theories Flashcards
1
Q
what is a legalese theory
A
- david melinkoff
- “the law is a profession of words”
- it must be clear and unabigious
2
Q
what are the limitations of legalese
A
- difficult to understand
- gives lawyers power
3
Q
what is the drew and heritage theory
A
- ‘institutional talk’ differs from ordinary
- GOAL ORIENTATIONS- participants in a workplace convo focus on specific goals
- TURN TAKING RULES- in some proffessions, e.g a courtroom, there is specific turn taking operations
- ALLOWABLE CONTRABUTIONS- may be restricted to what you can say in some workplaces
- PROFESSIONAL LEXIS- the workplace context may reflect the lexical choices
- STRUCTURE- workplace interactions are structured
- ASYMETTRY- one speaker often has more power/knowledge
4
Q
what is the john swales theory
A
- a discourse community is a group of people who share a set of common goals
- they communicate internally, using and owning many genres of communication
- specialist language
- theres a required level of knowledge to be considered eligible to participate
5
Q
what is the royal navy and seaman theory
A
- known as ‘jackspeak’
- well defined and deeply rooted
- varies from standard English through its lexicon
- e. ‘FOD-POD’ which is compound within the language for the navy to speak efficiently
- some has entered our language, “let the cat out of the bag” was jackspeak for a whip to punish sailers
6
Q
what is the kim and elder theory
A
- looked at communication difficulties between Koreon and American pilotes and their collegues
- difficulties weren’t caused by bad language of the Koreon’s
- miscommunication was caused by native speakers not using agreed phrases, they often abbreviated
7
Q
what is Koester’s theory
A
- phatic talk
- looked at how important phatic talk was in getting a job done
- workers need to get an interpersonal relationship and have interactions not just based on work
- some employees think it is discouraging if not strictly work related, Koester shows it as sociable and engaging in personal chats is important in effective working
8
Q
what is the computer hackers and leet theory
A
- leet is a name given to a language variety of hackers
- they use an anti-language, a secret language
- it is exclusive, prodominanctly orthographical
- contains different ways of communication e.g ‘O’ could be written as ‘0’ ‘oh’ ‘o’ to avoid being tracked
9
Q
what is the medical jargon and slang theory
A
- medical jargon adopts more than one register
- may be technical, scientific which can be associated with overt prestige of the medical profession
- words are often latin or greek and they need to be inaccessible to others
10
Q
what is Deborah Cameron’s theory
A
- call centre convo’s
- found they are highly formulac and not spontaneous
- the questions asked, are in order decided by the software they are dealing with
- they need to elicit info and enter it into software in a particular order
- Cameron is critical of these as she is worried there is a strong degree of managerical control, sometimes giving a full script to follow
11
Q
what is the leena salminen theory
A
- business letters, emails etc
- believes business letters are more formal than emails because of the conventions
- found more variation in the language in emails because they are less constrained
12
Q
what is Andrew Wilson’s theory
A
- business language
- found there was a ‘semantic field’ for business’ that involved a limited number of sematic catagrories
- certain language didn’t appear in business language e.g weekends didnt
13
Q
what is c.levinson and brown theory
A
- politeness strategy
- HEDGING- avoid the topic
- PESSIMISSM
- INDICATING RESPECT
- APOLOGISING
- IMPERSONALISING
14
Q
What is robin lakoff’s theory
A
- politeness principle
- ensures you don’t cause offence
- don’t impose
- give options
- make the reader feel good
15
Q
what is erving Goffman’s theory
A
- face theory
- face= a persons self esteem and emotional needs
- face threatening act= an act that threatens face
- positive face= the need to feel liked and appreciated
- negative face= the need to have freedom and not feel imposed on
