Workplace Discourse (Continuum Discourse)

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Author: Almut Koester

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Workplace Discourse

Continuum Discourse Series Series Editor: Professor Ken Hyland, Institute of Education, University of London. Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in the humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways language mediates and shapes our interactions with each other and with the social, political and cultural formations of our society. The Continuum Discourse Series aims to capture the fast-developing interest in discourse to provide students, new and experienced teachers and researchers in applied linguistics, ELT and English language with an essential bookshelf. Each book deals with a core topic in discourse studies to give an in-depth, structured and readable introduction to an aspect of the way language is used in real life. Other titles in the series: Academic Discourse Ken Hyland Discourse Analysis: An Introduction Brian Paltridge Media Discourse Joanna Thornborrow Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing Ken Hyland Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis Paul Baker Professional Discourse Britt-Louise Gunnarsson School Discourse: Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling Frances Christie and Beverly Derewianka

Workplace Discourse

Almut Koester

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704, New York London SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Almut Koester 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978–1-8470–6115-7 (Hardcover) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

To my husband, Terry Pritchard, for everything

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Contents

Acknowledgements Notes on Data and Transcription

ix xi

Part I: Describing Workplace Discourse 1. What is Workplace Discourse? 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Workplace, institutional, professional and business discourse 1.3 Communities of practice and discourse communities 1.4 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse 1.5 Where does workplace discourse occur? 1.6 Workplace discourse in a changing world 1.7 Outline of the book

3 3 5 7 9 12 16 16

2. Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in Workplace Discourse 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Recurring or widespread genres in the workplace 2.3 The use of genres within organizations 2.4 Conclusion

18 18 23 36 43

3. What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse? 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Overview of relevant corpora 3.3 Lexico-grammar of the workplace 3.4 Pragmatic features 3.5 Corpus and genre 3.6 Discussion and conclusion

45 45 45 47 57 61 66

4. Working Together and Getting People to Do Things: Directives, Procedural Discourse and Training 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Previous studies of directives 4.3 A corpus-informed study of procedural workplace discourse 4.4 Directives in transactional and collaborative talk

70 70 71 74 76

Contents

viii

4.5 Solidarity and involvement strategies in procedural talk involving training 4.6 Training, apprenticeship and workplace learning 4.7 Conclusion

84 90 93

Part II: Issues and Applications in Workplace Discourse 5. Relationships at Work: Relational Talk and Humour 5.1 Introduction 5.2 ‘Work’ done through relational talk 5.3 The role of relational talk within a community of practice 5.4 Humour 5.5 Humour and workplace culture 5.6 Humour in the ABOT Corpus 5.7 Conclusion 6. Communicating across Cultures: English as an International Language of Work 6.1 Introduction 6.2 English as a lingua franca 6.3 English as an international language in business 6.4 Relational language in lingua franca workplace and business interactions 6.5 English in the multi-ethnic workplace 6.6 Discussion and conclusion

97 97 99 103 108 109 111 120

122 122 123 125 131 139 141

7. Applying Research: Teaching Workplace Discourse 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Research-based consultancy 7.3 Training and teaching 7.4 Using insights from research for teaching and teacher training 7.5 Conclusion

145 145 145 146 149 159

Appendix I: Adhesive Labels Appendix II: Sample Activities Notes References Index

161 163 167 171 187

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the people who have helped me with the work that has gone into this book. First of all, my fellow researcher, Mike Handford, for helping me along the way, and providing inspiration and advice on all aspects of this undertaking. I am also very indebted to those who have read and commented on parts of the manuscript: Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Janet Holmes, Meredith Mara, Ian McMaster, Patricia Pullin and Celia Roberts. Many people have helped me with corpora, references and data; and my thanks goes to Svenja Adolphs, Mirjaliisa Charles, Winnie Cheng, Ulla Connor, Anne Fiddes, Alan Firth, Ya-Taui (Ellen) Hsueh, Marie-Luise Pitzl, Peter Medway, Andreas Müller, Mike Nelson and Pamela Rogerson-Revell. I am grateful to TESOL for the opportunity to present and publish many of the ideas that went into Chapter 7. Access to the following corpora has been extremely useful for research that has gone into this book, and I would like to express my appreciation to the corpus holders for making these available: z Mike Nelson’s Business English Lexis Site z Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE) in the Research Centre for

Professional Communication in English, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University z Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English/VOICE Project at the University of Vienna My mentor, Michael McCarthy, has continued to provide inspiration for my research. I am also very grateful to my editors, Colleen Coalter, Ken Hyland and Gurdeep Mattu for their patience and understanding throughout this project. I would also like to thank my parents, Helmut and Gisela Koester, for their support and encouragement. I owe my greatest debt to my husband, Terry Pritchard, without whom this book could not possibly have been written. I am grateful for permission to reproduce data samples from the following sources: Example 2.1 reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press from: McCarthy, M. (1998), Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Extract from p. 44 (data from the Cambridge International Corpus).

x

Acknowledgements

Example 2.3 reproduced by permission of Mouton de Gruyter from: CookGumperz, J. and Messerman, L. (1999), ‘Local identities and institutional practices: Constructing the record of professional collaboration’, in Sarangi and Roberts, pp. 145–181. Extract from pp. 159–60. Example 2.8 reproduced by permission of the author from: Medway, P. (1996), ‘Virtual and material buildings’, Written Communication 13 (4), 473–514. Extract from p. 484. Table 3.1 reproduced by permission of the author and Cambridge University Press from: Handford, M. (2007), ‘The Genre of the business meeting: A Corpus-based study. unpublished PhD thesis’, University of Nottingham, School of English Studies, Figure 3.1 reproduced by permission of the author from: Nelson 2000, Chapter 8, 8.2.12, available from Mike Nelson’s Business English Lexis Site, http://users.utu.fi/micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm. Example 3.6 reproduced by permission of the author from: Cheng, W. (2004), ‘//Ædid you TOOK//Ê from the miniBAR//: What is the practical relevance of a corpus-driven language study to practioners in Hong Kong’s hotel industry?’ In U. Connor and T. Upton (eds), 141–166. Extract from p. 150. Example 3.7 reproduced by permission of Svenja Adolphs from: Adolphs, S., Brown, B., Carter, R., Crawford, C. and Sahota, O. (2004), ‘Applying corpus linguistics in a health care context’, Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (1), 9–28. Extract from p. 19. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 reproduced by permission of the author from: Connor, U. (1999), ‘How like you our fish?’ Accommodation in international business correspondence’ in Hewings, M. and Nickerson, C. (eds.) Business English: Research into Practice, Harlow: Longman, pp. 115–128, extracts on pp. 123 and 126. Example 6.1 reproduced by permission of the author from: Pitzl, M.-L. (2005), ‘Non-understanding in English as a lingua franca: Examples from a business context’. Vienna English Working PaperS, 14/2, 50–71. (Available at http:// www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/Views0502mlp.pdf) Example 6.3 reproduced by permission of the author from: RogersonRevell, P. (2008). ‘Participation and performance in international business meetings,’ English for Specific Purposes 27, 338–360. Extract from p. 354. Example 6.4 reproduced by permission of the author from: Firth, A. (1996), The discursive accomplishment of normality: On ‘lingua franca’ English and conversation analysis’, Journal of Pragmatics 26, 237–259. Extract from p. 254. Example 6.5 reproduced by permission of Celia Roberts from: Roberts, C. and Campbell, S. (2006), ‘Talk on trial: Job interviews, language and ethnicity’. Department for Work and Pensions Research Report No. 344. Leeds: Corporate Document Services. Extract on p. 49.

Notes on Data and Transcription

Data Unless otherwise stated, all extracts in the book are the author’s own data.

Transcription For purposes of anonymity, all speakers, company names and some products are identified by pseudonyms in the transcripts. The following transcription conventions were used: , ? . ! ... – italics : :: → ↑ ↓ () // /?/ ⎣

slightly rising in intonation at end of tone unit; high rising intonation at end of tone unit; falling intonation at end of tone unit; animated intonation; noticeable pause or break within a turn of less than 1 second; sound abruptly cut off, e.g. false start; emphatic stress; colon following vowel indicates elongated vowel sound; extra colon indicates longer elongation; speaker's turn continues without interruption; A step up in pitch (higher key1); A shift down in pitch (lower key); parentheses around tone units spoken with ‘sotto voce’ (low key intonation); words between slashes show uncertain transcription; indicates inaudible utterances: one ? for each syllable; overlapping or simultaneous speech;

xii

⎣⎦ = []

[. . .]

.hh hhh t°

Notes on Data and Transcription words in these brackets are utterances interjected by a speakers within another speaker’s turn; latching: no perceptible inter-turn pause; words in square brackets indicate non-linguistic information, e.g. pauses of 1 second or longer (the number of seconds is indicated), speakers’ gestures or actions; indicates that the rest of the speaker’s turn has been ellipted, or that the extract starts in the middle of a speaker turn, or that some turns have been omitted; inhalation (intake of breath); aspiration (releasing of breath); tongue click;

‘Heheheh’ indicates laughter, for each syllable laughed a ‘heh’ is transcribed.

Part I

Describing Workplace Discourse


Chapter 1

What is Workplace Discourse?

This book sets out to answer the following questions: z z z z z

What is workplace discourse? What are the distinctive characteristics of workplace discourse? What role does discourse play in the activities that people carry out at work? What role does discourse play in workplace relationships? How do people communicate across cultures at work?

This chapter addresses the first question (what is workplace discourse?), and discusses how the book attempts to answer the other questions.

1.1 Introduction This book is about spoken or written interaction occurring in a workplace setting. Workplace discourse involves interactions occurring across a whole range of occupational settings, from factories to offices, hospitals to government offices, private businesses to non-profit organizations. Before we explore the question of what workplace discourse is in more detail, let us look at a ‘typical’ example. The following interaction shown in example 1.1 is from a small private firm based in a mid-western city in the United States of America. Here Mike, who is one of the managers, has a meeting with his boss, Chris, to discuss his KRA’s (‘Key Responsibility Areas’) – a method of evaluating his performance. Mike has already drawn up a proposal which he discusses in this meeting. Example 1.1 (1) Mike Twelve o’clock already [as he’s walking in] (2) Chris Isn’t it amazing? [Mike sits down] (3) Mike Okay. [2] You– you want me to make a log. To– to– it’ll measure . . . how well I’m doing/pre-counting. Recounts/an’ getting/the list out to /??/ how do you want that to show up over here. [4] (4) Chris As an average . . . number of hours . . . between . . . uh:m . . . request and delivery.

4

Workplace Discourse

This brief extract from an interaction between co-workers illustrates some of the key distinguishing features of workplace discourse compared to discourse occurring in other settings, such as social or intimate ones. In their seminal study of Talk at Work, Drew and Heritage (1992) propose a range of criteria which distinguish ‘institutional talk’ from ordinary conversation, which is usually considered the neutral benchmark for comparison. The most significant of these is ‘goal orientation’: ‘an orientation by at least one of the participants to some core goal, task or identity . . . conventionally associated with the institution’ (ibid., p. 22). Other distinguishing features of institutional or workplace discourse are ‘constraints on allowable contributions’, that is what it is considered appropriate to say or write in the workplace setting, and the existence of special ‘inferential frameworks’, which refers to ways of interpreting discourse that are particular to the institutional or workplace setting (ibid., pp. 21–25).1 Workplace interactions are also frequently asymmetrical (Heritage 1997), that is there may be differences in the distribution of institutional power or expert knowledge between the participants. Thus in interactions between professionals and lay people (e.g. doctors and patients) or managers and subordinates, there is a clear imbalance in knowledge and/ or power between the participants. Nevertheless, as we shall see, roles and identities, as they are manifested through discourse, are not fixed and immutable, but subject to negotiation. Each of these distinguishing characteristics of workplace (or ‘institutional’ talk) can be can be found in example 1.1. The meeting is goal-oriented, as is clearly signalled by Mike in the way he frames the purpose of the meeting as following up on a directive from Chris: (3) Mike Okay. [2] You– you want me to make a log. To– to– it’ll measure . . . how well I’m doing/pre-counting. Recounts/an’ getting/the list out to /??/ how do you want that to show up over here. In doing this, he also invokes their respective institutional roles as boss and subordinate, projecting their relationship in this encounter as an asymmetrical one. There is an expectation that the discussion in this meeting will stay focused on the stated purpose of agreeing on the method of evaluation, which constitutes constraints on what kinds of contributions are allowable. The participants will also be drawing on inferential frameworks relating to their understanding of what such an evaluation process involves, which will influence their interpretation of what is said. The fact that they have an acronym (KRA, which stands for ‘Key Responsibility Areas’) to refer to this procedure is an indication that it is an established one, and that they do share some kind of common understanding of it. Lexical choice is another way in which participants orient to the institutional context, and the use of this acronym is a good illustration of such an orientation (Drew and Heritage 1992, Heritage 1997).


5

But despite the clear goal-orientation of this encounter, there is nevertheless a brief phatic exchange at the beginning of the meeting which is unrelated to the task goal – a comment on how quickly the morning has gone: (1) Mike Twelve o’clock already [as he’s walking in] (2) Chris Isn’t it amazing? Despite being focused on accomplishing a particular workplace task, Mike and Chris nevertheless do some ‘relationship work’, however passing and cursory, through this phatic exchange. Therefore, although workplace discourse is primarily about getting things done, relationship-building is also a key concern for people who work together. This point is returned to later in this chapter, and is a recurring theme throughout this book.

