language and occupation Flashcards
What is occupational language?
the technical words and phrases/jargon that are specific to a particular occupation because everyday language doesn’t contain appropriate words t describe all the activities
Why use jargon?
- efficiency and speed
- exclusion and discretion
- mutual understanding
- precision
- convergence
- discourse communities
- associations of prestige, complexity, sophistication and competence
What are some syntax and discourse behaviors of teachers?
- use of frequent interrogatives to elicit responses
- polite requests and orders using modal auxiliary verbs and imperatives
- 3 part exchanges to elicit information from students then provide feedback
What are some phonological behaviors of teachers?
- intonation to ask questions
- emphatic stress to emphasise importance of certain words
What are some examples of medical jargon?
- contusion = a bruise
- HR = heart rates
- lytes = electrolytes
- Rx = prescription
- stat = ASAP
John Swales and discourse communities
there are 6 characterisics of discourse communities
1. broadly agreed set of common public goals
2. mechanisms of intercommunication among its members e.g. emails, meetings
3. provides information and feedback
4. possess one or more genres in communicative furtherance i.e. makes use of multiple methods to achieve aims and suit needs e.g. use of social media
5. has acquired specific lexis
6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and expertise
Are discourse communities harmful or helpful?
- the JAMA Network Open found that the language doctors often use does not translate easily into everyday English
- jargon can be more time-consuming due to unclear meanings behind many of these terms
- 50% find jargon annoying
- 90% of people believe business jargon is used by people who want to ‘cover up the fact that they have no idea what they’re doing’
What is phatic talk?
a language interaction known as small talk
What is banter?
a category of phatic communication and can be described as lighthearted, playful, and often good-natured teasing between individuals
What are different types of phatic communication?
- starting a conversation
- breaking a silence
- making small talk
- gossiping
- keeping a conversation going
- expressing solidarity
- creating harmony or comfort
- expressing empathy, friendship, respect or politeness
What is transactional talk?
interactions that have a purpose such as completing a task of reaching a work-specific goal - the most commonly seen type of communication
What were the aims of Koester(2004) study?
shorter units of phatic talk occurring in workplace conversations to see if there were patterns in the type of phatic talk used
What was the methodology Koester used?
- collected data from 3 types of workplace offices in the UK and the USA - university offices, editorial offices in publishing and editorial offices outside of publishing
- collected 30 hours of data. transcribed into 66 conversations
What were Koester’s findings?
- non-transactional conversations= revolved around office gossip, small talk and banter
- phatic communion= refers to the small talk occurring at the beginning or end of a transactional interaction is used to create a sense that the participants value the social relationship they have and are not just using each other for the task at hand
- relational episodes = occurrences of small talk, office gossip and banter during a transactional interaction
What is institutional talk?
the communication occurring in institutional contexts such as workplaces, schools, courts, hospitals and governmental bodies
- it has specific characteristics that distinguish it from everyday conversation, including: pre-allocation of roles,constraint on what could be said, use of specialised lexicon and goal-oriented interactions
What was the methodology of Drew and Heritge’s institutional talk study?
they collated and summarised multiple pieces of research into their theory of institutional talk, concluding that it has 6 characteristics
What are the six characteristics of institutional talk?
- goal orientation
- turn-taking rules
- allowable contributions
- professional lexis
- structure
- asymmetry
What is goal-orientation in institutional talk?
the participants share common goals
What is turn-taking rules in institutional talk?
adhering to turn-taking rules shows a person’s general politeness and good manners, showing respect for their interlocutor, more distinct rules that consider social hierarchy
What are allowable contributions in institutional talk?
there are constraints on what someone may contribute to an institutional interaction - a contribution may be allowable for someone of a high rank but not for someone else
- can be linked to Herbert and Straight (1989)
What is professional lexis in institutional talk?
in each institutional setting, there is a corresponding semantic field of specific and frequently used lexis
- can be linked to Michael Nelson’s business lexis theory
What is structure in institutional talk?
different institutional settings each have different conventions for how communication is structured
What is asymmetry in institutional talk?
