occupation Flashcards
occupational language
language on the surface acts as a part of the occupations semantic field
michael nelson
did research at manchester university on business english compared a corpus of business language with a more general corpus to investigate if there is such a thing as business language
michael nelson findings
found that there is a semantic field of business involving a limited numbers of semantic categories: terms to do with ‘business people, companies, institutions, money, business events, time, modes of communication, and lexis concerned with technology’.
michael nelson business speak
Nelson also highlighted that business English has little focus on:
The existence of weekends, personal issues, society, family, house and home, as well as personal activities.
john swales discourse communities (2011)
defined a discourse community as having members who:
1. Share a set of common goals;
2. Communicate internally, using and ‘owning’ one or more genres of communication;
3. Use specialist lexis and discourse;
4. Possess a required level of knowledge and skill to be considered eligible to participate in the community.
drew and heritage (1993)
suggest that members of a discourse community share inferential frameworks. (These consist of implicit ways of thinking, communicating and behaving)
They also suggest that there are strong hierarchies of power within organisations, with many
asymmetrical relationships marked by language use.
koester (2004)
Workers need to establish interpersonal relationships and have interactions that are not just about work-related procedures. Some employers may discourage talk that is not strictly work related, but Koester shows that being sociable and engaging in personal chat is an important part of effective working. As well as power, solidarity - the ability to connect with others - is an important dimension of the workplace.
