Occupational Theorists
Herbert & Straight 1989
In the workplace, compliments flow downwards from high-status to low-status workers
Tracy & Eisenberg
Edelsky
Criticism
Paul Grice
Eakins: •Found that in meetings men spoke for longer
Brown and Levinson (1978)
Paul Grice Cooperative Principle (1975)
When we communicate we subconsciously assume the other person will be conversationally cooperative.
These 4 maxims are:
Maxim of quantity
Maxim of quality
Maxim of relation
Maxim of manner
Face is defined as the public self image every adult portrays, which must be attended in interaction. There are two aspects of this face.
Negative face
Positive face
The desire to have freedom and not be imposed upon.
Face threatening act (FTA)
An act that deliberately threatens the face of others
Politeness theory
Politeness
Impoliteness
Defined as using the communicative strategies to create and maintain social harmony
Defined as engaging in aggressive face work, in particular context to cause social disruption. This can be done in various ways:
The speaker intentionally attacks face
Maxim of quality: we try to be truthful and give information which isn’t false or not supported by evidence
Maxim of relation: we try to say things which are pertinent to the discussion
Maxim of quantity: we try to be as informative as we can, giving no more than the sufficient information needed
Maxim of manner: we try to be as clear and as brief as we possibly can, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity
When role-playing delivering criticism to a coworker about errors in a business letter, men showed more concern for the feelings of the person they were criticising when in the subordinate role, while women showed more concern when in the superior role
The listener perceives a face attack
Both of the above
The desire to be appreciated and liked
Positive politeness
Negative politeness
Positive impoliteness
Negative impoliteness
Showing you value someone so minimizing the threat to positive face
Not impending on someone so minimizing the threat to negative face
Attacking the positive face need by not showing you value someone
Attacking the positive face need by imposing on someone e.g. threats, orders
Studied a university faculty meeting and found that:
- In structured segments of the meeting, men took more and longer turns
- In free-for-all segments, men and women talked equally
Studied many factors in order to analyse compliments in the workplace
They propose that "deflecting" or rejecting compliments negates the implication that the addressee is superior to the speaker in anyway
Koester: PHATIC TALK ALMUT KOESTER (2004) Suggests phatic talk is an important part of getting jobs done, allowing employees to support each other in their tasks. Workers need to build interpersonal relationships and not just discuss work-related procedures. Being sociable is an important part of effective working ( contrary to many employers' views). Solidarity is an important factor in workplace communication.
Herring (1992)
Workplace email communication
Hornyak (1994)
Topic maintenance
Eakins and Eakins (1976)
University meetings
Janet Holmes (2009)
Language in the workplace:
Leadership - current theories of leadership
Importance of assertiveness, authority and relational skills
“Assertiveness and authority” are associated with masculine styles of management
“Well-honed relational skills” associated with more feminine interactional management styles
Negotiation - female managers more likely to negotiate consensus than males. Males ‘plow through the agenda” whereas women try to ‘consider’ all viewpoints
Drew and Heritage (1993)
Inferential framework
John Swales (2011)
Speech community vs. discourse community
Howard Giles
Accommodation theory
Convergence
Divergence
This is where speakers will try to make their language resemble, and be more in line with, that of their audience to improve communication
This is where speakers attempt to use language to distance and distinguish themselves from others
An example is when a manager will talk in a similar way to their employees in hopes of motivating them by being friendly with them.
Alternatively if the manager aims to show that they are above their employees they will diverge their language to distance themselves
Swales defines a Speech Community as a group of people with a natural shared knowledge of the rules that govern speech. A speech community is built through birth, accident, or adoption.
Swales defines a Discourse Community as having members who share a common set of goals. They communicate internally through the use of discourse and specialist lexis. Members of this community must possess a required level of knowledgeable skills to be considered eligible to participate in the community.
STUDY OF WORKPLACE TALK
Identified differences between everyday conversation and workplace talk. Workplace talk is more likely to contain:
Goal orientation
Turn taking
Professional lexis
Allowable contributions
Structure
Asymmetry
Analysed the staff members of American Universities during their meetings.
In seven University Faculty meetings, the men spoke for longer than the women, despite them occupying the same level of position.
The men’s turns ranged from 11-17 seconds whereas the women’s ranged from 3-10 seconds.
Paul Grice Cooperative Principle (1975)
Breaking the maxims:
We can violate them - break them covertly so others don’t know (breaking maxim of quality = lying, breaking maxim of quantity = not telling the whole truth)
We can flout them - break them flagrantly so others know (speaker intends for implacature (extra meaning) to be inferred e.g saying you’re happy in an unhappy manner). Ergo ‘sentence meaning’ and ‘utterer’s meaning’
The shift from work talk to personal talk is always initiated by the highest ranking person in the room.
Superiors tend to initiate and delimit the small talk, as well as defining what subject matters are acceptable subjects for conversation.
Co-workers/ people at the same level initiate small talk equally.
Analysed the Linguistic Society of America’s group emails discussions.
The distribution list was made up of just over 50% women and just under 50% men.
However, 30 men contributed to the group discussion, whereas only 5 women contributed
On average, men’s messages were twice as long as women’s.
Women tended to use personal voice such as ‘I am intrigued by your comment’
Men adopted a more assertive tone such as ‘It is obvious that’