1.2 Workplace, institutional, professional and business discourse A number of different terms are used to talk about the types of interaction and uses of language that are described in this book. In addition to ‘workplace discourse’, other terms used include ‘institutional discourse’, ‘professional discourse’ and ‘business discourse’. I discuss each of these terms in turn and try to ascertain whether they all describe the same thing, or whether they refer to different kinds of discourse. The terms ‘workplace discourse’ and ‘institutional discourse’ are usually more general, and are often used interchangeably in the literature. For example, Drew and Heritage (1992, p. 3) describe ‘institutional talk’ as ‘task-related’, involving ‘at least one participant who represents a formal organization’, which can also be said of workplace discourse. ‘Business discourse’ and ‘professional discourse’, on the other hand, would seem to be more specific. While the term ‘workplace discourse’ describes interactions occurring across all kinds of occupational settings, only some of these involve business discourse. Business discourse can be considered a specific kind of workplace discourse occurring in the commercial sector. Bargiela-Chiappini et al. (2007, p. 3) define business discourse as ‘social action in business contexts’, specifying that ‘business discourse is all about how people communicate using talk or writing in commercial organizations’. Staying within this definition, a broader or more narrow view can be taken of what constitutes ‘business’. A narrow, restricted view of business discourse would be to focus only on company-to-company communication and look at ways in which suppliers and customers do business together, for example through commercial correspondence (e.g. Connor 1999) or business negotiations (e.g. Charles and Charles 1999). A broader view would include company-internal communication as part of business discourse. Interactions between colleagues in private

6

Workplace Discourse

sector organizations have a great deal in common with interactions among co-workers in white collar workplaces in the public and semi-public sector, for example they frequently involve internal meetings. Example 1.1 above is between co-workers in a private company, and thus fits the broader definition of business discourse, but not the more narrow one, as it involves in-company rather than company to company communication. Many studies of ‘business discourse’ take this broader view of business, and are therefore relevant for an investigation of workplace discourse. For example, a large proportion of the data in the Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC) are from recordings of internal meetings, and the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE) consists of many company-internal genres, such as job interviews, in-company meetings and office talk. Both these corpora are discussed extensively in Chapter 3. This book is centrally concerned with interactions between co-workers, regardless of whether they take place in a private company or in a public or semi-public organization. It is not primarily concerned with commercial communication between businesses, but such communication is nevertheless a kind of workplace discourse, and therefore is also included (e.g. in looking at international business communication in Chapter 6). As we have seen, ‘institutional discourse’ is frequently used as a synonym for ‘workplace discourse’, but Sarangi and Roberts (1999, pp. 15–19), propose a more restricted definition of ‘institutional discourse’, contrasting it to ‘professional discourse’ (see also Gunnarsson 2009 and Roberts forthcoming). They suggest that everyday uses of the terms ‘professional’ and ‘institutional’ provide useful clues to the difference. A professional, as a member of a vocational group, is someone who has certain skills and knowledge. An institution, on the other hand, is not associated with a group of people, but rather with systems, regulations and the exercise of authority. Professional discourse is thus constituted by professionals carrying out their duties and responsibilities, whereas institutional discourse is comprised of genres which are socially sanctioned by the institution. This may involve having particular types of meetings in an organization or writing up reports in a certain way. Both modes of discourse can occur within the same encounter, for example in gate-keeping processes (e.g. examinations) used for professional certification which legitimate and set criteria for professional practice (see Roberts and Sarangi 1999). There may also be tension between institutional and professional discourse, for example if professionals feel that certain types of institutional discourse are being imposed on them (see Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999), especially if these are seen as a nuisance or hindrance to carrying out professional duties. According to Candlin (1997, pp. xi–xii), ‘professional’ discourse expresses the ‘licenced belonging’ to a profession on the basis of skills and knowledge. Professional discourse is thus centrally concerned with knowledge construction, and becoming a professional involves acquiring certain types of knowledge and discourses through apprenticeship and training (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, p. 37). These


7

themes of apprenticeship and training at work are explored in more detail in Chapter 4. While this book is not specifically concerned with professional or institutional discourse in their more restricted senses, both types of discourse are relevant to a study of workplace discourse. Much written and spoken workplace discourse is produced by professionals of all kinds, and everyone who works for an organization must engage with institutional discourse in some way or another. Looking again at example 1.1 above, we can see that the speakers orient to both professional and institutional concerns. The knowledge and skills Mike needs to perform his job well are relevant to the method through which he is evaluated, and therefore Mike and Chris’ discussion can be considered to involve professional discourse. However, what they are doing is also setting up a method of controlling Mike’s work and ensuring it is consistent with the goals of the organization; therefore it is also a form of institutional discourse. Both forms of discourse are therefore important to and make up part of workplace discourse. This book is thus concerned with workplace discourse in its most general sense, encompassing institutional, professional and business discourse. It is of course not possible to be exhaustive in covering all types of workplace discourse, but examples are drawn from a wide variety of different workplaces, and the most frequently occurring genres are examined.

1.3 Communities of practice and discourse communities As example 1.1 shows, differences between ‘ordinary’ uses of language and workplace discourse are not absolute, and of course workplaces also differ from one another. Nevertheless, research into workplace discourse has revealed distinctive interactive and linguistic patterns across different workplaces as well as within particular professional or workplace settings (Drew and Heritage 1992, McCarthy and Handford 2004, Koester 2006). Such patternings are a reflection of distinctive workplace practices which result from participants interacting in carrying out their tasks at work. While individuals will have varying degrees of autonomy depending on the nature of the work, working together always involves interacting with others through spoken or written genres within the constraints of certain ways of doing things or ‘practices’. Two ways of referring to such groups or teams in which people ‘do’ things at work have emerged in the literature on workplace discourse: ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) or ‘discourse communities’ (Swales 1990). This section, discusses the similarities and differences between these two concepts, and asks how they can help us to understand workplace discourse. In some ways these two concepts are quite similar; however, they come out of two different research traditions, and differ significantly in their orientation and emphasis. This can be illustrated by comparing the definitions of a community of practice and of a discourse community.

Workplace Discourse

8

According to Wenger (1998, pp. 72–73), ‘communities of practice’ are characterized by three dimensions: 1. mutual engagement 2. joint enterprise 3. a shared repertoire Swales (1990, pp. 24–27) proposes that a ‘discourse community’ . . . 1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals 2. has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members 3. uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback 4. utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims 5. in addition to owning genres, has acquired some specific lexis 6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant context and discoursal expertise. ‘Mutual engagement’ seems similar to ‘mechanisms of intercommunication’, and ‘joint enterprise’ seems to correspond to ‘common public goals’. However, what Wenger means by the terms ‘mutual engagement and ‘joint enterprise’ seems to go far beyond Swales’ corresponding categories. Mutual engagement does not simply involve mechanisms of intercommunication, but it creates mutual relationships and ‘it connects participants in ways that can become deeper than more abstract similarities in terms of personal features or social categories’ (Wenger 1998, p. 76). In the same way, joint enterprise ‘is not just a stated goal, but creates among participants relations of mutual accountability’ (ibid., p. 78). Looking at all of Swales’ six defining characteristics of a discourse community, it is clear that the emphasis is not on the community as such, but on how it uses discourse, and more specifically on the utilization of ‘one or more genres’ (the fourth characteristic). A discourse community is a socio-rhetorical community (i.e. a community of genre users), and does not require ‘assimilation of world view’ or ‘a threshold level of personal involvement’ (Swales, 1990 p. 31). Swales’ aim and that of other genre analysts in the rhetorical school is to describe genres, and as a result, discourse communities are not actually given much attention beyond their role as ‘owners’ and users of genres. As we shall see in Chapter 2, which explores the notion of genre in detail, this is somewhat different in the social constructionist school of genre (see Freedman and Medway 1994, p. 7), as this school attempts to link genres to the values and epistemology of the discourse community. Swales’ discourse communities are therefore much more narrowly defined than Wenger’s communities of practice, and the focus is on how these communities


9

employ genres. On the other hand, with communities of practice, the role of discourse is much less clearly defined. Wenger’s third dimension, ‘shared repertoire’, is again much broader than the notion of genre, including ‘routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gesture, symbols, genres, actions or concepts’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 83). There are linguistic as well as non-linguistic elements here, and it is not clear what role each of these elements plays in the practice of the community. Just as the emphasis in discourse communities is on the notion of discourse, so with communities of practice it is on the concept of practice. ‘The concept of practice connotes doing’, as Wenger says, ‘but not just doing in and of itself. It is doing in a historical and social context that gives structure and meaning to what we do. In this sense, practice is always social practice’ (ibid., p. 47). Thus, practice is embedded in and interacts with social structures, and moreover it also interacts with the community’s epistemology: The competent members of a given workplace community not only manifest in their daily lives what counts as routine practice, but also, at a metalevel, they bring to scrutiny the very boundaries of institutional knowledge for renewal and reification. (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, p. 3) The concept of community of practice is thus both richer and more complex than that of discourse community; however, it is more difficult to operationalize for discourse analysis. Handford (forthcoming) proposes that the frequencies and patterning of language in workplace discourse discovered through research using computer-based corpus methods can provide evidence of routine practices in a workplace community. Chapter 3 of this book examines in detail what such corpus research can tell us about workplace discourse and ultimately about the practices within workplace communities. Both terms, discourse community and community of practice, are employed in this volume, but it is important to remember that, while they do have some similarities, they are not completely synonymous. Thus Chapter 2 looks at how workplace genres are used by discourse communities, but Chapter 5 uses the notion of community of practice to explore relational talk and humour. Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of ‘situated learning’ in a community of practice is drawn on in examining training and apprenticeship at work in the second half of Chapter 4.

1.4 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse The study of workplace discourse is marked by a multiplicity of approaches originating within a variety of disciplines, including, sociology, anthropology and linguistics, and various research methods, such as ethnography, conversation analysis, genre analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis have frequently been used. A detailed review of all these approaches and methods is beyond the scope of the present chapter, but the aim is to situate

10

Workplace Discourse

the methods and approaches drawn on in this book within the body of research on workplace discourse. For a fuller discussion see Sarangi and Roberts’ (1999) critical review of approaches to institutional and professional discourse, and Bargiela-Chiappini et al.’s (2007) volume on Business Discourse which provides a comprehensive overview of research methods in this area.

1.4.1 Interaction order and institutional order Sarangi and Roberts’ (1999, pp. 1–10) suggest that most studies of workplace discourse can be situated on a continuum from those that focus more on the interaction order to those that are more interested in the institutional order. Goffman (1974) called for studying the interaction order, which is ‘the structuring of participation in a given social situation’ (Sarangi and Roberts 1999: 2, original italics) in its own right. This involves studying in detail the actual words and interactions of the participants in a given situation. But workplace interactions are also embedded in the institutional order, which is defined by Berger and Luckman (1967: 83) as the ‘body of transmitted recipe knowledge, that is, knowledge that supplies the institutionally appropriate rules of conduct’. Most sociolinguistic and discourse analytical studies focus more on the interaction order, whereas mainstream sociological studies are more interested in the institutional order (Sarangi and Roberts, 1992: 2). However, sociolinguistic studies of workplace discourse vary in terms of how much they focus exclusively on the interaction order or also take into consideration the institutional order. Thus, conversation analysis (CA), which has a well-established tradition of analysing workplace talk, stays within the interaction order, and aims to discover the relevant categories and identities (including institutional ones) to which participants orient in a workplace setting through micro-analysis of speaker turns and sequences (see Hutchby and Woofitt 1998, pp. 145–171). Social constructionist approaches, on the other hand, take into account the social and institutional order as well as the interaction order in the interpretation of the discourse. In fact, these are seen as mutually reflexive, with social and institutional identities seen as dynamic and subject to negotiation through interaction (Holmes et al. 1999, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, pp. 8–12). Discourse analytic studies which move furthest towards incorporating the institutional or social order into their framework are those that take a socio-critical approach, such as critical discourse analysis (CDA). For example, Gee et al. (1996) analyse the discourse of the ‘new work order’, based on the ideas of ‘fast capitalism’ in the post-industrial era as a new form of hegemony through which power relations and control are obscured. Gee (2005, p. 7) refers to the more sociological perspective as analysing discourse with a ‘big D’ and the more sociolinguistic or micro-analytical one as discourse with a ‘little d’. Another way of looking at the interaction order – institutional order continuum is in terms of the way that context is viewed. For


11

instance, CA takes a talk-intrinsic view, in which context is seen as dynamically created through interaction; whereas approaches such as social constructionism and CDA view context more broadly as also including institutional and social domains (see Koester 2006, pp. 11–16).

