in organisational settings, from doctors’ surgeries (Swinglehurst 2014) to think tanks (Shaw 2015) to call centres (Woydack and Rampton 2016). Less work, however, has been done examining how linguistic ethnography can be used in studying the organisations themselves, particularly in understanding the role of language and interaction in co-ordinating their operations and sustaining their existence.

We are especially interested in the relationship between the ‘settled’ and the ‘mobile’ – between the relatively enduring power relations and patterns of activity that characterise organisations, and the relatively dynamic networks of relationships, experiences and ideas that individuals are engaged with. How do people navigate and make sense of the multiple institutional frameworks within which they find themselves? How does an ethnographic perspective with a focus on language reframe our understandings of institutions and organizations? And how can these understandings be drawn on in practice in beneficial ways; for instance, in supporting people who are trying to bring about change in their own organisations, or in better understanding how language supports institutions’ functions (or dysfunctions)?

We take ‘organisation’ and ‘institution’ in their broadest senses, and welcome papers from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The event will be designed to foster discussion of key issues, so we will be inviting participants to circulate a summary paragraph of their work before the event. Presentations will be brief, allowing time for us to talk and make connections. We are happy to consider both theoretical and empirical presentations, including work-in-progress.

We plan to produce a special issue with a selection of papers arising from the presentations and discussions, and to hold a second event to move forward collaboration and develop the publication at the Explorations in Ethnography, Language and Communication conference in Oslo (24-25 September 2020). (Attendance at both events is not compulsory or expected.)

The cost of the first event will be £50, with a reduced rate of £25 for students. A small number of bursaries will be available for people without access to institutional funding, including doctoral students and early career researchers. Please email the organisers if you would like to be considered for a bursary.

Proposals for contributions of 10-15 minutes, theoretically or empirically focused, will be due by 15th November 2019. Please send an abstract of up to 200 words to: LingEth_Orgs@lancaster.ac.uk. If you have any queries contact the organisers:

Anne Murphy a.murphy2@lancaster.ac.uk

Rob Sharples robert.sharples@bristol.ac.uk (from 1 September)

Karin Tusting k.tusting@lancaster.ac.uk

REFERENCES

Shaw, S. E., Russell, J., Parsons, W., & Greenhalgh, T. (2015). The view from nowhere? How think tanks work to shape health policy. Critical Policy Studies, 9(1), 58–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2014.964278

Swinglehurst, D. (2014). Displays of authority in the clinical consultation: A linguistic ethnographic study of the electronic patient record. Social Science & Medicine (1982), 118, 17–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.07.045

Woydack, J., & Rampton, B. (2016). Text trajectories in a multilingual call centre: The linguistic ethnography of a calling script. Language in Society, 45(5), 709–732. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404516000610