occupational lang Flashcards
jargon
•specialist vocab of an occupation
•positive or negative
•ways of creating power & superiority
•can exclude- obstacles for understanding
•unnecessarily complex
•abstract vocab
•euphemism
•create a community- same knowledge & understanding
•impact work
•corporate jargon
legalese
•word for the language of the law
•associated with traditional styles of legal writing
•part of a specialised discourse of lawyer communication
•pejorative term
•needs to be clear and unambiguous
•wordiness & over complicated syntax & high register- led to this by preoccupation with preciseness
•preoccupation with clarity can often make it difficult to understand, especially for general public
•only those who are trained in law can read it- can change it & manipulate
•creates a power imbalance
•put trust & faith into them
John Swales discourse community
•members who;
-share set of common goals
-communicating internally using/owning one or more genres of education
-specialist lexis & discourse
-required levels to f knowledge & skills to be considered eligible in this convo
•not all members use fixed template, discourses are constantly changing
teacher student discourse structure (IRF)
•initial response feedback
•pattern of discussion between the teacher & learner- the teacher initiates, the learner responds, the teacher gives feedback
•this approach has been criticised as being more about the learner saying what the teacher wants rather than really communicating
Koester phatic talk
•small talk/communication which serves to establish or maintain social relationships rather than impart information
•establishes impersonal relationships
•interactions that are not work related
•being sociable & engaging creates solidarity & rapport
Giles accommodation theory
•interested in why we change the way we speak to accommodate other people
•can occur through convergence- speaker adapts lang to resemble language of those who they are talking to. usually bc of underlying psychological motivations of wanting to be approved/ liked
•divergence- adapts to sound less like the person they are talking to- disapproval of the addressee & distinguish themselves as different
Drew & Heritage institutional talk
•how a persons language is different at work & other contexts
•three dimensions;
-goal orientated- works towards a final goal related to work place, person who initiates usually introduces goal, never really occurs in casual convo when talk is more international and less transactional
-special & particular constraints- limits to what is acceptable, constraints as to how workers should conduct themselves in & out of the workplace
-inferential procedures- lang used to describe occupational processes, type of occ jargon, infer meaning based on occupational context e.g target, goal
power in discourse
•types of power- political, military, authority, social, religious
•given through authority •demonstrated in a number of ways;
-topic control
-turn-taking
-sentence function
-modal verbs
-specialist lang/lexis
-mean length utterance
•power asymmetry- is there an imbalance of power
•face & politeness theory
Waering different types of power
•instrumental- maintain & enforce authority/ gain complicity
•influential- influence & persuade others to do something
•political- politicians, police
•personal- occupation/ role e.g professional status of teacher/manager
•social- class, gender, ethnicity, age
fairclough
•critical discourse analysis- interdisciplinary approach used to analyse the role language plays in the construction of knowledge, ideology & power- discourse as a form of social action
•how societal power relations are established & reinforced through language
-power in spoken discourse- unequal encounters between a powerful participant who imposes conversational constraints of less powerful participants
-power within discourse- power exercised by the choice of language e.g formal register such as elevated synonym choice
-power behind discourse- producers of the text have an external power behind the linguistic features e.g ideologies/political thus lexical choices reflect a wider power of play
-synthetic personalisation- second person pronouns create relationship between text producer & receiver; constructs a product image appealing to the lifestyle of a potential consumer, drawing in the members resources of cultural/cognitive models
•analysis of power can be split into two disciplines;
-power in discourse (analysing lexicon, ideologies & lang structure used to create power)
-behind discourse (analysing the sociological and ideological reasons behind who is asserting power)
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
•inception in 1920s & 30s
•caused controversy and spawned research in a variety of disciplines- linguistic, psychology, education etc
•brought attention to the relationship between language, thought & culture
•theory of lang determinism- lang you speak determines the way you will interpret the world
•linguistic relativism- lang influences our thoughts about the real world
•Edward Sapir- studied the research of Wilhelm Von Humboldt- “man lives in the world about him principally, indeed exclusively, as language presents to him”- clearly a connection between language and thought
