Introduction Trading between reflexivity and relevance: new challenges for applied linguistics

Abstract

The basis for this special issue was a colloquium on professional discourse held within a conference at the University of Gent in August 2000 on the theme of Text and Talk in the Workplace. The colloquium itself was a truly interdisciplinary event, not just marked by the dialogic structure of the contributions by authors and commentators, but also by the fact that the commentator team included professional practitioners with their own particular perspectives. In this special issue we have retained the deliberations from these main papers and commentaries, but these have been supplemented with additional material. It is not the purpose of this editorial to replicate what the invited papers and the associated commentaries already attempt: they provide descriptions and analyses of three workplace-based projects. Other readers from their own distinct perspectives will engage with the issues presented here differently. We view our editorial task as chiefly to consolidate the common issues shared, but not necessarily resolved, by the papers and the commentaries.