Language And Occupation

Question 1

What ia Judith Baxter’s theory and what is it called?

Answer 1

• double voiced discourse
• double voice discourse means to express a particular opinion and at the same time adjust the way they speak to take into account their counterparts views and concerns
  EXAMPLE:-“ it may not be the best idea, but…”
  “ I realise I’m no experts like the rest of you, but…”

Question 2

What is Michael Nelson’s theory and what is it called?

Answer 2

• business language
• this theory goes against the idea of using plain English in work
  he compared two different corpuses to find the common business language
• he found the language used in business is almost always positive, action orientated and non emotive
• in business verbs are essential in communication
• semantic associations/collocations, he looked at the word employee and found there was a collocation with employee and the benefits that employee is entitled to so the colocation was “employee holiday” and “employee benefits”

Question 3

What is instrumental power?

Answer 3

This is to make people do things or make things happen. Example of these can be legal or official documents and rules. Features of these texts are:
-Formal Register (Making the voice seem distant rather than friendly).
-Specialist & Latinate Lexis.
-Imperative sentences (You must do this …).
-Modal Auxiliaries; e.g. must, will, can (Express certainty and confidence in telling you what you can or cannot do)

Question 4

What is influential power?

Answer 4

This is the power to make us believe or support something. These are generally found in political or media texts. Features of this are:
-Embedded assumptions (You will want to read this …).
-Metaphoric references (“A healthy economy”, obviously economies don’t get sick!).
-Assertions (Opinions stated as facts)

Question 5

Brown & Levinson (1987)

Answer 5

According to Brown and Levinson, politeness strategies are developed in order to save ‘face’. Face refers to the respect an individual has for him or herself, and maintaining that self-esteem in public or private situations. Face Threatening Acts (FTA’s) are acts that infringe on the hearers’ need to maintain his/her self esteem.

Question 6

Politeness?

Answer 6

Bald on record politeness
Positive politeness
Negative politeness
Off record indirect politeness

Question 7

Paul Grice – conversational maxims

Answer 7

-Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false, do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
-Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as required, do not make your contribution more informative than required
-Relevance: Be relevant to the topic of conversation
-Manner: Avoid ambiguity, be brief, be orderly.

Question 8

Fairclough’s model (2001)

Answer 8

-According Fairclough, advertising exists as a prime example of ideology at work through building a relationship between the text producer and receiver.
-This is done by constructing a product image that in turn, helps to position the reader as a potential consumer.

Question 9

What is phatic talk? Koester?

Answer 9

-Language that is devoid of content but supports social relationships
-engaging in personal chat is an important aspect of effective working

Question 10

Drew and Heritage - inferential frameworks?

Answer 10

-there are different types of relationships in the workplace
-we share a way of communicating in the workplace

Question 11

John Swales - Discourse communications?

Answer 11

-defined community as having members who:
-Share a set of common goals
-use specialist lexis and discourse
- poses a required level of knowledge and skill to be considered eligible to participate in the community

Question 12

David Crystal - initialisms and acronyms?

Answer 12

Initialisms and acronyms in the workplace = linguistically economic -allows work to get done quickly - especially useful in high stress, low time occupations

Question 13

Howard Giles - accommodation theory

Answer 13

• Accommodation - we prefer accents which are most like our own
• Convergence - unintentionally using the same accent as the person you’re speaking to
• Divergence - when you try and differ your language to the person you’re speaking to
Convergence + divergence used in workplace to create quick spread of jargon form higher-ups. Also helps co-workers establish relationships with one another to help them effectively improve at their jobs together.