Language and Occupation Flashcards
Cameron - Call Centre Research
She concludes that such telephone interactions are subject to a worrying degree of managerial control, characterized by “characterization” and “surveillance”. Her research shows that many call centres give detailed specifications or even full scripts, for what the telephone agent should say, and that the telephone agents should say, and that the telephone calls are monitored and recorded, and used as a basis for appraisal.
This 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.
Drew and Heritage - “Institutional talk”
Workplace 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.
Goffman - Face Theory
Politeness theory- an individual has both positive and negative needs.
Koester - Interpersonal Relationships
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.
Swales - Discourse Communicates
He defined a discourse community as having members who:
Share a set of common goals.
Communicate 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.
Nelson - Business Language
Milroy found the stronger the social network, the greater the use of vernacular or non-standard linguistic features.
Apparent norms, like women’s preference for prestige forms, can be reversed by the need to express something more.
Brown and Levinson +/- Face Needs
Developed a theory of how the notion of face, which has to do with basic human needs and feeling of self worth, influences how people interact: Negative face and positive face.
Positive or negative face ca be threatened in various interactive situations by face-threatening acts.
