Occupation and Power

Question 1

Swales - Discourse communities

Answer 1

The idea that people acquire language features from specialist groups (occupation)
→ Occurs when somebody becomes a member of a professional community (occupation)
- Community uses specialist lexis because they work in the same field

Question 2

Sinclair & Coulthard - Theories

Answer 2

Initiation-Response-Feedback
Adjacency Triplet

Question 3

Sinclair & Coulthard - IRF

Answer 3

Initiation-Response-Feedback
a pattern of discussion between the teacher and learner
→teacher initiates, learner responds, teacher gives feedback

e.g.
Teacher: Does anyone know what 5 x 5 is?
Student: 25
Teacher: Well done!

Question 4

Sinclair & Coulthard - Adjacency Triplet

Answer 4

Initiation, response, feedback in discourse

• The response initiates a further utterance from the speaker initiating

Question 5

Drew & Heritage - Theory

Answer 5

Building knowledge over time
[Took inspiration from Swale’s coinage of ‘Discourse Communities’]

• Investigated inferential frameworks (implicit rules of language)
• Suggested that hierarchies of power within organisations produced asymmetrical relationships

Question 6

Drew & Heritage - Differences

Answer 6

Goal Orientation
Turn taking rules
Allowable Contributions
Professional Lexis, structure, asymmetry

Question 7

Drew & Heritage - Goal Orientation

Answer 7

People in the workplace usually focus on conversations with specific tasks / goals

Question 8

Drew & Heritage - Turn taking rules

Answer 8

• Some situations in the workplace have IMPLICIT or EXPLICIT turn taking rules.

EXPLICIT - specific guidelines (e.g. within a courtroom).
IMPLICIT - the accepted turn taking protocol in certain situations
- Natural opportunity to take the floor without explicitly being invited to do so.
→Interrogatives, attention-getting phrase, etc. (lexis which elicits a responses) can imply this.

Question 9

Drew & Heritage - Allowable Contributions

Answer 9

Workplaces had restrictions on which type of contributions are considered ‘allowable’ within the conversation.

Question 10

Drew & Heritage - Professional lexis / structure / asymmetry

Answer 10

LEXIS - Professional workplace conversation may require specialist lexis
STRUCTURE - Structure which fits conversations
ASYMMETRY - Workplace conversations are often asymmetrical with one speaker usually having more specialist knowledge or power than the other (e.g. boss & worker)

Question 11

Nelson - Theories

Answer 11

• Occupational language (as a whole) is restricted
• Business English is made up of dynamic verbs, non-emotive adjectives and is overall action-orientated
• The business world is ‘semantically divorced’ from emotion, the outside world, abstract concepts, family and society

Question 12

Occupation & Power Theorists

Answer 12

Nelson
Drew & Heritage
Sinclair & Coulthard
Swales