there are 2 aspects of asymmetry (power and a person’s role)
- power can cause asymmetry in a workplace setting as the person with the most knowledge or highest rank is allowed to talk first
- links to Hornyak’s theory
Brown and Levinson (1987)
There are 2 main types of politeness:
1. one that appeals to the listener’s positive face
2. one that appeals to the listener’s negative face
They also outline 4 types of politeness strategies:
1. baldness on record - getting straight to the point
2. negative politeness - avoiding feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment
3. positive politeness - finding common ground
4. not being noted
Evaluation of Brown and Levinson
- their list of ‘politeness’ strategies mainly includes certain types of interactions that are very limited
Cameron (2000) - Call center conversations
- looked at telephone conversations in a call centre and noticed that they were highly formulaic rather than spontaneous
- concluded that these conversations were subject to a worrying degree of managerial control, characterised by codification and surveillance
Evaluation of Cameron
- this study is not inclusive, as it only focuses on Scotland and no other parts of the world
- might be argued that more extensive study is needed to draw further conclusions about the discourse communication of call centres
Coulthard and Sinclair (1975) - Initiation, Response and Feedback
- model to analyse the discourse that took place in a classroom between the teacher and the student, most followed the same pattern:
- initiation of discourse by the teacher
- response from the student
- feedback from the teacher
- they identified model ranks: acts, moves, exchanges and transactions
Evaluation of Coulthard and Sinclair
- Francis and Hunston (1992) = highlighted that their model fails to recognise the presence or importance of paralinguistic features in discourse
Fairclough (2001) - textual and contextual aspects of power
- power in discourse = refers to power relations that are enacted, performed, or negotiated in discourses
- power behind discourse = points to the social and ideological setup that shapes and influences discourses
Evaluation of Fairclough
- theory challenges Howard Giles’ ‘accommodation theory’
Goffman (1955) - face theory
- negative face = a universal need to feel independent and not be imposed upon
- positive face = a universal human need to feel valued and appreciated
- face threatening act = an act that threatens someone’s positive or negative face needs
- politeness strategies = distinctive ways in which speakers can choose to speak to avoid threatening face
Evaluation of Goffman
- it invokes a Western-centric bias and it has been suggested that ‘different cultural backgrounds may lead to different productions of the level of politeness’
Herbert and Straight (1989) - compliments
- people of higher authority were more likely to give compliments to those of lower authority than the other way around
- compliments are used as a form of praise from someone higher to someone of a lower rank
Evaluation of Herbert and Straight
- giving compliments can be a subconscious thing
- doesn’t consider individual differences as some people will just be more likely to give compliments than others, regardless of position in the workplace
Hornyak (1994) - professional hierarchy
- the shift from work talk to social/personal talk follows a pattern = it is always initiated by the highest ranking person in the room
- if a lower ranking person in the room were to initiate personal chat, they may be viewed as being unfocused and not dedicated to the job
Evaluation of Hornyak
- reductionist = some people will just be more likely to start a chat than others, regardless of their position in the workplace
Howard Giles (1973) - Accommodation theory
- individuals adjust their speech to create, maintain or decrease social bonds
- convergence = when individuals change their speech to sound like their interlocutor
Evaluation of Howard Giles
- fails to investigate the effect of the workplace dynamic effecting the language and dialect we use
+ relates to all types of communication
Kim and Elder (2009) - Korean pilots
- communication difficulties are caused by a lack of English language proficiency, excessive use of plain language, rapid rate of speech and accents that deviate from standard English
- they looked at the communication difficulties experienced by Korean pilots when communicating with American colleagues
Evaluation of Kim and Elder
- methodology isn’t generalisable
Nelson (2000) - business language
- compared the corpora of business English with the more generic English corpora and found that business lexis exists
- people were found to avoid personal topics in the business environment
Evaluation of Nelson
- cannot be applied beyond the workplace
Lakoff (2011) - politeness principles
- don’t impose
- give options
- make your reciever feel good
Evaluation of Lakoff
+ can be applied beyond the workplace in any discourse/conversation
Louhiala-Saminen (1999) - business letters, faxes and emails
examined intertextuality and interdiscursivity in email exchanges in Malaysia:
- intertextuality = observed how and why the discourse community repeatedly used certain forms to respond to reoccurring rhetorical situations
- interdiscursivity = examined how and why the employees appropriated the generic resources of a genre to create another
- business letters tended to be more formal than emails or faxes
Evaluation of Louhiala-Salminen
- temporal validity = years later emails have become more informal, and people don’t necessarily send letters anymore as most of this is conducted online
Wareing (1999) - three types of power
- political power = the power held by people in authority
- personal power = the power based on an individual’s occupation/role in society
- social group power = power held by a group of people due to certain social factors
Wareing also suggests that these types of power can be divided into instrumental power and influential power
Evaluation of Wareing
- doesn’t consider the fact that not all conversations are goal-oriented and not everyone is trying to gain power in conversations
What are general functions of language in occupational contexts?
- communicating information
- requesting help
- confirming arrangements
- instructing employees/colleagues to do something
- making things happen
- building productive working relationships
Adam Fox (2002)
compiled a list of medical slang:
- CTD - circling the drain
- code brown - incontinence related emergency
- house red - blood
- there’s a grim kind of humour involved which supports the idea of a sociolect helping to form kind of solidarity between medical workers
David Mellinkoff (1963) - legalese
- accused lawyers of contagious verbosity
- the gradual assimilation of the Normans + the english resulted in many redundancies and repetitions in legal language
What is ‘jackspeak’?
the sociolect of the Royal Navy e.g. cracking on, batten down the hatches, all at sea
- language that we thought were to exclude have become popular idioms in our everyday vernacular
What is an anti-language?
- used to explain the forms of sociolects that arised to support subcultures that seek some covert identity
What are Halliday’s (1976) 9 features of anti-language?
- the language of an anti-society
- word lists
- mostly formed by relexicalising existing vocabulary
- a different lexicon but same grammar as main society
- communicate meanings that are inaccessible to a non-user
- fundamental part of their identity
- conversation is the main form of communication
- a vehicle of resocialisation
- continuity and exchange between language and anti-language
What is ‘leet’?
- an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used on the internet
- highly specialised and have often been associated with computer experts and hackers
What is polari?
- was spoken to skirt the UK’s strict anti-homosexuality laws
- made up of Italianate phrases, rhyming slang and jargon terms
e.g. dolly = beautiful, bevvy = drink, naff = no good
