Geert Jacobs

A Multilanguage Online Writing Center for Professional Communication: Development and Testing

An online writing center developed at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, called Calliope, provides a modular platform aimed at enhancing learners’ professional writing skills in five different languages: Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish. It supports courses in business and technical communication. The current version includes modules on press releases in English, business letters in French, and minute taking in Dutch. Unlike many online writing centers, it is genre-specific and context-specific, it is highly interactive rather than linear, it uses a process approach to cater to different learning styles, it accommodates different writer profiles, and it is an instructional tool not connected to a physical writing center.

Notes on linguistic ethnography as a liminal activity

Abstract Linguistic ethnography has rapidly secured itself a place among the most commonly used paradigms for analyzing language in use. In this discussion paper we present a birds eye view of the state of linguistic ethnography as it is reflected in the papers included in this volume. We propose to identify the main theoretical and methodological concerns that seem to emerge across the research presented here. Some of them center around the etic–emic, frontstage–backstage, text–context, and linguistics–ethnography questions. While ultimately these issues cannot be resolved, we argue that they nevertheless continue to provide an impetus for ethnographic inquiry and a frame within which to explore the specific challenges of doing language and communicative analysis in institutional sites in the contemporary era. In the end, we suggest that linguistic ethnography should perhaps be seen as a liminal activity, with both the researchers and the language they investigate situated within and across different worlds. The present approach is an empirical one since we propose a close reading of the papers in this volume as “texts” and we examine them not to provide a state-of-the-art survey of linguistic ethnography but to unravel some of the cues that these texts contain regarding the practices constituting linguistic ethnography as a part of social reality.

The Lowlands Newsroom Model: Fieldwork notes on the position of the newspaper sub-editor

This paper sheds light on newspaper sub-editors, the “forgotten stepchildren of the newsroom” and considers their position within the larger organizational model of the newsroom. In order to explore the sub-editors position in the news production chain, we take an ethnographic approach. We draw on participant observation in the newsrooms of a Belgian broadsheet and a broadsheet from the Netherlands. In our study of the sub-editor, we observe how at both newspapers the newsroom model differs from those previously described by Esser, and we propose the term “Lowlands newsroom model”. At the same time, we demonstrate how, although the same Lowlands newsroom model is applied in both newsrooms, the spatial setting, division of workload and the sub-editors profile impact on the sub-editors ability to intervene in the news production process. We argue that exploring this newsroom model is necessary, not only considering the general newsroom flow, but also the much debated future of the newspaper “subber”. Furthermore, we aim to open the door to future journalism studies research of the sub-editor and hope to move towards a more complete definition of the sub-editor as a—in the language of Gieber—genuine “newspaperman”.

IS LANGUAGE A NEWS VALUE IN BELGIUM?: A case study of the use of Dutch-language quotes in the French-language TV news

In todays globalized and multilingual mediascape the practicalities of inter-language translation have become increasingly relevant in the newsroom and the question has been raised how multilingualism affects journalistic practice. This question seems particularly relevant in Belgium, where the political tension between Dutch-speaking and French-speaking communities has recently dominated the news agenda. In this paper we report on team fieldwork conducted in the TV newsroom of Belgiums French-language public broadcasting corporation RTBF in the spring of 2009. In particular, we will present a case study in which a journalist struggles with the integration of a number of Dutch-language quotes in a news report on the demise of the fashion industry. Our behind-the-scenes analysis, from the storyboard meeting until broadcasting, leads us to question whether the language in which source materials are available can be considered a news value in Belgium. In line with recent calls in media linguistics, our approach is a linguistic ethnographic one, demonstrating the added value of a fine-grained analysis of the discursive processes at the heart of newsmaking routines, one that allows us to revisit news values as decision-making parameters not just in gatekeeping but throughout the news production process.

Assessing QuADEM: preliminary notes on a new method for evaluating online language learning courseware

In this article, we set out to assess QuADEM (Quality Assessment of Digital Educational Material), one of the latest methods for evaluating online language learning courseware. What is special about QuADEM is that the evaluation is based on observing the actual usage of the online courseware and that, from a checklist of 12 different components, the evaluator is free to pick and choose one or more. In particular, we focus on the QuADEM evaluation of a module of the digital environment Deutsch-Uni Online (DUO) that aims at preparing B1/B2 students for a study semester in Germany. DUO is meant for self-study supported by an online tutor. For our assessment, we observed two respondents during their activities in the online learning module, using think-aloud protocol, video registration, and keystroke logging, and we conducted semistructured postintervention interviews with them. Zooming in on usability, we found that this QuADEM component lacks assessment criteria regarding feedback and task design, both of which turned out to play an important motivational role in our assessment. While both could be added to the QuADEM usability dimension under the denomination “didactic usability,” we suggest that it might be worth reconsidering QuADEMs pick-and-choose approach.