1.4.2 Textual, tactical, professional and social space Bhatia’s (2004) ‘four-space model’ also provides a useful way of viewing the continuum from a more micro-analytic to a more social orientation. Much research on workplace discourse has examined spoken interaction, for example studies that employ conversation analytical methods. Bhatia’s model focuses on written discourse, but it can be applied equally to spoken discourse. Bhatia (ibid., pp. 18–22) proposes that approaches to discourse can be viewed on a continuum from a pedagogical perspective to a socio-critical one moving through four different ‘spaces’. Each space corresponds to a particular view of discourse and knowledge: 1. Textual space z Discourse as text z Textual knowledge

2. Tactical space z Discourse as genre z Genre knowledge

3. Professional space z Discourse as professional practice z Professional expertise

4. Social space z Discourse as social practice z Social and pragmatic knowledge

Within textual space, only surface-level properties of discourse are analysed, and Bhatia refers to this as a pedagogical perspective, since historically, the study of English for Specific Purposes, which has a pedagogical orientation, began with such an approach to the analysis of text. Bhatia (ibid., pp. 12–13) notes that for written discourse the historical development in research has been from textual space to social space, but that this is not necessarily the case for spoken discourse. These four ways of viewing discourse are not mutually exclusive, but a researcher might situate their research within one particular space, and ‘move’ into other spaces in either direction. Thus an applied linguist would probably first carry out an exhaustive analysis of discourse as text, and then look

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Workplace Discourse

to the social context for an explanation of the lexico-grammatical features identified (ibid., p. 21). Bhatia’s own work in genre analysis can be situated within both tactical and professional space, which he sees as closely linked and together comprising ‘socio-cognitive space’. The approach taken in this book is also situated within socio-cognitive space, mainly considering discourse as genre and discourse as professional practice. Overall, the emphasis is on the interaction order, rather than the social or institutional order, and analysis is concentrated on discourse with a ‘little d’. An approach which focuses on the interaction order also entails a particular view of workplace roles and identities. As discussed in section 1.1, participants take on particular institutional roles in workplace interactions which are often asymmetrical (e.g. doctor-patient, manager-subordinate), but it cannot simply be assumed that these institutional roles are always relevant to the talk in which speakers are engaged. Taking a talk-intrinsic view of context means seeing institutional roles and identities not as fixed, but as made relevant in and negotiated through talk (ten Have 1991, Greatbatch and Dingwall 1998). Within the approach taken here, two research methods are highlighted as particularly relevant to analysing workplace discourse: genre analysis and corpus linguistics. As we have seen, the most important distinguishing feature of workplace discourse is its goal orientation, and therefore genre analysis, which views discourse as comprising goal-oriented, recurring written or spoken activities or genres, is particularly suitable. A large number of studies of workplace discourse, particularly written discourse, have been carried out using genre analysis (e.g. Devitt 1991, Yates and Orlikowski 1992, Bhatia 1993). Corpus linguistic methods, on the other hand, have only recently been used to investigate workplace discourse (e.g. Nelson 2000a, Cheng 2004, Handford 2007), and therefore this is still a relatively new area of enquiry. Traditionally corpus methods have been associated with ‘discourse as text’, but I agree with Handford (forthcoming) that they can also help us to gain insights into professional and even social space. By drawing on both genre analysis and corpus methods it is possible to provide a rich description of the data which accounts for both micro-features of discourse, such as lexico-grammatical and phraseological patterns, as well as larger textual or interactive patterns, and to link these to workplace and professional practices.

1.5 Where does workplace discourse occur? As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, workplace discourse is extremely diverse, as it encompasses interactions between co-workers, customers and clients, lay people and professionals and occurs in offices, factories, hospitals, courtrooms and so forth. Some types of workplace discourse have received a great deal of attention in previous studies. This includes the areas of medical discourse and healthcare (e.g. Cicourel 1987 and 1999, Erikson 1999, Ragan 2000) and legal discourse (e.g. Bhatia 1993, Gibbons 1994, Greatbatch and


13

Dingwall 1998). Business discourse has also been studied extensively (see Bargiela-Chiappini et al. 2007), especially business correspondence (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini and Nickerson 1999), negotiations (e.g. Firth 1995b, Charles 1996) and business meetings (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1997a; Handford forthcoming). Interactions between co-workers comprise the key site for an investigation of workplace discourse, and these may take place in formal meetings or in more informal, ad hoc interactions. The Wellington, New Zealand Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) has compiled a large database of workplace interactions which includes formal as well as and informal interactions from both white-collar settings, such as government departments and small businesses, and blue-collar ones, e.g. the factory floor (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004). Studies based on LWP will be drawn on throughout this book. In my own work on the ABOT Corpus, I have examined mostly informal, unplanned workplace interactions between co-workers in office settings (see Koester 2006). But interactions between lay people and professionals or clients and customers are also represented in the corpus. A useful way of distinguishing between different sites for investigating workplace discourse is the concept of ‘front regions’ compared with ‘back regions’.

1.5.1 Front regions and back regions Goffman (1959) suggested that there are two sites in which social life can be studied: front regions (or frontstage) and back regions (or backstage). Front regions are areas ‘where a particular performance is or may be in progress’, whereas back regions are ‘where action occurs that is related to the performance but inconsistent with the appearance fostered by the performance’ (ibid., p. 134). The dramaturgical metaphor used by Goffman is relevant, as it implies the presence of an audience in frontstage activity, and a setting in which ‘best behaviour’ is expected. The backstage setting, on the other hand, is more relaxed and ‘allows minor acts which might easily be taken as symbolic of intimacy and disrespect for others present’ (ibid., p. 128). Workplace activities taking place in front regions involve lay-professionals encounters, for example interactions between health professionals and patients, or service encounters, where service providers interact with customers. Interactions between co-workers typically occur in back regions, and they may constitute the backstage to certain frontstage business or lay-professional encounters. For example, interactions between health professionals (e.g. doctors, nurses, lab technicians) form the backstage to front stage interactions with patients. A business negotiation between two companies may be preceded by a preparatory company-internal meeting, which thus constitutes the backstage to the external meeting to take place in the front regions. In retail shops, front stage activity occurs between sales people and clients, but this work is supported by workers in back offices (aptly named) engaged in backstage activity, such as

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dealing with orders and billing (e.g. one of the settings represented in the ABOT Corpus is the back office of an organic food cooperative). Much of the early research on workplace discourse focused on front regions, particularly in the area of medical discourse (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, p. 22). The studies in Drew and Heritage’s (1992) seminal volume on Talk at Work focus exclusively on the front stage, for example Heritage and Sefi’s study of interactions between first time mothers and health visitors, or Zimmerman’s work on emergency calls. Since these early studies, back regions have received increasingly more attention, with Goodwin’s (1995) examination of two backstage settings at an airport – the airline operations room and the check-in gate – being a particularly interesting example. Studies of medical discourse have also shifted their attention to the backstage, as attested by a number of contributions to Sarangi and Roberts’ (1999) edited volume on Talk, Work and Institutional Order, such as Erickson’s paper on the apprenticeship of new doctors and Cook-Gumperz and Messerman’s study of the way in which a medical record is collaboratively constructed. The workplace corpora drawn on in this book contain a mix of frontstage and backstage interactions. The CANBEC Corpus has both external and internal meetings, and the business sub-corpus of HKCSE also contains data representing both front and back regions. Front region data includes front desk encounters in hotels or job interviews, and back region interactions include informal office talk and company-internal meetings. The ABOT Corpus consists mainly of backstage interactions between co-workers, but there are also a few service encounters in which frontstage activity occurs. The two examples below show a frontstage and a backstage encounter from the ABOT Corpus, each one illustrating the key features of each of the sites described by Goffman. The two examples show the same speaker (Don) first in a frontstage encounter (example 1.2) and then in a backstage one (example 1.3), and therefore they illustrate how the same participant adjusts his behaviour to suit each of these sites of interaction. Don works as a ‘staff assistant’ at the front desk of a university office. Example 1.2 shows him interacting with a visitor to the office, and in example 1.3 he talks with his co-worker, Andy. Example 1.2 (1) Visitor (2) Don (3) Visitor

/(Hi)/ Hello. Um . . . [5 sec] Is there a list of . . . uhm . . . faculty assistants? [1 sec] in the handbook or something like that? I need to try and /???/ (4) Don ⎣No:, there isn’t a list in the handbook, I have a . . . typewritten list here, (5) Visitor Wow. thank you very much.


15

Example 1.3 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Don Something ↑very important I need to tell you. Andy ⎣Yes Andy ↑Oo:h. ↓Yes? Don You know that . . . stuff . . . tha’ that we brought you from Paris? That real sweet chestnut stuff? Andy ⎣Yeah. ⎣Uhu? Don Rita said the ↑classic↓ way, to eat that stuff= Andy =On pears. [1.5] Don On ↑whipped ↓cream: [2] Andy Heheheheheheh

Example 1.2 shows Don performing his institutional role at the front desk, where his job is to deal with enquiries. In example 1.3, we see him ‘backstage’: he is not acting in his official role, but engages in an informal interaction with his colleague, which is marked by ‘intimacy’, such as informal language (e.g. ‘stuff’) and laughter. While example 1.2 displays all the typical features of institutional talk, such as goal-orientation and asymmetry, example 1.3 does not: Don and Andy do not focus on any task, but engage in off-task small talk, in which their institutional roles are not relevant (for instance, we cannot tell from this encounter that Andy is Don’s boss). Sarangi and Roberts 1999 (pp. 21–22) observe that Drew and Heritage’s characterization of institutional talk is based on the analysis of frontstage data, and that ‘focusing on frontstage talk can lead to certain biases and limitations on what counts as workplace communication’ (ibid., p. 22). If features such as goal-orientation and asymmetry distinguish workplace interactions from everyday interactions, should such small talk occurring in the office be considered not to constitute workplace talk? Recent research into relational talk at work seems to suggest that this would not be satisfactory. First, it is often difficult to separate out talk that is work-related from non-task talk at work (Holmes 2000a, Tracy and Naughton 2000, Koester 2006); and even talk at work which seems to bear no relation to any task at hand may have some relevance, even if indirect, to other workplace interactions (see Chapter 5). Moreover, small talk which occurs at work is not exactly ‘the same’ as small talk outside work. For instance, in example 1.3, Don begins the encounter with a mock workplace ‘frame’: ‘Something ↑very important I need to tell you.’ Such advance summaries of what an upcoming interaction will be about are typical of workplace interactions and provide evidence of participants orienting to workplace goals (see Koester 2006, p. 4). In this example, however, Don actually does not have anything ‘important’ to impart, but uses this frame as a humorous device. But it is because his colleague, Andy, can recognize this as a typical workplace frame that the humour ‘works’. It is unlikely that small talk

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outside the office would be introduced in the same manner. The view taken in this book is that relational talk forms an integral part of workplace discourse, and therefore cannot be disregarded, even if it does not fit our expectations of what workplace discourse should look like. Including both front and back stage encounters in an examination of workplace discourse ensures that a rich and diverse, if fairly complex, picture of what constitutes workplace discourse can be built up.

1.6 Workplace discourse in a changing world In the past twenty years, many workplaces have been subject to considerable structural changes, and ‘workers across a variety of sites are being confronted with having to renegotiate their knowing, their doing, and their worker identity’ (Iedema and Scheeres 2003, p. 316). Much of this is due to rapid developments and changes in technology, but there has also been a concomitant change in what we could call business ideology. Gee et al. (1996) argue that the ideas of new capitalism have brought in a ‘new work order’ which presumes the need for constant change in order to stay competitive, and involves workers taking on new tasks, particularly involving communication. These changes have had an impact on both written and spoken workplace discourse, and Iedema and Scheeres (2003, p. 319) claim that ‘discourse analysts can no longer consider workplace discourse as “stable objects” that are simply “out there”’. According to Fairclough (1992, pp. 204–205), one of the ways in which professional and public discourse has changed is that there is an increasing tendency towards ‘conversationalization’, that is, the adoption of less formal styles of communication in institutional environments; similarly, Cameron (2000, pp. 21–23) discusses the increasing ‘hybridity’ of talk in different domains of social activity. The changing nature of the workplace discourse is also reflected in this book, for example in Chapter 2 we consider how genres have evolved and new genres, such as email, have emerged. Alongside changes in technology which have had an impact on the way people communicate, people from different cultures are coming increasingly into contact and working together both through migration and as a result of the increasingly global nature of business. Such cross-cultural and multicultural interactions are explored in Chapter 6. In examining workplace discourse, this book draws on older as well as more recent studies, as certain characteristics of workplace discourse have remained constant, even if the technologies have changed.

