The sociolinguistics of work and health: From the margins to the mainstream

Reflecting on the place of work and health within sociolinguistics research, I trace their shift from marginal concerns to established areas of inquiry, which have shown how access, participation, belonging, and inequality are produced and negotiated in interaction through the everyday experiences of professionals and lay members. This research has often remained separate from other areas of the discipline. Drawing on past and ongoing projects, I argue that fragmentation is problematic: work and health are central not only to the relevance of the discipline and our understanding of language in society, but also to its development. I focus on three interrelated challenges: the need for greater dialogue across sociolinguistic traditions; further development of tools that can better capture multilingual, multi-layered, embodied and mediated interaction; and embedding interdisciplinary collaboration in research design from the outset to achieve meaningful impact.

Jo Angouri is a Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Warwick. Her research sits at the interface of sociolinguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis, and encompasses complex decision-making/risk in work/health settings, multilingualism, language politics, and methodology. She is the International Subject Chair for Linguistics, Language, Communication and Media on the Scopus board, founding editor of the Multilingual Matters’ Language at Work series, and Editor-in-Chief of Discourse & Communication.

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