Language And Occupation

Question 1

What is an acronym?

Answer 1

Pronounced as a word e.g. NASA

Question 2

What is an initialism?

Answer 2

Pronounced as individual letters e.g. OMG

Question 3

What is occupational jargon?

Answer 3

Words/ phrases used solely in a particular job or field

Question 4

US navy occupational jargon examples

Answer 4

• baboon ass = corned beef
• deck= floor
• used only by recruits using covert prestige to form identity

Question 5

What is legalese?

Answer 5

Language used in the law profession (exact and precise so no one can argue against it)

Question 6

What is occupational discourse?

Answer 6

Way of speaking/ writing specifically to members of the occupation

Question 7

What is a discourse structure?

Answer 7

A structure that runs across sentences, weaving them into a pattern to form a cohesive test

Question 8

“How to write an occupational discourse structure is part of the knowledge held by any BLANK”

Answer 8

Discourse community

Question 9

John Swales (2011)

Answer 9

A discourse community consists of members who…
- share a set of common goals
- communicate internally
- use specialist lexis and discourse
-possess a required level of knowledge and skill to be considered eligible to participate in the community

Question 10

Asymmetry of address

Answer 10

An imbalance of some form in address e.g. teachers calling students by first name but students calling teachers by last name

Question 11

Types of power (3)

Answer 11

• political = their occupation gives them power by default e.g. King, politicians, lawyers
• personal = the power you have is due to your occupation e.g. boss, headmaster
• social = power due to social variables e.g. class, gender, age

Question 12

Instrumental power

Answer 12

To make people do things or to make things happen e.g. legal or official documents and rules (legalese, teaching etc)

Question 13

Features of instrumental power (9)

Answer 13

• formal register
• specialist lexis
• imperative sentences
• conditionals
• declarative sentences
• faceless language (official job titles)
• avoidance of ambiguity
• mitigation
• modal auxiliaries

Question 14

Influential power

Answer 14

The power used to make us believe or support something
e.g. political speeches or media texts (advertising, social media influencers)

Question 15

Features of influential power

Answer 15

• embedded assumptions (you will want to read this)
• metaphorical references (a healthy economy)
• assertions (opinions stated as facts)
• Disjunct adverbs (adverb stating opinion)
• loaded language (words chosen to evoke strong negative/ positive connotations)

Question 16

Exerting power through conversation

Answer 16

• initiating or changing the subject of conversation
• interrupting
• holding the floor (dominating conversation)
• unresponsive
• imperatives
• closing the conversation

Question 17

Power asymmetry

Answer 17

Power participant and a less powerful participant (context dependant)

Question 18

Types of purpose (2)

Answer 18

• interactional speech = to build and maintain social relationships (e.g. small talk between colleagues)
• transactional speech = used to get something done (e.g. restaurant / shop / any type of service)

Question 19

What is a Repressive discourse strategy

Answer 19

An indirect way of maintaining power

Question 20

Examples of repressive discourse strategy

Answer 20

• avoiding any face threatening acts
• use positive politeness strategies
• strengthening social ties
• phatic / small talk
  -mitigated imperatives

Question 21

Oppressive discourse strategy

Answer 21

Openly stating you are in control through language choices

Question 22

Examples of oppressive discourse strategies

Answer 22

• imperatives
• holding the floor
• interruptions

Question 23

Brown and Levinson / Goffman

Answer 23

• saving face
• negative face (need to be independent)
• positive face (need to fit in)
• face threatening act (challenging someone else)

Question 24

Grices maxims

Answer 24

• quality
• quantity
• manner
• relevance

Question 25

Convergence in occupation

Answer 25

- people converge their language to make customers feel comfortable (therapist, doctor) - people with lower status may converge when talking to a superior in a firm - colleagues on similar status may converge to each other to build and maintain relationships, forming a discourse community

Question 26

Divergence in occupation

Answer 26

- a doctor may show divergence to show professionalism - a superior in a firm may use divergence when telling off a inferior to express authority - Spanish teacher may diverge by speaking in Spanish to immerse the English speaking students

Question 27

Drew and Heritage (1993)

Answer 27

- Members of a discourse community share inferential framework with each other, consisting of implict/ implied ways (sometimes explicit like rules) of communicating and behaving within an occupation. - there are strong hierarchies of power within organisations with many asymmetrical relationships

Question 28

Koester (2004)

Answer 28

- Emphasises how important phatic talk is to establish interpersonal relationships - phatic talk= language that is devoid of content but supports social relationships (small talk) - being sociable and engaging in phatic talk is key to effective working - phatic talk builds solidarity which is important in the workplace communications

Question 29

David Crystal (initialism and acronyms)

Answer 29

- Initialism and acronyms in the workplace are linguistically economic as they get work done efficiently and quickly - allows workers to complete goals and communicate efficiently, especially useful in high stress, low time occupations (doctors)

Question 30

Judith Baxter

Answer 30

- undertook an 18 month study into the speaking patterns of men and women at meetings in companies - doubling voicing is usually used by women to negotiate power relations in educational and professional contexts - used as a response to the threat of potential scrunity - Minimise direct confrontations or critism from male colleagues - women’s self criticism and apologetic style was seen as risky for leaders as it appears as weak and defensive and negative by all colleagues - double voicing can be turned into a sophisticated linguistic skill, showing subtlety in difficult situations

Question 31

What is single voiced discourse

Answer 31

Stating what you want, typically a male feature

Question 32

Features of double voiced discourse

Answer 32

- hedging strategies - politeness - humour - framing - meta comment - implied meaning - deference - apology - self mockery - understatement

Question 33

Examples of double voiced discourse

Answer 33

“I’m not an expert” “I’m so sorry to disturb you”

Question 34

Johnathan Meads Concept (6)

Answer 34

- slang is the expression of what we think - slang describes the actual not the ideal which deflates human perfection which is a good thing - slang is the poetry of the gutter as it is the expression of what we think (good) - jargon is delusional and inflates self esteem to impress superiors - jargon is conformist and evasive - jargon is used by people in power to patronise people not in power as a way of controlling people

Question 35

Micheal Nelson - business English

Answer 35

- compared a corpus of business language with the British National Corpus to investigate if business lexis existed - 50% of occupational language used business collocations (words that are often out together e.g. cash flow,interest rates, market share - people in different occupations will have different collocations due to semantic prosody (how aspects of the semantic profile can depend on the words they typically have as neighbours in natural language use)

Question 36

Non verbal power

Answer 36

Body language and facial features

Question 37

Disjunct adverb

Answer 37

Adverb to state opinion e.g. clearly, obviously