DEVELOPING LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES
IN EDTECH and LEADERSHIP
What is Linguistics?
Being a linguist is like being a doctor - people specialise in different areas of the discipline. Not every doctor has detailed knowledge and understanding of every type of medicine or practice. The same is true for linguists - we don't know everything there is to know about every language in the world. We do, however, specialise in different areas of the field, like Second Language Acquisition, Language Assessment, Phonetics and Phonology or Sociolinguistics.
WHY Linguistics?
People often assume linguistics is about pronunciation and the phonemic script, but as a discipline, linguistics covers a whole range of studies. Sociolinguistics analyses the anthropological and social aspects of language - how people talk to each other, code switching, language capital, gender speak. Discourse Analysis, similar to Critical Discourse Analysis, analyses language beyond the sentence, looking at speech and its meaning and impact - micro-agressions, discourse and framing, turn-taking, discourse markers and speech acts.
This area of linguistics can have a great impact on the way we communicate with others in a professional setting. In a global professional world, the choice of words and phrases can make or break business deals, investments, relationships and alienate your audience. Using theoretical frameworks and models and understanding how they impact our communication is a step towards being a better communicator.
ABOUT
Unlike a conversation, an investor pitch or on-camera corporate communication is often an unnatural speech act of one person speaking with the intent of getting investment to someone who does not reciprocate communication - you are out there, on your own with very few linguistic cues to read.
There have been many discourse analysis studies on investor pitches and other high-stakes business communication providing a road-map of how best to pitch your business and speak to an audience.
Wicker Consulting uses linguistic theory and models to help plan your communication. From high-level planning such as genre, brainstorming and structure, to more detailed sentence-level development like word choices, sentence structure and tone for just about any kind of business communication.