Language and Occupation

Question 1

Metropolitan police acronyms

Answer 1

ASU- air support unit

AFR- automatic fingerprint recognition

Question 2

US Navy occupationaljargon

Answer 2

Baboon ass- corned beef

Salty- experienced

Question 3

What is variant occupational language?

Answer 3

Sub-groups within individual companies using their own shared lexicon among the employees
E.g. UK’s mining industry - The National Coal Mining Museum for England

Question 4

Coded language

Answer 4

E.g. IC1 code for a white person in British police)

Need for shared knowledge and understanding by a particular occupation or professional group- ‘excluding outsiders’

Question 5

Howard Giles’s Accomodation Theory date

Answer 5

1973

Question 6

What is there in an occupational setting?

Answer 6

A clear sense of expectations regarding the language used in certain industries and the desire to create a sense of community among workers
May need to adopt a certain register if customers are involved

Question 7

Why does our language change at work?

Answer 7

We are taking on a different role and adopting a different persona while at work?
Society’s expectations that we all must adhere to in the workplace

Question 8

Drew & Heritage Institutional Talk

Answer 8

Goal orientation, turn-taking, professional lexis, allowance contributions

All serve a specific purpose to benefit the business
Helps employers work towards their goals
Not just chit-chat, aims and objectives, money to be made and targets to be met
Language used reflects that and everybody involved in business is working towards those goals to bring about positive progress & change

Question 9

Something to challenge the idea that occupation completely determines language/ Code switching

Answer 9

Outside of work, occupation may not impact language.
Code switching from public to private discourse, at home chatting to family, no reason for using occupational lexis
ONLY INFLUENTIAL ON YOUR SPEECH WHEN YOU ENGAGE IN WORKPLACE CONVOS

Question 10

Who backs this uo that it’s about who you are speaking to?

Answer 10

Howard Giles Accomodation
E.g. if you were a teacher would need to downward converge to make your language more accessible
Use language to facilitate the needs of others

It’s about the needs of others our language is and context

Question 11

IRF Model- initiation, feedback, response model

Answer 11

There should be a level of expertise within a discourse community e.g. teachers with a degree need qualification to be part of a community