AO1 Flashcards
Brown and Levinson: Politeness strategies
Negative politeness strategies: Questioning, hedging, presenting disagreements as opinions
Positive politeness strategies: Juxtaposing criticism with compliments, using jokes, honourifics, tag questions, in-group jargon, slang, special discourse markers (please)
Occupational register - Levels of formality depending on occupation
- Intimate
- Casual
- Consultative
- Formal
- Frozen
Using the wrong register of language can be socially offensive
Acronyms and initialisms
May be used within field-specific lexis
Imperative verbs
Used by those with more power and a higher status in the workplace when commanding those who have a lower status e.g. “Do this..”
Interrogatives
Used by a superior to get the information they need in a transactional interaction
Used by someone inferior to appeal to a superiors negative face
Instrumental power
Using language to assert rules and make commands, used by those with higher status
Turn-taking
Tend to be more carefully followed than in casual conversation e.g. in a meeting
• If nominated for a turn, you’re obliged to take it
• One speaker at a time
• No gap or overlap
Jargon
Words & phrases linked to a particular field
Can be used to include/exclude people e.g. 2 doctors using jargon so the patient doesn’t understand what they’re saying
Code switching
Code-switching is common in work compared to socially
Modal verbs
Used to mitigate imperatives to not impose
E.g. “Could you”
Higher status : “You must” , “You will”
Terms of address
Higher levels of formality when referring to/speaking to someone with a higher status in the workplace e.g. Miss, Sir, Dr.
Expect asymmetrical terms of address e.g. in a school, children are referred to by their first name, teachers are referred to as “Miss” , “Sir”
Rhetoric
Used in the workplace to persuade
Business lexis
Field-specific lexis that may not exist outside the occupations semantic field
Higher levels of formality
