ABSTRACT
The modern workplace is international, multilingual, and diverse and employees are expected to work in teams and to operate at the interface of linguistic, professional, and geographical boundaries. Despite the significance of the workplace for both individuals and societies as a whole, linguists in general, and sociolinguists and applied linguists in particular have relatively turned their attention to it as a research setting. Time and research shows that teaching resources and classroom practices continue to be at odds with the reality of the workplace. Workplace discourse analysts have had a strong interest in 'culture' since the beginnings of the field and particularly in its complex relationship with language. Post structuralism puts emphasis on the multifaceted relationship between language and culture. Linguistic research has been arguing on the nuances and complexities of social categorisation for quite some time now, but the discourse of difference has been resilient to change.
