Communicative Practices at Work: Multimodality and Learning in a High-Tech Firm (Language, Mobility and Institutions, 1) - Softcover

Kleifgen, Jo Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783090448 ISBN 13: 9781783090440

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

This book examines communicative practices in a circuit-board manufacturing plant in California's Silicon Valley, where the employees come from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds, their activities involve the use of high-tech equipment and their practices are shaped by, and sometimes contest, local and global forces. Analyses of the data show that learning occurs optimally when workers make strategic use of both their home languages and English within an ecology of semiotic systems. The book demonstrates the importance of accounting for multilingual practices in studies of multimodality. Through detailed ethnography it brings the reader to a better understanding of learning-in-practice in work environments, where the complexities and accelerated growth of new technologies along with a globalized world produce new forms of multilingual and multimodal communication.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jo Anne Kleifgen is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. Her publications include Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Language Learners (with Ofelia García; Teachers College Press, 2010) and Languages of Africa and the Diaspora: Educating for Language Awareness (with George C. Bond; Multilingual Matters, 2009).

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Communicative Practices at Work

Multimodality and Learning in a High-Tech Firm

By Jo Anne Kleifgen

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2013 Jo Anne Kleifgen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78309-044-0

Contents

Acknowledgments, ix, 
1 Introduction: Theorizing Communicative Practices at Work, 1, 
2 Genesis, Inc. and Its People, 15, 
3 Multimodal Interaction on the Assembly Floor, 39, 
4 Doing Social Work: Power Relations in Interaction, 74, 
5 Globalizing Forces and Quality-Control Certification, 99, 
6 Learning-in-Practice, 129, 
7 Conclusion: Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Communicative Practices at Work, 164, 
Appendix, 172, 
References, 181, 
Index, 194, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Theorizing Communicative Practices at Work

A word is a territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and his interlocutor Volosinov, 1973: 86

Consider this scene: In a small plant that manufactures circuit boards, a machine operator and his supervisor are working at a computerized assembly machine, which has been programmed to load components on a circuit board. They are under pressure to finish a set of boards that is slated for delivery to the customer by the afternoon. They have just discovered that the machine failed to place three microscopic components to their assigned spaces on the board. This is not good news, as the machine's inability to place these components will slow down the rest of the assembly process.

At this point, the machine operator takes the board to an inspection station where two women are working, and the supervisor asks one of them to inspect the board. As she begins to review the board, the supervisor examines the Bill of Materials (BOM) that the customer submitted for this job and asks her to read aloud the numbers on the board corresponding to the components that now will have to be placed by hand: 'Could you please read the numbers?' Her gaze scans the three locations on the board as she reads, 'Seventeen, twelve, thirteen'. The supervisor, searching for the numbers on the BOM, confirms, 'Seventeen, twelve, thirteen. Is that right?' and the inspector answers 'Yes'. Then, looking up from her sources of information, she turns to the supervisor to verify that these are the only components to be checked: 'Three pieces. Is that right?' 'Yeah', he replies. The supervisor retrieves the components from the machine and gives them to the inspectors, who carefully load them by hand.

One might be tempted to dismiss this as just another humdrum exchange at work. Indeed, this sort of 'trouble-shooting talk' is an everyday occurrence in this company, where workers constantly deal with breakdowns in assembly. Yet, brief interactions such as these deserve a closer look. This book is about looking both within and around such interactions and about the convergence of multimodality, learning, and globalization in the workplace. It examines communicative practices in a contemporary American work setting – a small circuit board assembly plant in California's Silicon Valley – where the employees come from diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds, their activities involve the use of high-tech equipment and massive amounts of documentation, and their practices are often shaped by, and sometimes contest, larger global forces. One of the things I attempt to show in this book is the various ways in which participants 'learn' through conjoint action, drawing on the array of resources available to them, including their ways of speaking (Vietnamese, Chinese, Spanish, English) and other semiotic modes of communication (writing, gestures, sounds, images) along with mediating tools (circuit boards, components, software, high-tech machines) to accomplish their tasks. Thus, whereas a number of prior studies have focused on talk at work (Atkinson & Drew, 1984; Drew & Heritage, 1992b; C. Goodwin, 1994, 1995b; Sarangi & Roberts, 1999), literacy at work (Hart-Landsberg & Reder, 1995; Hull, 1997, 2000; Tannock, 1997), learning and cognition at work (Chaiklin & Lave, 1993; Darrah, 1996; Engestrom & Middleton, 1998b) and work and global capitalism (Gee et al. 1996; Gowen, 1992), this volume examines these different facets as they come together in social interaction.

The scene described here is, in many ways, a remarkable achievement. It is steeped in communicative complexity. Language use here is crucial yet is only part of the story. The environment is permeated by tools as well as by different inscriptions, a term first used by Derrida (1977) to refer to all marks – writing, graphs, numbers, blueprints, images – that organize and represent material phenomena. These are all contributing elements to communication and action at work. To account for all these resources, I use the broader term communicative practices to encompass languages and language varieties, spoken as well as written forms, and the use of other semiotic building blocks to construct meaning on the job. The term also implies that meaning-making is highly contextualized and permeated by ideology. This concept is developed in depth by Hanks, who argues that the key elements in communicative practice are linguistic (and other semiotic) structures, communicative activities, and 'the socially specific values that always inform experience' (1996: 304).

Throughout the book, I pay close attention to the complexity of communicative practices at work. For the moment, let us briefly notice the workers' use of multiple resources for communication in this interaction. First, they exchange a few words consisting largely of numbers in their native language (to be elaborated below). Other sign systems they deploy include their embodied actions, such as pointing to the 'problem' locations on the circuit board and taking the board to people at another station for review. In addition, they draw on inscriptions and relevant objects in the work environment by reading aloud available information and scrutinizing both printed documents and the spatial configurations and inscriptions on the partially loaded board. In short, the social interaction is multimodal, with gestural, spoken, written and visual resources all working together to form a communicative whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. I describe this multimodal complexity in greater detail in subsequent chapters.

The scene also evokes other matters that will be explored in this book. For example, though taking place in a specific work context, the participants' talk and actions reflect local – global linkages and tensions. In this interaction, the workers' actions reflect the company's involvement in the broader context of an intensely competitive international market. Many potential customers in Silicon Valley have begun to send their manufacturing to locations abroad. To survive and remain locally relevant, this company must have leading-edge equipment, be able to do a fast turn-around on a job and provide excellent quality control. Employees have a large stake in the success of this firm. The quality of the product determines whether or not the company will win more contracts or simply fold and leave the workers without a job.

The local-global link becomes even more perceptible in this scene's verbal exchanges, for the participants happen to be speaking primarily in Vietnamese, one of several languages spoken on the manufacturing floor. The multilingual character of this talk is testimony to one effect of globalization – people crossing national...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1783090448
• ISBN 13: 9781783090440
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland