Paper 1 - Occupation Theories

Question 1

Goffman 1955 - Face theory

Answer 1

• face = your public image, what you are like to other people
• positive face = overwhelming, involved in everything, interested, curious
• negative face = quiet, to do with themselves, not keen, rarely engaged
• face threatening act (FTA) = when someone does not consider the other persons needs/doesn’t read the situation
• face saving act (FSA) = face needs are met as other person’s face has been read so conversation isn’t face threatened

Question 2

Lakoff 1973 - Politeness principle

Answer 2

• three maxims usually rolled in interaction: don’t impose, give the receiver options and make the receiver feel good
• ## these are paramount in good interaction

Question 3

Grice 1975 - conversational maxims

Answer 3

• they’re the aspects of how we speak to each other
• 4 maxims: quality, quantity, manner, relevance
• quality = being truthful, do not give false or unsupported information
• quantity = say enough information but not too much
• manner = be clear, brief and orderly, avoid obscurity and ambiguity
• relevance = stay relevant to the topic and appropriate to discussion
• violate a maxim = break them covertly so that other people don’t realise (lie)
• flout = break them noticeably so it’s obvious to all concerned it has been broken

Question 4

Brown and Levinson 1987 - politeness

Answer 4

• positive politeness = you show people that they are liked and admired ~ complimenting, take an interest on their wellbeing and enjoy their company
• negative politeness = we avoid intruding others lives, taking care not to impose our presence or pry into their personal affairs ~ results in indirect, apologetic and respectful language
• brown and levinson studied which societies and culture have greater emphasis on negative or positive and an example is that Britain tends to stress on negative face

Question 5

Giles 1970s - accommodation theory

Answer 5

• convergence = we move our speech closer to that of the other person ~ decreasing social distance between people
• divergence = people’s speech styles move further apart
• downward convergence = RP speaker may tone down his accent when speaking to a working-class speaker as he feels it will set him apart
• upward convergence = man with a strong regional accent will eliminate regional features when speaking to an RP speaker
• research showed that status is an important influence on accommodation and that someone of subordinate status is more likely to converge to the superior speaker than vice versa

Question 6

Sinclair and Coulthard 1975 - IRF and adjacency pairs

Answer 6

• intiation, response, feedback (IRF) = asked a question (I), give an answer (R), person who asks question adds to answer (F) ~ also known as a three-part exchange
• adjacency pair = two part exchange following a predictable pattern

Question 7

Crystal - Initialisms and acronyms

Answer 7

• allow workers to complete goal;s and communicate efficiently, especially useful in high-stress and low-time occupations
• initialism = words are abbreviated but letters are pronounced individually eg USA
• acronym = words formed from the initial letters of existing words and pronounced as a word eg NATO and scuba

Question 8

Drew and Heritage 1993 - talk at work

Answer 8

• inferential framework where knowledge is built up over time and used in order to understand meanings that are implicit
• suggested that members of a discourse community will share the same inferential frameworks to make it easier to communicate ~ jargon/ field specific lexis
• in workplace conversations there is always somebody with more authority and/or knowledge who will have more control and power in a conversation