Language and Occupation

Question 1

Cameron

Answer 1

She concludes that such telephone interactions are subject to a worrying degree of managerial control, characterized by ‘codification’ and ‘surveillance’. Her research shows that many call centres give very detailed specifications, or even full scripts, for what the telephone agent should say, and that the telephone calls are monitored and recorded, and used as a basis for appraisal. This, she says, results in a standardization of interactions and a reduction of the autonomy of the call centre employees. She concludes that call centres are ‘communication factories’, with employees working in conditions similar to a production line.

Question 2

Brown and Levinson

Answer 2

Brown and Levinson developed a theory of how the notion of face, which has to do with basic human needs and feelings of self-worth, influences how people interact. Negative face and positive face.
Positive or negative face can be threatened in various interactive situations by what Brown and Levinson call face-threatening acts.

Question 3

Nelson

Answer 3

He found what he describes as ‘a semantic field of business’ involving limited number of semantic categories: terms to do with ‘business people, companies, institutions, money, business events, places of business, time, modes of communication and lexis concerned with technology’.

Question 4

Swales

Answer 4

He defined a discourse community as having members who: Share a set of common goals. Communicates internally, using and ‘owning’ one or more genres of communication. Use specialist lexis and discourse. Possess a required level of knowledge and skill to be considered eligible to participate in the community.

Question 5

Koester

Answer 5

The importance of phatic (conveying emotions rather than ideas) talk is in getting jobs done. Although some employers are represented as discouraging talk that is not strictly work-related, Koestler shows that being sociable and engaging in personal chat is an important aspect of effective working. As well as power, then, solidarity - the ability to connect with one’s workmates - is an important dimension in workplace communication.

Question 6

Goffman

Answer 6

Politeness theory - an individual has both positive and negative needs

Question 7

Drew and Heritage

Answer 7

Workplace or professional talk differs from ordinary conversation in a number of ways: Goal orientation, turn-taking rules or restrictions, allowable contributions, professional lexis, structure, asymmetry.
They suggest that members of a discourse community share inferential frameworks with each other, consisting of implicit way of thinking, communicating and behaving.

Question 8

Fairclough

Answer 8

NORMAN FAIRCLOUGH shows that many interactions are ‘unequal encounters’; that language choice is created and constrained by certain social ‘power’ situations or ‘power type’ discourse of kinds accepted as ‘normal’ for that kind of encounter, e.g. a manager/worker or doctor/patient conversation (or, in a text, the use of stereotypes or other ideological ideas).
Fairclough also shows how texts are persuasive because of the ideologies they rely upon for their effect, i.e. when the text makes ‘natural’ assumptions about its reader’s values and beliefs, about what is ‘normal’ or ‘common sense’.
Remember SYNTHETIC PERSONALISATION (only in advertising)