The linguistic demands of learning at work: Interactional competences and miscommunication in vocational training

Abstract

Becoming a professional worker involves a wide range of cognitive, social, and cultural processes that have received extensive attention over the past decades amongst various disciplines. It is also not external to language use and communication. Novices in any occupation have to learn technical terms and are expected to master specific discourse and communication genres. They also face explicit or implicit demands regarding how to deal with interactional tasks. This paper discusses the theoretical conditions under which connections between work, language use and learning can be investigated both conceptually and empirically. It illustrates some of these ideas by using empirical data, focusing on a specific educational context, that of the apprenticeship system as it exists in Switzerland. A fine-grained analysis of this material highlights some of the characteristics of verbal and non-verbal inter-actions between apprentices and trainers as they occur in workplaces. To finish, the paper elaborates on some practical implications and applicationsof these analyses for the field of teachers’ training and language teaching and learnin