The Business of Words examines the practices of 'high-end' language workers or wordsmiths. An essential resource for researchers, advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of English Language, Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Communication and Media Studies, and Anthropology.

Crispin Thurlow is Professor of Language and Communication in the Department of English at the University of Bern, Switzerland.

List of Contributors

Chapter 1 - The (Grubby) Business of Words: What 'George Clooney' Tells Us

Part 1: Language Work and the Business of Words

Chapter 2 - Unequal Language Work(ers) in the Business of Words

Chapter 3 - The Linguistic Business of Marketing

Part 2: Wordsmiths and Professional Language Work

Chapter 4 - Unwriteable Discourse? Co-crafting the Language of Science News

Chapter 5 - Voice Work: Learning About and From Dialect Coaches

Chapter 6 - EAT, LOVE and Other (Small) Stories: Tellability and Multimodality in Robert Indiana's Word Art

Chapter 7 - Judges as Wordsmiths: Crafting Clarity and Neutrality in Summing-up for Juries

Chapter 8 - Making (up) the News: The Artful Language Work of Journalists in 'Reporting' Taboo

Part 3: Linguists and Political Economies of Expertise

Chapter 9 - Framing Elite Knowledge in Shifting Linguistic Economies: The Case of Minority Language Translation

Chapter 10 - Beyond the Academic 'But': The Pleasures and Politics of Collaborative Language Work in the Publishing Industry

Chapter 11 - The Commercialisation of Linguistic Expertise in the Asylum Vetting Process

Chapter 12 - Engaging with School Principals as Language Policy Workers

Index