ABSTRACT
Workplaces around the world have increasingly come to be constituted as communities of transnationally mobile staff and clientele, and the resulting cultural and linguistic diversity to which this gives rise. One consequence is that members of these transient multilingual communities (Mortensen, 2013) need to coordinate dynamically fluctuating participation frameworks (Goffman, 1981; Goodwin, 1981, 2007) and their contingent
language scenarios (Mortensen, 2010) as part and parcel of their ongoing daily workplace activities (e.g. Hazel & Mortensen, 2013; Torras, 2005). This in turn requires members to remain sensitive to a shifting bricolage of linguistic identities (Gafaranga, 2001) encountered at any given moment as they go about their work-related activities, in order to be able to respond appropriately, effectively and efficiently to each linguistic scenario as it arises. Consequently, a member’s language competencies can become implicated in his or her institutional – and thereby also implicitly their professional – identity.