1.7 Outline of the book This book is divided into two parts: Part I (Chapters 1–4) provides a description of workplace discourse from a number of different perspectives, and Part II


17

(Chapters 5–7) looks at specific issues and applications which I suggest are particularly relevant or timely to a current discussion of workplace discourse. Chapters 2 and 3 aim to describe the key characteristics of workplace discourse. It is not possible to provide an exhaustive description, as each sector of work has its own genres and each workplace has its specific communities of practice. My aim is to give a flavour of the variety of workplaces and types of workplace discourse, as well as to suggest frameworks for making sense of this variety. Chapter 2 deals with workplace genres, and Chapter 3 explores the question of what corpus linguistic research can tell us about workplace discourse. Genre analysis and corpus research provide complementary perspectives on workplace discourse, and enable us to see not only what different workplaces have in common, but also what distinguishes them. Chapter 4 focuses specifically on one key workplace activity: getting people to carry out tasks. This exploration of procedural or directive discourse also leads to a discussion of another important workplace topic: training and apprenticeship at work. A key theme to be explored in this book is the importance of relational aspects of workplace discourse, despite its overall transactional, or task-oriented nature. This is a recurring theme throughout the book, but is addressed specifically in Chapter 5, which examines relational talk and humour. Chapter 6 explores some of the ways in which the increasing internationalization of work through migration and international business have affected workplace discourse. Two sites for intercultural workplace interactions are explored: situations in which people of different nationalities communicate to do business, and workplace situations in which members of a dominant cultural group interact with people from minority cultures. The main focus in this chapter is on the use of English as an international language in business and workplace interactions between people whose native language is not English. Research in workplace discourse is often carried out with a view to providing some practical benefit to the organization or business in which the data are collected (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, Cheng 2004, Warren 2004), and therefore the practical application of such research is often a key objective of the study. These themes are picked up in the final chapter, which examines the practical applications of research into workplace discourse for teaching English for professional, occupational and business purposes.

Chapter 2

Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in Workplace Discourse

2.1 Introduction The previous chapter outlined some of the key characteristics of workplace discourse, but beyond these very general features shared by all language at work, how are we to make sense of the great diversity of spoken interactions and text types used in different organizations and professions? Does the language used on the factory floor really have anything in common with that used in interactions between health professionals in a hospital, or the texts produced by the legal profession? Seeing workplace interactions and texts as instances of ‘genre’, that is as goal-oriented, recurring manifestations of certain ‘types’ of texts and activities, is useful in trying to make sense of this diversity, and provides a systematic approach to describing workplace discourse. That said, as there are a number of different approaches to the study of genre, which all deal with useful – but sometimes seemingly contradictory – aspects of this notion, applying genre analysis to workplace discourse is by no means straightforward. Bhatia (2004, p. 22) attempts to bring together the three main approaches to genre – the social-constructionist approach, the so-called Hallidayan approach, which emphasizes schematic structure, and the rhetorical approach – in one definition: Genre analysis is the study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalized academic or professional settings, whether defined in terms of typification of rhetorical action, as in Miller (1984), Bazerman (1994) and Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995), regularities of stages, goal-oriented processes, as in Martin, Christie and Rothery (1987), or consistency of communicative purposes, as in Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993). (original italics) While genre analysts in the rhetorical school, following Swales’ definition, consider communicative purpose to be the defining and ‘privileged criterion’ (Swales 1990, p. 58), Swales himself (Askehave and Swales 2001, Swales 2004) points out that identifying communicative purpose is not necessarily straightforward. There may be multiple purposes, or different views within the discourse

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community of what the purpose of the genre is (Askehave and Swales 2001). Handford (2007, forthcoming) argues that privileging communicative purpose may mean neglecting other important aspects of genre, such as structure. In the Hallidayan approach, structure, in particular the presence of certain ‘obligatory elements’ (Hasan 1985), is key in identifying genre, but using exclusively formal criteria runs the risk of conflating ‘genre’ and ‘text type’ (Bhatia 1993, Paltridge 1996). Some textual patterns, such as problem-solution or general-particular, are common across a range of written genres (Paltridge ibid.); and equally, a genre may have a variety of structural realizations. For example, Bhatia (ibid.) argues that sales promotional letters and letters of application, while quite different structurally, are both instances of ‘promotional’ genre, due to similar communicative purposes. In my own work (Koester 2006, p. 22), I take the view that ‘formal linguistic characteristics are important aspects of genre, however, they should not be considered as the defining features of a genre, which should be communicative purpose’ (original italics). That is to say, it is not the form that determines the genre, but formal generic patterns are the result of recurring, goal-oriented activity. In this way, we can also account for the fact that generic structure is variable (the same genre can be performed in different ways) and that genres change. Whether or not communicative purpose is taken to be the main criterion in identifying a genre, it seems clear that both shared communicative purpose and formal or structural features are important properties of genre. Yates and Orkilowski(1992), who define genre as ‘a typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation’ (ibid., p. 301) see genre as being characterized by both substance (which equates more or less to communicative purpose) and form. Form includes structural and linguistic features, but may also include elements of the context, such as time and place. Meanwhile, genre analysts working in the social-constructionist tradition are less interested in formal properties of genre, and more in ‘the ways in which genre is embedded in the communicative activities of the members of a discipline’ (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995, p. 2). Therefore they have tended to examine how a discourse community uses genres, and how these genres are related to one another. For example, Devitt (1991) studied the ‘genre set’ – the range of texts – used by tax accountants in the course of their work; and Bazerman (1994) extended this to the notion of ‘genre system’ – ‘the full set of genres that instantiate the participation of all the parties’ (ibid., p. 99), including those outside the professional community, such as clients and government organizations (Swales, 2004, uses the term ‘genre network’ here). Genres are also seen as inherently dynamic and subject to change, in response to the changing needs of the discourse community (Miller 1984, Yates and Orlikowski 1992, Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). Therefore, it is possible to study genre ‘evolution’ (Berkenkotter 2008), as Yates and Orlikowski (1991) do in tracing how the memo genre evolved from the business letter in the nineteenth century to be transmitted eventually via electronic mail in the twentieth century.

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The social constructionist perspective has shifted the emphasis away from seeing genres as inherently stable and self-contained to recognizing the fluidity and interconnectedness of genres, as seen for example in recent work by Swales (2004) and Bhatia (2004), who examine such notions as genre networks, genre sets or genre colonies. Another instance of this fluidity of genre is the overlap that exists between related genres, or the difficulty at times in establishing which genre is being enacted in a particular text or activity. For example, Bhatia (2004) notes that certain genres, such as book reviews and company reports are partly promotional and partly informational. Should they therefore be considered as promotional or informational genres? Two ways of approaching this kind of gradation and overlap between genres have been proposed in the work of Bhatia (2004) and McCarthy (1998). Bhatia (2004, pp. 57–84) proposes the idea of ‘genre colonies’, which are grouping of closely related genres that largely share a communicative purpose, but are different in a number of respects, such as discipline, profession, contexts of use or participant relationships. One such colony relevant to workplace discourse is the colony of promotional genres. Some genres in a colony are more typical representatives of the genre than others, and are therefore ‘primary members’. Primary members in the colony of promotional genres include advertisements, promotional letters, job applications and book blurbs, as these have the primary communicative purpose of ‘promoting a product or service to a potential customer’ (Bhatia 2004, p. 60). ‘Secondary’ members of the colony would not be classified as advertisements, but have a strong promotional concern, for example fundraising letters or travel brochures. Finally, there are ‘peripheral’ genres, which are ‘mixed’ in terms of their communicative purpose; for example book reviews and company reports are partly promotional, partly informational. Such peripheral members may be primary members of another genre colony, for example annual company reports, which can be described as belonging primarily to the colony of reporting genres (ibid., p. 62). Promotional genres which are widely used in the world of work include advertisements, job applications and sales promotion letters. Another genre colony described by Bhatia is that of reporting genres, which are used in almost any domain of work, for example business reports (e.g. annual reports, feasibility reports) police reports and medical reports. While Bhatia proposes viewing the overlap between related genres on the basis of family resemblance, McCarthy (1998) examines how different variables or dimensions combine to form specific genres, and how small changes in these variables result in genre shift. This approach was used as a classificatory scheme to set up the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus Discourse in English (CANCODE), a corpus of spoken English mainly targeting everyday speech, but also including some professional and workplace interactions. The two main dimensions according to which all the interactions were classified are goal type and context. Three general goal types were identified: collaborative task, collaborative idea and information provision; and five contexts, based on the

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type of relationship between the participants: transactional, professional, pedagogical, socializing and intimate. McCarthy (ibid., pp. 38–46) shows how shifts in goal or sub-goal type and in the relationship between the participants (including the the degree of intimacy and shared knowledge) and other contextual features (e.g. the physical environment) results in more or less subtle changes to the specific genre being performed. For example, two decision-making or planning encounters (a subgoal type of collaborative task) from two different contexts (‘intimate’ and ‘professional’) are compared: one involving a family planning holiday and the other a planning meeting in a publishing company. The two encounters are surprisingly similar in terms of the contextual variables: the setting is informal and the degree of shared knowledge is high. However, there are subtle differences in these contextual variables and in the goals which result in the professional encounter having more indirect language, less deixis and a slightly higher lexical density. Most significantly, the participants in the planning meeting must orient to institutional deadlines and targets, which is obviously not the case in planning a family holiday. Balancing these goals, with relational concerns (or ‘face work’) results in the use of more indirect language in the publisher’s meeting, for example (in talking about numbers of reprints for a title): Example 2.1 can you just fill me in again [<S01>mm] just very quickly [<S01>mm] how many and when are they likely to hit me. (from McCarthy 1998, p. 44, extract from CANCODE, © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission) The use of hedges and vague language (‘just’, ‘very quickly’, ‘likely to’) make the request more indirect, and may thus serve to mitigate any perceived threats to workplace relationships which institutional imperatives could represent (see Chapter 4.2). Such mitigation is not usually necessary in intimate situations, such as planning a family holiday. Thus the two encounters can either be considered to belong to the same or to different genres, depending on the specificity of generic description. Importantly, the model allows a specific description of how related genres vary according to the two dimensions of goal type and context. Two of the CANCODE context types (‘transactional’, which involves mainly service encounters, and ‘professional’) are particularly relevant for workplace discourse, but the model also shows how ‘everyday’ genres used in intimate or social contexts are related to professional or workplace genres. The latter is an important point, as the professional genres that have been described in the literature are frequently fairly specialized and conventionalized, such as the genre set used by tax accountants: transmittal letters, research memoranda, tax protests, to name just a few (Devitt 1991). These are genres for

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which the discourse community has a name and often explicit structural conventions. McCarthy’s (1998) comparison of the intimate and professional CANCODE data reminds us that not all workplace communication, especially if it is spoken, involves such formalized genres, but may nevertheless display generic patterning according to the transactional goal of the encounter, for example instruction-giving, decision-making, planning or reporting. These are what Bakhtin (1986) calls ‘primary’ genres, that is genres which occur in ‘unmediated conversation’; in contrast to ‘secondary’ genres, which are instances of highly developed and organized cultural communication and are primarily written (ibid., p. 62). Not all descriptions accord the status of ‘genre’ to such primary genres: Bhatia (2004, pp. 59–60) refers to instructions, descriptions, narratives etc. as ‘generic values’ or ‘rhetorical acts’, and notes that genres are realized through a combination of such acts. Müller (2006a) makes a similar point when he says that genres are made up of ‘communicative forms’ – smaller patterns similar to Levinson’s (1992) ‘activity types’. It is certainly true that more complex secondary genres are not confined to single rhetorical acts; for example Bhatia notes that promotional genres draw on descriptions and evaluations. Nevertheless, I would like to retain the label of genre for such primary genres, as they can be described according to the two main identifying features of genre: communicative purpose and formal/ structural characteristics. Another aspect of the question of what should ‘count’ as genre, is the level of generality of the generic description. Is the business letter a genre, or is this too general a category to allow generic description, for example, in terms of communicative purpose or rhetorical structure? Yates and Orlikowski (1992, p. 303), who are concerned specifically with genres of organizational communication, take the view that it is possible for genres to be either very general or very specific, as long as ‘a recurrent situation, a common subject . . . and common formal features’ can be identified. Genres thus exist at various levels of abstraction: the business letter and the meeting might at one point be genres, whereas at another point, these types of communication might be considered too general and the recommendation letter or the personnel committee meeting might better capture the social sense of recurrent situation. (ibid.). Therefore, more general genres can be viewed as having sub-genres, which might in turn have even more specific sub-genres, for example (ibid., pp. 303–304): business letter ↓ letter of recommendation ↓ positive letter of recommendation

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Bhatia’s (2004) genre colonies are also composed of such genres and subgenres, for example within the genre of advertisements, a promotional genre, we can identify sub-genres such as print advertisements, radio advertisements, TV commercials. In addition to different levels of abstraction, genres can also be distinguished in terms of their ‘normative scope’ (Yates and Orlikowski 1992, p. 304); that is the extent to which they are shared across society. Yates and Orlikowski identify five levels of normative scope: a. b. c. d. e.

existence in most societies existence in particular societies or cultures use in certain occupations and industries use in particular organizations or corporate cultures use in particular intra-organizational groups, for example departments or teams

Business letters and memos, for example, are used in most industrial societies (level a), whereas legal cases are specific to the legal profession (level c). The notion of genre can thus be approached from a number of different angles; genres can be viewed as multi-layered, and it is possible to investigate them at a number of different ‘levels’. From this complex multi-layering, two broadly different ways of approaching the investigation of workplace genres can be discerned. One is to take a more broad brush approach, where genre is viewed at a more general level of abstraction, and examine genres which recur across a range of organizations and/or professions. The other is to narrow the focus to more specialized genres, which may be specific to particular professions or even to particular workplaces. The most narrow focus would involve a case study of all the genres used in one particular organization. Both approaches have certain benefits. With the first approach, genres can be compared across workplaces, and thus common general characteristics can be identified. With the second, more focused approach, the emphasis shifts from identifying the formal and linguistic characteristics of a genre to examining how genres are embedded in their social context and how the genres used in a workplace or profession interact with one another. The chapter is organized around these two approaches to examining workplace genres. First we review some genres which are very widespread and seem to play a key role in workplace communication, for example meetings, decisionmaking or business correspondence. Then, we turn to the use of genres within particular professions or organizations.

2.2 Recurring or widespread genres in the workplace What then are the main genres to recur across a range of workplace contexts and professions? Genre analysts have tended to avoid devising taxonomies of

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genre, and, as Askehave and Swales (2001, p. 196) note, any such taxonomic schemes, such as Martin and Rothery’s (1981) ‘six elemental genres’ have been controversial. The same reluctance to categorize genre is evident in studies of workplace genre. An exception to this is Müller’s (2006a, 2006b) proposal that there are eight (spoken) communicative genres in industrial organizations: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

private conversations contact conversations presentation talks training talks evaluation (appraisal) conversations planning conversations crisis conversations analysis talks

Müller’s list of eight genres overlaps to a large extent with the genres identified in my own research on spoken workplace communication (Koester 2006). Müller (2006b, pp. 150–152) stresses that this list does not represent a complete taxonomy of workplace genres, but is an ‘open inventory’ based on a corpus of meetings recorded in three factories (in Germany, France and Spain) belonging to a multinational company. Similarly, the genre set I identified is not exhaustive, but results from an attempt to categorize the recurring communicative events identified across a range of office environments in the North America and Britain. The offices were in a variety of organizations and business sectors, including higher education, publishing, the paper trade, advertising and retail (Koester 2006.). From approximately 30 hours of audio-recorded data, a smaller data set was transcribed, and a corpus consisting of 66 conversations or generic stretches of talk and totalling 34,000 words was compiled (the Corpus of American and British Office Talk, or ABOT). In order to establish the genre categories for the corpus, linguistic evidence of speakers’ goals, identified through qualitative analysis, was used to pick out recurring genres and organize exemplars of these into sub-corpora (see Koester 2006, chapters 2 and 3). The following genres were identified, and grouped into three ‘macrogenres’: 1. Unidirectional genres z Procedural and directive discourse z Briefing z Service encounters z Reporting z Requesting

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2. Collaborative genres z Decision-making z Arrangements z Discussing and evaluating

3. Non-transactional genres z Small talk z Office gossip

Unidirectional genres involve a discursively dominant speaker imparting information or instructing/directing another participant; in collaborative genres, participants contribute more or less equally to the discourse. The genres grouped under unidirectional and collaborative discourse are all transactional, that is work-oriented; whereas non-transactional genres are not concerned with performing workplace tasks, but involve topics outside work (‘small talk’) and off-task talk about work (‘office gossip’). The most frequently-occurring genres were decision-making, and procedural/directive discourse, making up 26 and 15 per cent of the corpus respectively. It is interesting that many of the genres which make up the ABOT corpus are similar to the genres identified by Müller (2006a, 2006b), although Müller’s data was collected in different countries, quite different workplace environments (factories rather than offices), and the participants spoke German, French and Spanish, rather than English. This seems to indicate that many of these genres are very widespread indeed in spoken workplace communication. Table 2.1 shows the overlap between Müller’s eight genres and genres identified in the ABOT Corpus.

2.2.1 Decision-making or meetings? One glaring omission from the above two lists of spoken workplace genres is business meetings, which clearly play a key role in most workplace settings, and Table 2.1 Müller’s 8 genres (2006a)

Similar genres identified in the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2006)

(1) private conversations (2) contact conversations (3) presentation talks (4) training talks (5) evaluation (appraisal) conversations (6) planning conversations (7) crisis conversations (8) analysis talks

non-transactional genres — — procedural and directive discourse — decision-making/arrangements discussing and evaluating

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have been extensively described in the literature on workplace discourse (Boden 1994, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1997b, Poncini 2002, Holmes and Stubbe 2003). Although many of the encounters in the ABOT Corpus (and also in Müller’s corpus) take place in the context of meetings, meetings are not treated as genres. This is because meetings can have a variety of purposes, for example planning, problem-solving, reporting (Holmes and Stubbe 2003), and thus cannot be described as constituting a genre, if one takes a goal-based definition of genre (see Koester 2006). Müller’s genre categories are also largely derived on the basis of communicative goal; or, more specifically, the reason (‘Anlass’) for the interaction together with the participant roles (‘Teilnehmer’) constitute the genre (2006b, p. 149).1 Handford (2007, forthcoming), on the other hand, argues that communicative goal should not be the sole criterion for defining genre, but that structural features, in combination with particular practices and strategies, should be taken into account as well, and that therefore the business meeting can be viewed as a genre. Structure is clearly an important aspect of genre, whether a defining feature or not, and as Handford points out, meetings do have clear beginnings and endings, whereas the same is not necessarily true of activities like decision-making. Decision-making may be ‘invisible’ in organizations, as it is often ‘incremental and fragmentary’ (Boden 1994, p 183), or it may actually take place outside the meetings where the issues are discussed (Handford 2007). Nevertheless, there is ample evidence in both the ABOT Corpus and the Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC),2 used in Handford’s study, that decision-making is a key activity in workplace discourse; accounting for over 25 per cent of the entire ABOT Corpus. Whether or not a decision is reached in the actual encounter, a large proportion of spoken workplace communication seems to involve people actively engaging in verbal decision-making (Willing 1992, McCarthy and Handford 2004). The following two extracts involve decision-making in quite different workplace settings, but they are strikingly similar in terms of the linguistic and interactive features they share (these are underlined in the examples). Example 2.2 is from a small family-run business, and involves two colleagues discussing some problems with their accounts, whereas example 2.3 is from the meeting of a medical team in the nursing-home care unit of a hospital (both data samples are from North America). Example 2.2: Discussing problems with accounts (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Chris But– I think the– it seems to me that what we need to do on those → Amy ⎣But– Chris → is is . . . basically make our– → Amy ⎣/say– tell ‘em/ we’re gonna start charging an interest Chris ↑Yeah make– make the interest provision stick. It’s there already. Amy ⎣make our interest

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(7) Amy Right (8) Becky An’ that’s /??/– (9) Amy ⎣We just need the systems to make it do that.

Example 2.3: Discussing patient treatment plan (1) Ellie: I have a problem with this care plan (2) Barbara: Yeah go ahead (3) Ellie: We’re saying he has self total self-care deficit then she’s saying he’s able to eat . . . has the ability to eat and does so effectively then why are we saying total self-care deficit? (4) Barbara: You’re right if it’s self-care deficit . . . (5) Ellie: We’re contradicting ourselves! (6) Barbara: and we need . . . and we need . . . and we need . . . (7) Laura: Yeah (8) Barbara: . . . to identify the . . . (9) Laura: Mobility mobility umm (Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999, pp. 159–160) In both encounters, speakers make suggestions how to deal with a particular problem, for example ‘it seems to me . . . , we need (to) . . .’. The language used is quite direct, with frequent use of the deontic modal verb ‘need’, and unhedged agreement/disagreement and expression of opinion, for example: z z z z z

Yeah Right I have a problem with . . . We’re contradicting ourselves You’re right

The discourse is highly collaborative, with speakers interrupting each other and jointly putting forward proposals. These examples seem to indicate that it is possible to identify decision-making in terms of its formal linguistic and interactive properties, as well as its overall goal orientation (see also Chapter 3, p. 62). There is clearly a large overlap between meetings and decision-making discourse. In discussing data from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, Holmes and Stubbe (2003, p. 75) note that ‘in many meetings it was important for those involved to reach decisions on issues, and indeed in some cases this was the primary function of the meeting’. Handford (2007, pp. 249–256) points out that the role of decision-making in meetings may be influenced by the relationship of the participants. Overall, there is more linguistic evidence in CANBEC of problem-solving and decision-making discourse (e.g. the use of the words ‘problem’ and ‘issue’) in company-internal meetings than in external meetings

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(meetings between different companies). External meetings often involved reporting about decisions already made or discussing such decisions in some way. In internal meetings, decision-making was often the focus in meetings between peers, especially in strategic meetings; whereas meetings between managers and subordinates frequently involved handing down decisions made by upper management. However, Cook-Gumperz, and Messerman, (1999) point out that there is not always a straightforward relationship between decision-making and status. In the medical team meetings exemplified in extract 2.3, it is regularly the lower status members, such as the social worker (Barbara in example 2.3 above) or dieticians, who play a key role in deciding what goes in the medical records. In the ABOT Corpus, it is also the case that those driving the decision-making process are not always the most senior in status, and more generally there is evidence that in collaborative discourse differences in status play a less important role than in unidirectional discourse (see Chapter 4). The advantage of decision-making as a genre category is that the linguistic characteristics of decision-making discourse linked to the discourse goals (e.g. the use of deontic modals like ‘need’) can be more easily described than those of meetings, where the goals may be more diverse. This means genres can be compared easily across workplace contexts. On the other hand, meetings have a spatio-temporal reality within the workplace context, and ‘meetings’ as a genre label has the advantage of being recognized by its users. Perhaps another way of looking at the difference between decision-making and meetings as generic categories (besides the goal-based versus structure-based definitions), is to see decision-making as a primary genre, which also occurs in nonworkplace contexts (as seen in the discussion above of the CANCODE data), and meetings as a secondary genre with a recognized cultural identity in the workplace.

2.2.2 The structure of meetings Most descriptions of meetings have tended to identify a three-part generic structure, for example, Bargiela-Chiappini, and Harris (1995) found that both British and Italian management meetings could be divided into the following phases: 1. Opening Phase 2. Debating Phase 3. Closing Phase Holmes and Stubbe (2003) propose a similar three-part structure, but label the second phase ‘exploratory’. Handford (2007, forthcoming) elaborates on this three-phase model and proposes further stages which take into account the

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preparation leading up to a meeting and what happens as a result of the meeting: Stage pre-2: Meeting preparation Stage pre-1: Pre meeting (transition move) Stage 1: Meeting coheres (transition move) Stage 2: Discussion of the agenda/topic (transition move) Stage 3: Closing of meeting Stage 4: Post-meeting effects The pre-meeting involves any talk (often phatic) that occurs before the official start of the meeting. The first and the last stages (meeting preparation and post-meeting effects) are different from the other four, as they do not describe specific interactive events; but including these in the model recognizes the fact that meetings do not ‘exist in a vacuum’ but are in fact highly intertextual (Handford 2007, p. 319). Handford argues that the model should also take account of the turn-by-turn nature of meetings, and therefore includes a transition move between three of the stages as shown above. For example to signal the transition between the pre-meeting stage and stage 1, the chair may say something like: ‘okay well we might just start without Seth’ (from Holmes and Stubbe 2003, p. 57). The core stage of a meeting – the discussion of the agenda/topic – consists of several phases, which tend to follow either a linear or a ‘spiral’ pattern, as identified by Holmes and Stubbe (2003, pp. 68–71). In a meeting following a linear pattern, each problem is dealt with before moving on to the next; if it has a spiral pattern, a point may recur several times with further discussion. Meetings, or stages of meetings, with a decision-focus tend to have a spiral pattern, whereas information exchange meetings (typically between managers and subordinates) tend to be more linear (Handford 2007). Handford shows that there is considerable variety in how/whether each of the stages is realized and how developed it is. Some of the factors which seem to have an influence here include the regularity of the meeting, whether the meeting is internal or external and what the relationship between the participants is. For example, in regular internal meetings, stage 1 (meeting coheres) tends to be quite short and perfunctory (ibid., p. 321).