Introduction: Emerging linguistic ethnographic perspectives on institutional discourses

This special issue attempts to show the added value of combining variousapproaches to linguistics with ethnographic studies of institutional discur-sive practices and their socially constructed sets of conventions. The pa-pers contained in the issue explore how such combinations can form ad-ditional lines of analysis, thus providing richer and more variegated detailthat helps improve our understanding of discourse practices across anumber of institutional sites. Taken together, the papers open up newperspectives on the characteristic forms of interaction within particularinstitutional sites as well as on the discursive practices through whichsuch sites are constructed and identified. In this respect the issue furtherbuilds on an intensive discussion and examination of ethnographies of in-stitutional practices held during a small-scale, all-plenary internationalworkshop that the editors of this volume organized in Knokke, Belgium,in 2006.

In the land of pharma : a qualitative analysis of the reputational discourse of the pharmaceutical industry

The pharmaceutical industry has been battling a negative reputation and has been confronted with accusations such as putting profits before patients and manipulating clinical trial results. In this study, we focus on how pharmaceutical companies address what we define as the Bad Pharma discourse. Drawing on interviews, press releases, corporate documentation and ethnographic fieldwork, we analyse the main themes that are used by the Belgian pharmaceutical industry to construct its reputational discourse, and we focus on how this discourse is shaped by the Bad Pharma discourse. Our results illustrate that on the one hand, the industry contests the Bad Pharma discourse by generating an alternative discourse. On the other hand, they also partly embrace and reframe this Bad Pharma discourse. This way, current societal debates are entextualised in the reputational discourses of the pharmaceutical industry.

“We Never Even Wondered Whether We Trusted Them or Not”: From Freedom to Mutuality in a Student Research Project

Of the many lines of research in the broad field of business and professional communication, one that has received increasing attention over the past few years is focussed on the complex interactions between practice and learning. Sarangi and Candlin (2010), for example, have discussed the impact of inviting practitioners to the classroom in order to share their expertise in a specific field of interest. More recently, Drury-Grogan & Russ (2013) have looked at how to integrate simulations of real cases in pedagogical settings. As Blake (1991) indicated, the ultimate step in bridging the gap between learning and practice is to get the students out of the classroom and provide them with opportunities to work with practitioners in the work field. This paper reports on one such effort made in the context of the master’s program in Multilingual Business Communication (MBC) at Ghent University, where students work in teams on a specific research project that has been commissioned by a professional organization. In particular, we present a case study on a student research project in the area of employer branding that was conducted for the Belgian division of a multinational in the food industry.

Reflections on the ins and outs of business and professional discourse research

This book presents a collection of original chapters focusing on what, for lack of a more precise term, we have come to call the “INs and OUTs” of business and professional discourse research. Put simply, this means that we zoom in on the two extreme ends of the scholarly process investigating written, oral, non-verbal and digital communication in business and professional settings. On the one hand, the volume includes a number of chapters that deal with issues of gaining access to and collecting data, and addresses questions like: how can we convince practitioners to let us observe, record, interview, survey? What counts as data? How much data do we need? What shape and form can the data take? How does our research interfere with the professional practices we study? On the other hand, there are a number of chapters that look at issues of feeding results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners. Questions here include: how can professional discourse research be applied to help shape practice? How do we translate our methods and concepts for the communities that we investigate, including industry, government and non-profit organizations?

Good Pharma? How Business Communication Research Can Help Bridge the Gap Between Students and Practitioners

This article presents a case-based exploration of the complex interactions between learning, research, and practice in the field of business and professional communication. It focuses on a student research project in the area of corporate social responsibility in the biopharmaceutical industry. Adopting an autoethnographic approach, we aim to document the students’ development from researchers to insiders or even consultants. The findings reveal that while the students feel confident in their roles as researchers, they fail to live up to some of the commissioning practitioners’ expectations. The study concludes by providing guidelines to strengthen interaction between students and practitioners.