Resumen de Receptive multilingualism as a strategy for sharing mutual linguistic resources in the workplace in a Swiss context

Georges Lüdi

• The growing mobility of populations in important parts of the world has led, and is continuing to lead, to a lasting change from monolingual to multilingual teams of people working together, and the need for techniques for communication between people of different languages. A frequent stereotype envisages the most convenient solution as the choice of a single language, often English, including for the purposes of internal communication. Generally, it is linked to an ‘additive’ or ‘monolingual’ view on multilingualism and language choice, respectively: interlocutors speak one or the other language. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the DYLAN project showed the existence of alternative strategies based on a ‘multilanguaging’ philosophy: multilingual repertoires, defined as sets of ‘resources’ – both verbal (various registers, dialects and languages, mastered at different levels) and non-verbal (e.g. mime and gestural expression) – are jointly mobilised at the same time by the actors in order to find local solutions to practical problems. These alternative approaches demand integrated partial competences, e.g. local language(s) by expats or closely related languages, but inversely also English, as a tool for cross-linguistic and intercultural communication. They will be illustrated by examples from business meetings involving mixed teams in a range of companies operating across language borders.