2.2.3 Service encounters Service encounters comprise another genre occurring in the ABOT Corpus which is quite widespread in institutional and workplace discourse, and has

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received considerable attention in the literature. Service encounters are ‘front stage’ activities (see Chapter 1.3), frequently involving interactions between service providers and the general public, for example retail sales. Some of the foundational studies in genre analysis were based on market transactions (Mitchell 1957/75) and small shop encounters (Hasan 1985), and other retail settings examined include encounters in bookshops (Aston 1988) and at the supermarket checkout (Kuiper and Flindall 2000). The leisure industry has also received some attention, for example service encounters in travel agencies (Ventola 1987, Coupland and Ylänne-McEwen 2000, Ylänne-McEwen 2004), in restaurants (Merritt 1976) and at the front desk of hotels (Schneider 1989, Cheng 2004). Many service encounters take place over the telephone, particularly with the growth of call centres, which have been the focus of a number of studies (Cameron 2000, Cheepen 2000, Taylor and Bain 2003). Telephone calls may also be initiated by customers, as for example in the case of calls to emergency services (Zimmerman 1992), or queries regarding bills or banking, for example Iacobucci’s (1990) study of customer’s calls to the telephone company regarding their phone bills. Besides such interactions between lay people and professionals, service encounters also take place between companies or professionals, for example the commodity trading studied by Firth (1995a and 1995b), or the encounters between wholesale paper sellers and their customers that form part of the ABOT corpus. With such a diversity of encounter types and settings, does it make sense to think of the category of service encounters as constituting a genre with a common communicative purpose and having particular structural features? There are at least two factors which can be said to be common to all service encounters. First, the roles of service provider and customer (or service receiver) are constants in all service encounters. Secondly, the main transactional goal of such encounters is that of giving or obtaining a service of some kind, whether it be transacting actual goods or services, or simply obtaining information. However, specifying the structural features of the genre is not straightforward. Hasan (1985) described the ‘generic structure potential’ of service encounters as consisting of certain ‘obligatory’ and ‘optional’ moves or elements: z Obligatory elements: sales request, sales compliance, sale, purchase,

purchase closure z Optional elements: greeting, sales initiation, sales enquiry, finis

However, positing that all the above moves are obligatory is problematic, as Ventola (1987) points out, as there are clearly many service encounters which do not include an actual transaction in the form of a sale and a purchase. For instance, frequently customers may only make an enquiry of some kind, but the interaction is nevertheless still a service encounter. One could say that at a minimum all service encounters will include a service request and a service compliance of some kind, but this does not really tell us very much about an

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encounter. In fact, focusing too much on structure may mean missing what is most interesting about the encounter, and indeed many studies have examined other aspects of service encounters. For example, Goodwin (1995) looked at how teams working in the operations room of an airport collaboratively construct responses to queries from pilots of incoming flights. Zimmerman’s (1992) study of calls to emergency services examined the sometimes difficult task of achieving alignment with callers in order to get the required information. Furthermore, many service encounters include a substantial amount of relational talk, in addition to the transactional elements, as a number of studies have shown. McCarthy (2000) describes ‘close contact service encounters’ in hair-dressing salons and during driving lessons, where server and client are in close physical proximity for an extended period, and shows that relational talk is prominent in such interactions, with transactional elements only making up a small portion of the talk. McCarthy convincingly demonstrates that relational talk plays a key role in such service encounters, and other studies have also focused on the role of small talk and other relational elements of talk in some service encounters, for example travel agency interactions (Coupland and Ylänne-McEwen 2000, Ylänne-McEwen 2004) and supermarket checkout talk (Cheepen 2000). The presence or absence of relational talk in service encounters clearly has a great deal to do with the nature of the service encounter, for example, small talk is unlikely in a situation where participants must focus exclusively on the task at hand, for example in responding to an emergency call. But, the nature of the relationship between server and client is also an important factor: whether they are strangers or have occasional or even regular contact with one another. Where there is a relationship to build or maintain, attention to relational aspects of the interaction will be more important than if it is a one-off encounter. For example, Ylänne-McEwen (1996) found that, in travel agency encounters, the level of acquaintance between server and client played a role in the occurrence of relational talk.3 Where there is no relationship to maintain, transactional elements of the genre may dominate, with phatic elements limited to greetings and thanking, as for example in the beginning of a service encounter at the front desk of a university office in example 2.4 (which we have already seen in Chapter 1, example 1.2): Example 2.4: (1) Visitor /(Hi)/ (2) Server Hello. (3) Visitor Um . . . (5 sec) Is there a list of . . . uhm . . . faculty assistants? [1 sec] in the handbook or something like that? I need to try and /???/ (4) Server ⎣No:, there isn’t a list in the handbook, I have a . . . typewritten list here, (5) Visitor Wow. thank you very much.

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In such interactions, the participants exclusively enact their pre-established roles as server and servee, but if a relationship has already been established, they may step out of these roles and interact on a more personal level. Example 2.5 shows a small talk sequence from another service encounter in a university office – here between a student and two secretaries involving an enquiry about the student’s user name. In the relational talk shown, the participants refer to a previous encounter with the student, in which she had left some food for her mother’s birthday dinner in the English office for the secretaries to ‘look after’. Example 2.5: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Liz Jenny Susan Liz Jenny Liz [3] (7) Susan (8) Liz (9) Liz

Did your mum like her dinner. Yeah hehehe I know it was a while ago, She’d been-She’d been to Sainsbury’s hadn’t she. Hehehehe Yeah /??/ ⎣ And she was cooking dinner for her mum. ↑ Oh was it for your mum. I didn’t realize that. ⎣ Yeah, For your mum’s birthday.

Here the asymmetry of the service encounter and the attendant institutional roles are temporarily suspended and participants interact as equals, referring to common ground and to the relationship that already exists between them (see also Ylänne-McEwen 2004). This relational episode occurs in the middle of the transactional encounter, effectively interrupting the service provision. Where, on the other hand, there is a relationship, but it is not well-established, evidence from the ABOT Corpus suggests that phatic communion occurring at the beginning and end of encounters is particularly prevalent in workplace encounters (Koester 2006, p. 142, see also Laver 1975). One striking example of this is a service encounter involving a meeting between a supplier and customer, where the small talk at the beginning and end of the meeting take up 18 and 8 turns respectively. What may play a particularly important role in service encounters is the power difference that often exists between server/supplier and customer, which seems to result in a predominance of negative politeness (see Chapter 4.2), characterized by a large amount of hedging and indirect language, as is the case in the above-mentioned customer-supplier meeting (key language is underlined): Example 2.6 (1) Ian

Uh ↓ Just wanted to come and chat to you a little bit about the company. /’Cause the-/ paper brokers have changed a little bit,

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(2) Paul Oh yeah? What you been up to then (3) Ian Uh:m . . . Well I– I did quite a bit with Danny Murphy and ⎣<Paul>: Mm⎦ Bob Green. Um centrally. And uh . . . we used to do quite a bit- with you as well. ↓Uh:m . . . /but at least i- / This exchange marks the transition from the 18 turns of initial small talk to the actual business of the meeting, and it is marked by extensive hedging on the part of the supplier, Paul: ‘just wanted to’, ‘a little bit’, ‘quite a bit’. Another type of service encounter in which such negative politeness is important is in interactions at the front desk of a hotel. Cheng’s (2004) analysis of in a number of checking out encounters in Hong Kong hotels revealed that Chinese front desk staff interacting in English with international clients sometimes failed to display the expected degree of negative politeness, thus falling short of the level of service stipulated by the hotels’ mission statement: Only six [of eleven] checking out discourses clearly communicate a message of customer care and concern for providing “impeccable service” that is so central to the mission of the hotel. (Cheng 2004, p. 157) The role played by relational talk is of course an important topic for most workplace genres (see Koester 2004b and 2006). But, because there is such a range in the possible social distance between servers and clients (as compared, for example with workplace colleagues, where a certain level of familiarity can be assumed), the discursive shape of service encounters may be particularly diverse as a result. One objection to viewing service encounters as genres could be the argument that different types of discursive activity can take place within a service encounter setting. For example, service encounters between companies often involve protracted negotiations, which could be considered a different genre entirely (Firth 1995a and 1995b). Ylänne-McEwen (1996) takes a bottom-up approach to analysing travel agency encounters, looking at the local management of the discourse and the goals the participants are orienting to, rather than classifying such discourse a priori as a service encounter.4 Therefore, an interaction can be considered to constitute a service encounter if the main transactional goal is that of giving or obtaining a service or information. Taking a bottom-up approach allows for the possibility that more than one genre may be performed in the course of an interaction, for example the customersupplier encounter from the ABOT Corpus mentioned above mostly involves service provision, but does contain some elements of negotiation.

2.2.4 E-mail Turning to written workplace genres, various forms of business correspondence, particularly letters, faxes and e-mail are central to the work of any organization.

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Over the last decade or so, e-mail as emerged as an important – or perhaps even the most important – means of communication in the workplace. But can it be considered a genre? In their seminal study of genres of organizational communication, Yates and Orlikowski (1992) identify e-mail as being a medium, not a genre. They stress that the distinction between medium and genre is an important one: Media are the physical means by which communication is created, transmitted or stored. Genres are typified communicative actions invoked in recurrent situations and characterized by similar substance and form. (p. 319) However, they acknowledge that the medium may play a role in the recurrent situation and form of a genre. On the one hand, the recurrent situation may involve the use of a specific medium, for example, an e-mail message typically evokes an e-mail response; and on the other hand, the medium can be an aspect of a genre’s form, for example letters are traditionally paper-based (ibid., p. 310). Other studies, even some which build on Yates and Orlikowski’s work (Mullholand 1999, Nickerson 1999), treat e-mail as a genre in its own right. In examining e-mail as a genre in a Dutch multinational corporation, Nickerson (1999) invokes the conventional association of genre with a medium discussed by Yates and Orlikowski. She suggests that it may be possible to identify a common communicative purpose for e-mails, citing a number of studies (Sherblom 1988, Markus 1994, Ziv 1996) which show that e-mail seems to be used primarily to exchange information in organizational settings (ibid., p. 40); whereas other media, for example face-to-face communication, may be chosen for other purposes which do not involve the straightforward exchange of information. Nickerson’s study examines the use of English in the Dutch multinational as an aspect of the ‘form’ of the genre, resulting from the recurrent situation in which it is used (ibid., p. 42). Mulholland (1999) also views e-mail as a genre, but notes that as people learn to use e-mail by ‘trial and error’, they are influenced by other ‘companion genres’ (such as letters and memoranda), and that therefore, e-mail draws on features of other genres. (ibid., p. 58). There are also different theories about the origins of e-mail. According to Yates and Orlikowski (1992), e-mail has evolved from the genre of written memos, but they note that the medium of e-mail may also be used for more ‘ephemeral’ types of messages which resemble other genres, such as voice mail (ibid., p. 317). According to Gimenez (2000), e-mail is derived from telephone conversations, and therefore has many features of spoken language, such as simple syntax, reliance on context, elliptical forms and informal language. Louhiala-Salminen (1999) suggests that new demands in today’s business environment, such as the need to communicate across time zones, results in the choice of e-mail and fax for types of communication that might have been done via the telephone previously. There seems to be general agreement in most studies that e-mail is influenced by both written and spoken genres, and is

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therefore a kind of ‘hybrid’ genre (Yates and Orlikowski 1992, Mullholland 1999, Louhiala-Salminen 1999). However, a number of studies examining specific types of e-mail communication throw doubt on the notion that a common communicative purpose can be identified for all e-mail. A recent study by Jensen (2009) on professional e-mail negotiation would seem to strengthen the case for seeing e-mail as a medium rather than a genre, as such interactions clearly have more in common with face-to-face negotiations than with other types of e-mail communication, such as internal messages, where the focus is on conveying information. Gimenez (2006) discusses the phenomenon of ‘embedded’ e-mails, where a series of messages sent back and forth results in a chain of textually connected messages. Such embedded e-mails seem to fulfil a particular need in a globalized business environment, as ‘the appropriate communication tool when the complexity of the topic being discussed by a geographically dispersed team calls for team decision-making’ (ibid., p. 162). This is clearly quite a different communicative purpose from the one of simple information exchange identified by Nickerson (1999). What Gimenez seems to be describing is a particular genre of e-mail with specific formal and structural features that all contribute to the overall communicative purpose. In terms of structure, an embedded e-mail begins with a ‘chain initiator’, followed by one or several embedded messages and concludes with a ‘chain terminator’. Other key formal features of the genre are the carbon copy (CC) and forward (FW) facilities, which allow messages to be sent to several participants and passed from recipient to recipient. This enables multiple participation in the decision-making process, with different levels of participation of the recipients: some of them actively involved and others as ‘witnesses’ of the process (Gimenez 2006, pp. 161–162). Gimenez (ibid.) is mainly concerned with showing how e-mail has changed in response to a changing business environment involving new demands on communication, namely the need to make decisions in geographically dispersed teams and to keep a written record of the process. What all studies of e-mail do seem to agree on is that e-mail communication is the site par excellence for examining genre change or evolution in organizational settings. Many studies highlight the emergent nature of e-mail and faxes, such as the lack of standardization, which leads to much more variation, for example in the level of formality, when compared with letters or memos (Mullholland 1999, Louhiala-Salminen 1999, Koester 2004a). Yates and Orlikowski (1992), Orlikowski et al. (1995) and Yates et al. (1999) examine e-mail and other forms of electronic communication to illustrate the process of genre change, and the way in which genre both shapes and is shaped by communicative practice in organizations. For example, Orlikowski et al. (1995) show how specific individuals (so-called mediators) influence the adoption of new computer-mediated modes of communication in an organization. A diachronic examination of the studies of e-mail communication provides a telling illustration in itself of the way in which e-mail has evolved from an

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electronic medium for conveying information, such as company-internal memos (Yates and Orlikowski 1992) to a much more versatile tool used for a variety of purposes, including decision-making (Gimenez 2006) and negotiation (Jensen 2009). With the increased use of e-mail and other forms of electronically mediated communication, such as newsgroups and business networking, for a wide variety of communicative purposes, it seems more accurate to speak of genres of e-mail and other forms of electronic communication, as Yates et al. (1999) do, rather than e-mail as a genre. For example, in analysing messages posted on a Japanese company-internal electronic news system, Yates et al. (1999) identify six different genres, including official announcement, trip report, and lost and found notices. But whether or not e-mail is treated as a genre in its own right, it exemplifies two important aspects of genres in today’s workplace: (1) the rapid evolution of the genres that are used, and (2) the increasing hybridity of many genres. A further, related aspect of e-mail which is discussed in a number of studies is that it is not used in isolation, but in conjunction with other written and spoken genres. Gimenez (2006, p. 164) notes that embedded emails are often used in conjunction with conference calls, and Louhiala-Salminen (2002, p. 217) talks of the ‘interwining’ of email communication with phone calls in dealing with a particular problem in the course of a manager’s day. This interaction of workplace genres with one another is the subject of the remainder of this chapter.

2.3 The use of genres within organizations Workplace genres do not of course exist in isolation, but the discourse community, whether at the organizational or professional level, uses a ‘genre repertoire’ (Orlikowski and Yates 2004). Looking at the kinds of genre used within different workplace contexts, a very general distinction can be made regarding such genre sets or repertoires. In some professions, such as the legal professions and tax accounting, written texts play a key role. The work carried out by professionals in these fields consists in producing texts, and texts thus essentially constitute and define the work (Devitt 1991). In many other jobs, the work is carried out less (or less exclusively) through written texts, and more through a process of collaborative tasks. Verbal communication may interact with material resources or ‘artefacts’ (Goodwin 1995) that people use in their work (charts, forms, lab equipment, electronic devices etc.); or the work itself may be constituted mainly through non-verbal action (as in the case of manual labour), and language may merely accompany the task. This kind of language has been referred to as ‘language-in-action’ (Ure 1971). Of course, even in professions which are heavily text-based, such as tax accounting, verbal genres will still be used; for example, tax accountants will have meetings or telephone conversations with clients. Both written and spoken genres are used in all workplaces, but in some professions written texts play a much greater role than in

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others. Written and spoken workplace genres also interact with one another, for example, meetings are minuted or medical records are produced as a result of verbal consultations. This relationship, or intertextuality, between written and spoken genres will also be examined, as well as the relationship between genre and ‘material artefacts’ (Goodwin 1995) or ‘tools’ (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995)5 that are used in their enactment.

2.3.1 Text-based genres Devitt’s (1991) much cited study of the range of written genres used by tax accountants illustrates the way in which a genre set is used by a professional group in the course of its daily work routine and how these genres are part and parcel of the discourse community’s values and epistemology. Texts are central to the work of tax accountants, as they are both the resources and the products of this profession. Texts are its products, as tax accountants charge fees for the texts they write for their clients. They are also its resource, as other texts, such as tax returns or letters from the tax authority, are the subject of the texts they write, and texts, such as tax publications, provide the authority for what the accountants write. Devitt concludes that, These texts and their interaction are so integral to the community’s work that they essentially constitute and govern the tax accounting community, defining and reflecting that community’s epistemology and values. (ibid., pp. 336–357) Other professions in which one can expect written texts to play such an essential, enabling role are law and academia (ibid., p. 344). In his work on research genres, Swales (2004) examines how different academic genres are linked to one another through hierarchies, sets, chains and networks. According to Swales, ‘genre networks’ are ‘the totality of genres available for a particular sector (such as the research world)’ (ibid., p. 22), whereas ‘genre sets’ are ‘the total genre network that a particular individual – or . . . class of individuals – engages in’ (ibid., p. 20). Studying ‘genre hierarchies’, reveals those genres which are most highly valued in different academic disciplines, which may be, for example, the research article, research monograph or conference presentation, depending on the discipline (ibid, pp. 12–18). ‘Genre chains’ consist of a series of genres which are chronologically linked to one another, in that ‘one genre is a necessary antecedent for another’ (ibid., p. 18), as for example proposals for conference papers or research articles, which go through a review and redrafting process before the presentation of the conference paper or the publication of the article. The chain may consist entirely of written texts, as in the case of a research article, but even an oral genre like the conference presentation (which in some cases is a written text read out loud), is preceded by a chain of written genres, from the call for papers through to the abstract,

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review process, and sometimes the submission of the written paper prior to the conference.

2.3.2 Action-based genres In other areas of work, producing and responding to written texts plays a lesser role, and work is carried out more through spoken genres, which may involve interaction with the physical environment. In such contexts, non-verbal activities may be integral to the genres used, and language may even play a subsidiary or supporting role to the activity. Ure (1971) uses the term ‘languagein-action’, borrowed from Malinowski, to describe situations in which it is essential to know about the ‘the action accompanying the text’ (ibid., p. 443) to understand what is going on, as in example 2.7: Example 2.7 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Mark Val Mark Val Mark Val Mark Val

There’s a matt one, Mm, That’s with nothing on it, [1] yeah? Mm = = An’ it stays like tha:t, yeah? Yeah = = That’s . . . not got any varnish on it. Right.

Without knowing that this conversation takes place in a printing company, and that the printer (Mark) is showing a label he has just printed to a colleague, it would be very difficult to make sense of this interaction. This is due to the frequent use of deixis, typical of language-in-action, as a result of speakers referring to material artefacts which form part of their work. While one would typically associate such language with manual labour, for example Weigel and Weigel’s (1985) study of directives in the work of migrant labourers, languagein-action plays an important role in a variety of workplaces. In the ABOT Corpus, all the settings in which data were collected were white-collar offices (with the exception of the printing company), and language-in-action typically occurs in interactions involving procedural discourse or briefing. While in ‘extreme’ forms of language-in-action, language plays a role which is completely ancillary to – and perhaps even unnecessary for – the action; in many cases, linguistic and non-linguistic elements of the genre are essential to accomplish the task at hand. Goodwin (1995) gives an interesting example from an airport ground operations room of the way in which actions, language and material artefacts interact in ‘collaboratively constructing’ a response to queries from pilots of incoming flights. Announcements from pilots who are

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coming in to land a plane are received by a flight tracker, who consults video monitors showing the current status of the gates, and confirms to the pilot whether or not the gate is ready to receive the plane. In doing this, the flight tracker may also need input from a ramp planner, which may lead to a collaborative construction of the response given to the pilot. In this very specialized genre, a co-ordination of linguistic interaction, interaction with material artefacts, and action (including the pilot flying the plane and the physical orientation of operators in the control room towards the monitors) are essential for its successful accomplishment. Goodwin refers to this activity as a service encounter (clearly of a very specialized kind), and although she does not use the term ‘genre’, her reference to the ‘predictability with which such sequences are routinely played out’ (ibid., p. 176), clearly shows that this is ‘a typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation’ (Yates and Orlikowski 1992, p. 301). Although, as we have seen, professional discourse tends to involve a large number of written genres, there are some professions in which language-inaction also plays an important role. The medical professions readily come to mind (e.g. examining a patient or performing an operation), but the same is true of architects, who need to refer to material artefacts, such as building plans, models and physical structures. Medway (1996) gives the following example (2.8) from an interaction between architects: Example 2.8 Dave:

OK, OK, I understand, OK, I thought this was the second floor plan. So here’s the main wall, and then . . . so that this is, this is 75 cm right here, right, and then . . . and then it cuts in a meter. Nelson: Yes, on the top level. Dave: OK on the top, over here. Nelson: Yes. Dave: That. Nelson: But on the main level it only goes 150, so it goes in that much, and it goes out like that, it goes back in like that. (from Medway 1996, p. 484)

The language is typical of language-in-action with frequent use of deixis (‘this’, ‘here’, ‘that’), but what is interesting about this example is that, although the material artefact the speakers are consulting is a building plan, they seem to be describing an actual building. Dave says, ‘here’s the main wall’, although he is simply pointing to some markings on a two-dimensional plan – there is no actual wall there. Medway (1996) argues that this ‘virtual building’ is as real for the speakers as a physical building, although it does not yet exist: ‘the virtual building seems to be a shared reality for the participants. They talk about it entirely as if it had substantive current existence’ (ibid., p. 482). Some

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interesting characteristics of the virtual building are that knowledge about it may be unevenly distributed between the participants, as illustrated in example 2.8, where Nelson seems to have more complete knowledge than Dave, and that the virtual building can be changed through talk, that is through joint decisions made about changes to the building plans. According to Medway (1996 and 2007), the genres used by architects draw on a range of symbolic and semiotic systems, that is verbal, gestural and graphical representation. For example, architects’ plans often combine graphical representation with writing, and example 2.8 shows a combination of speech and gesture (pointing to different parts of the plan). But language-in-action which involves the construction of such virtual worlds is not restricted to the language of architects. Example 2.9 below (from the ABOT Corpus) is from the sales office of a paper wholesaler. The extract is part of a lengthy explanation of the office manager, Ben, to a new sales rep, Sam, about the procedure he needs to follow when a printer wants to order adhesive labels (see also Chapter 4.5). He explains that Ben needs to get details from the customer about the format of the plate they use for printing, in order to see whether the company’s labels are the right format for that plate. This involves Ben in explaining the printing process in great detail: Example 2.9 (1) Ben (2) Sam (3) Ben

(4) Sam (5) Ben

So here’s his printing plate, an’ on his printing plate, he’s got– let’s say they’re– let’s say they’re um: labels for peanuts. Yeah, [drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks] so on each one o’ those, . . . they’re just white labels, and in the middle o’ that you might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a couple o’ legs and a couple o’ arms ↓ an’ /?/ an’ put peanuts under it right? Alright? ⎣Yeah. . . [chuckles] So all you’ve got on here,. . . is loads o’ little peanuts, with arms an’ legs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going round an’ round a cylinder, . . . that’s /flat/ wrapped round a cylindar like that right, . . . an’ here comes all the labels yeah? . . . . So here comes these labels, . . . an’ all those little . . . peanuts, land, right in the middle of all those . . . labels, right?

In explaining the printing process, Ben constructs a whole virtual printing press in operation, aided by a drawing on a piece of paper representing the sheet with labels. As with the virtual buildings, the printing process he describes is not actually happening, but the participants focus their attention on this activity as if it were actually taking place. Using this virtual situation as part of

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his explanation has a pedagogical purpose in trying to make the explanation vivid and entertaining for the new and very young sales rep. Action-based genres thus involve situated workplace activities, where verbal activities interact with non-verbal ones, and thereby are integrated into an ‘extratextual’ environment. However, this environment may involve virtual as well as physical worlds.

2.3.3 The Interaction of spoken and written genres The juxtaposition in the previous section of text and action-based genres is an attempt to capture some of the key ways in which workplaces may differ in terms of their genre repertoire. But, of course the text versus action or written versus spoken distinction represents two extremes. Most people use a range of written and spoken genres in the workplace, as well as genres in which some kind of nonverbal activity plays a role. The key point is that performing genres may involve drawing on both verbal and non-verbal resources, and that the genres used within an organization or a person’s daily work routine are linked to one another in various ways. Devitt (1991, p. 336) remarks on the high degree of intertextuality in the genres used by tax accountants: ‘No text is single, as texts refer to one another, draw from one another, create the purpose for one another.’ Such intertextuality can also exist between the written and spoken genres used in a workplace. In observing all the activities carried out by one manager in the course of a day, Louhiala-Salminen (2002, p. 217) notes that: throughout the day spoken and written communication were totally intertwined, there was hardly any activity in either mode where the other would not be present as well; many phone calls were to confirm an issue in an e-mail message, e-mail messages referred to phone calls, and they were constantly discussed in face-to-face communication with colleagues. This intertextuality is reflected in the many explicit references in the discourse used by the participants to other discourse acts, for example writing ‘I tried to call you back’ in an e-mail. A written document may also be the topic of discussion, in which case understanding the intertextual references is absolutely essential in order to make sense of the interaction. Koester (2004a, pp. 43–46) shows the following example (2.10. below) from the ABOT Corpus of a meeting between a sales manager and his boss, the president of the company, where they discuss a document the former has drawn up to give his sales team. The draft document is a list of ‘conversation stoppers’, that is things that sales reps should not say in their phone calls with potential customers. The president, Chris, makes a number of suggestions how he thinks the

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document can be improved: Example 2.10 (21) Chris Uh . . . I don’t know why this is . . . large. Isn’t this the same as all the rest of these? It’s just another . . . example? (22) Joe Yeah. It should be, [1.5] Yeah that’s just another example. (23) Chris [. . .] (24) Chris U:hm . . . an’ a- an’ maybe just a note at the end here, that says to the person ↑ Ask yourself is this question . . . a: an indirect invitation for the prospect to end the conversation [Joe: Yeah] because . . . I mean if they really answered that honestly, almost all of these are. The interaction is replete with references to the document discussed using deictic items such as ‘this’, ‘these’, ‘that’, ‘here’, and this spoken advice-giving sequence (a specific type of procedural discourse) is entirely dependent on the written text discussed. Another way in which written and spoken genres can be linked is if, as is frequently the case in organizational settings, a written record is routinely made of a verbal event, such as a meeting. Cook-Gumperz and Messerman (1999) discuss the case of record-keeping in the medical profession. They studied an interdisciplinary medical team in the nursing home care unit of a hospital, combining ethnographic fieldwork with discourse analysis of weekly team meetings (see example 2.3 above). The purpose of the meetings was to review patients’ treatment plans and to produce a written record in the form of a revised treatment plan. Thus the team meetings, which involve decision-making regarding patient care and the treatment plans, are specialized genres used in this institution, and perhaps in other similar professional medical settings. Cook-Gumperz and Messerman’s (1990) study focuses on the way in which negotiated consensus is achieved in the meetings and how the records are created as a result. They discovered that there is an ‘essential tension’ (ibid., p. 151) between the what happens in the meetings and what ends up in the records. The meetings are local, situated interactional events, which are ‘subject to all the ambiguities and problems of any interactional exchange’ (ibid., p. 148), but the records must provide an institutionally sanctioned account of the decisions made at the meeting. This means that decisions taken at the meetings must be made to fit the institutional requirements, which includes the form and wording required by the treatment plan. This kind of tension between spoken workplace genres and the records that are kept of them is probably not unique to the medical profession. The written genres provide the official and institutionally sanctioned records of the interactive events, but are not ‘merely factual descriptions of what was done’ (ibid., p. 170).

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Such intertextual links between genres used in the workplace remind us that individual genres are embedded in workplace processes and may be part of a ‘genre chain’ (Swales 2004). This is reflected in Handford’s (2007 and forthcoming) model of the meeting genre in the pre-meeting and post-meeting phases (see section 2.2.1). Similarly, Müller (2006b, pp. 144–149) notes that whereas dealing with a workplace task may involve a meeting at the ‘core’ of the process, this will be preceded and followed by a succession of activities, some of which will involve communicating with others (e.g. through phone calls and e-mail), while others will not (e.g. producing or copying documentation). Examining the intertextual links between all the different genres used in an organization or professional group is one way of trying to understand the ‘community’s epistemology and values’ (Devitt 1991, p. 337), as Devitt for example has done. Smart (1998) made a similar attempt in a case study using interpretive ethnography to investigate the Bank of Canada economists’ knowledge-making practices. Smart (ibid., p. 117) found that the economists employ a ‘distinctive discourse combining language, statistics, and mathematics to create specialized knowledge’. The way the economy is intersubjectively perceived in this professional community is informed by a set of oral and written genres, such as regular meetings, ‘analytic notes’, ‘research memoranda’ and the policy document (ibid., p. 117). The genres used by the economists thus play a particular role within the epistemology of the discourse community; however, Smart does not analyse these genres or their use in any detail. Medway (2007, p. 195) summarizes the role of intertextuality in workplace discourse in the following way: Intertextuality is of central importance in workplace discourse. It ties all the separate written and spoken communications into a single multi-stranded web of discourse (a text is a textile, something woven) and in the process knits the diverse participants together into a discourse community. (original italics)

2.4 Conclusion Drawing on the three main approaches to genre analysis, this chapter has attempted to show how diverse and multi-layered any attempt to describe the world of workplace genres necessarily will be. While the notion of genre remains difficult to pin down, it nevertheless provides a useful lens through which to view workplace discourse. As genres, the activities and texts used in the workplace can be examined for their structural and formal characteristics, as well as for the ways in which they are embedded in the practices of the discourse community. I have suggested that there are broadly two ways of approaching the study of genre in the workplace: on the one hand, a particular genre can be examined across different workplaces or professions, whereas

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another kind of perspective is provided by the examination of the use of different genres within a particular workplace or professional group. The first approach is particularly useful for identifying the formal and structural characteristics of a genre, and for generalizing findings beyond specific workplace contexts. In this chapter, I have attempted to identify some of the key characteristics of a number of genres which are used very widely across different workplace settings: decision-making and meetings, service encounters and e-mail. However, we have also seen that identifying genres at such a general level of abstraction is not unproblematic, and that it may not be possible to formulate generic descriptions which are relevant for all realizations of the genre across different workplace contexts. The second approach has led us into an investigation of genres first as interrelated written (and spoken) texts within particular workplaces or professions, and secondly as situated actions, in which verbal and non-verbal activities interact with material resources. While we have seen that some professions or workplaces may be either more text- or action-based, the text versus action distinction also provides two perspectives on how genres are integrated into and constitute the workplace practices of an individual or a group within an organization. The topic of genre in workplace discourse is a recurring one in this book. In the following chapter, which examines workplace discourse and corpora, we see how corpus linguistic research can provide further insights into the genres used at work.

Chapter 3

What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse?

3.1 Introduction As outlined in Chapter 1, one of the questions this book seeks to answer is: What are the distinctive characteristics of workplace discourse? This question has been explored in previous research using a variety of methodological approaches, including conversation analysis (CA) (e.g. Drew and Heritage 1992), genre analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993) and social constructionist approaches (e.g. Holmes and Stubbe 2003). Despite the proliferation of research activity in the field of business, professional and workplace discourse, few studies have used corpus linguistic methods to analyse the nature of workplace and business discourse (McCarthy and Handford 2004). However, some recent corpus-driven studies1 (e.g. Nelson 2000a, 2000b, and 2006, Cheng 2004 and 2007, Handford 2007 and forthcoming) provide some fascinating insights into some of the distinctive features of workplace and business language. The most obvious contribution of corpus analytical methods to the study of a variety or register is in providing information about the most frequent lexical items and collocations. However, corpus methods have also been used to explore a range of features which have usually been examined using exclusively qualitative methods. These include pragmatic features, such as speech acts and politeness markers, interactive features, such as interruptions and question tags, as well as genre and even prosody. This chapter reviews relevant findings from corpus studies of workplace discourse, which generally combine qualitative with quantitative methods to explore features of lexico-grammar (including collocation and ‘chunks’), pragmatics (including interactive features) and genre.

3.2 Overview of relevant corpora ‘Mega-corpora’, such as the British National Corpus (BNC) with 100 million words, the Bank of English with currently over 500 million words, have been around for some time now, and have yielded many insights into the lexis, grammar and phraseology of the English language. While many of these large corpora contain sub-corpora of more specific varieties, including professional and business

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genres, most studies of more specialized varieties or genres have been carried out using much smaller collections of texts. This includes studies drawing on small, specialized corpora, particularly in the area of English for Academic and Specific Purposes (e.g. Hyland 2002, 2004; Flowerdew 2008). Smaller specialized corpora are in many ways more suitable for studying specific registers or genres, as they are carefully targeted, and set up to reflect the contextual features of the genre, such as information about the setting and the participants. There are now corpora of both written and spoken academic English, for example the 6.5 million-word British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE) containing proficient student writing, the 1.8 million Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English (MICASE) containing transcripts of spoken interactions, such as lectures, seminars and dissertation defences, and the smaller British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus (consisting of 160 lectures and 39 seminars). There are also much smaller and more specialized ESP/EAP corpora, for example the 250,000-word Corpus of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) consisting of 60 summary reports commissioned by the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (Flowerdew 2008), or the Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC), which consists of 200 letters of application (Connor et al.1997, Upton and Connor 2001). Particularly relevant for our purposes, are those specialized corpora which focus specifically on business and workplace discourse. I use the word ‘corpus’ and ‘corpora’ to refer to collections of written and spoken data which are compiled in such a way that they are searchable using corpus linguistic computer software, such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1999), and which, in the case of spoken texts, have been fully transcribed. This is an important distinction, as a number of collections of spoken workplace data which inform some key studies in the field have not been analysed quantitatively using corpus tools. Such collections include the Language in the Workplace Project based at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, which consists of approximately 2,000 spoken interactions (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003) and Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris’s (1997b) research on business meetings based on approximately 18 hours of business meetings. The intention is not to criticize these projects, which have generated extremely valuable studies of workplace and business discourse, but this chapter focuses specifically on what studies derived from corpora, as defined here, have revealed about the nature of workplace discourse. The first such corpus of note to be compiled is Mike Nelson’s Business English Corpus, BEC (Nelson 2000b). It contains 1 million words of spoken and written business data, with slightly more written than spoken texts. Nelson makes the very useful distinction between ‘language about’ business and ‘language doing’ business. Language used for talking about business is from texts such as business books, newspapers and interviews; whereas language used for actually doing business can be found, for example, in emails, reports, meetings, negotiations and phone calls. While BEC focuses specifically on ‘business discourse’ (see Chapter 1), and therefore is not necessarily representative of ‘workplace discourse’ in general, it does cover a very important area within workplace discourse. Also, as the first corpus of its kind, the work carried


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out by Nelson is pioneering, and provides a model of how a corpus of workplace discourse can be compiled and analysed. More recently, the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Business English Corpus (CANBEC) has been compiled, consisting exclusively of spoken language doing business (Handford 2007, forthcoming). This 1 million-word corpus consists mainly of business meetings recorded mostly in the United Kingdom in a large variety of business sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry, information technology and manufacturing. The majority (three in every four) of the meetings are company internal meetings, and therefore involve ‘workplace discourse’, whereas the external meetings between companies are more specifically concerned with ‘business discourse’. A wider range of workplace genres were targeted in the 262,000-word business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), which consists of 30 hours of meetings, service encounters, workplace presentations, job interviews, telephone conversations and informal office talk recorded in Hong Kong. Much of the corpus consists of company-internal interactions, and therefore it provides a good coverage of workplace discourse in general. The speakers are Hong Kong Chinese, native speakers of English and speakers with mother tongues other than Chinese, and settings include a wide range of workplace contexts, including the service industry, for example hotels (see Warren 2004). Recently two written workplace corpora, the Hong Kong Engineering Corpus (currently at over 9 million words) and the Hong Kong Financial Services Corpus (currently over 7 million words), have been added to the projects being carried out at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (see Research Centre for Professional Communication in English Website). In discussing what corpora can tell us about workplace discourse, I draw particularly on the three corpora described above (BEC, CANBEC, HKCSE), as these are the largest business and workplace corpora to date. But a number of smaller and more specialized workplace corpora have also yielded findings which are relevant for a description of workplace discourse, and are therefore also discussed in this chapter.

3.3 Lexico-grammar of the workplace 3.3.1 Frequent words One of the great benefits of corpus software is that it can quickly count things that would be extremely painstaking, or even impossible, to count manually. This means, for example, that the most frequent words in the corpus, and by extension in that particular register or genre, can easily be identified using corpus analytical methods. However, such knowledge of frequency is meaningless without some kind of benchmark against which to measure it. The benchmark against which ‘special’ types of discourse (e.g. institutional or academic) have usually been compared is ‘ordinary conversation’.

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This was the approach used by McCarthy and Handford (2004) in a study analyzing a sub-corpus of 250,000 words from CANBEC, in which they posed the question: ‘To what extent is SBE [Spoken Business English] like or unlike everyday informal conversation?’ (ibid., p. 172). The CANBEC sub-corpus was compared to a sub-corpus of the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE) consisting of social and family conversations, and also to the academic sub-corpus from CANCODE (see also O’Keeffe et al. 2007, pp. 204–216). Handford (2007 and forthcoming) examines word frequency in the whole 1-million-word CANBEC Corpus, and compares this to the combined Socializing and Intimate sub-corpora (SOCINT) from CANCODE. Both the two-way and three-way comparisons are revealing of the ways in which spoken workplace discourse is different from – but also similar to – everyday language. The first step was to create raw frequency lists, which, at first sight, look quite similar across the different corpora, as the most frequent words are always grammatical ones, for example ‘the’, ‘I’ and ‘and’. But even in such lists of highly frequent words, some differences emerge. ‘I’ is the most frequent word in the conversational sub-corpus, whereas ‘the’ is at the top of the list for CANBEC and the academic corpus (O’Keeffe et al. 2007, p. 207). This difference reflects the more personal orientation of casual conversation compared with the more institutional and objective nature of business and academic discourse. The order of frequency of the pronouns is also interesting: ‘you’ occurs more frequently than ‘I’ in both CANBEC and the academic sub-corpus, whereas ‘we’ is much more frequent in CANBEC than in the other two corpora (ibid.). This highlights the important role of the group, team or organization in business; and the increased use of ‘you’ may reflect the importance of directives and requests in academic and business discourse.

3.3.2 Keywords The distinctive lexis of a genre or register comes out much more clearly using a keywords list. Keywords (Scott 1999) are those words whose frequency is unusually high in the genre compared to their normal frequency in the language. Corpus software, such as Wordsmith Tools (ibid.), generally has a keywords tool, which can establish the keywords in a corpus or text compared with a benchmark corpus (usually a more general one). The software analyses word lists from both corpora (the specialized corpus and the ‘reference’ corpus) and compares the relative frequency of the words. Those words that have a high frequency in both texts (i.e. grammatical items, such as articles and prepositions), will therefore not come out as key, but instead lexical words which are distinctive of the genre will be foregrounded. Keywords were identified for CANBEC based on a comparison to the SOCINT sub-corpus from CANCODE (Handford 2007 and forthcoming). Table 3.1 shows the top 50 keywords in CANBEC. In contrast to the raw frequency list, the keyword list contains a number of lexical words which we would expect to have a high frequency in business language compared with everyday language, such

What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse? Table 3.1 Top 50 keywords CANBEC N

WORD

FREQ.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

WE WE’VE OKAY WE’RE HMM THE CRANE CUSTOMER LIFT NEED CRANES ORDER MEETING SALES THOUSAND HUNDRED ORDERS IF WHICH WILL CUSTOMERS PER PRICE MAIL BUSINESS LIFTS IS MONTH WE’LL STOCK ISSUE PRODUCT CENT PROBLEM FOR US SERVER SO VEHICLE ER POINT TYRE LIST COMPANY INFORMATION SYSTEM TERMS CELLAR TWO TO

12,078 2,752 2,951 2,376 527 32,032 460 495 653 1,812 377 560 594 380 731 944 345 5,362 2,101 1,776 307 452 395 281 522 239 8,660 503 1,085 289 287 224 329 660 6,210 1,418 161 7,983 191 8,059 738 159 344 527 339 272 277 144 2,366 18,403

Source: Adapted from Handford (2007, p. 180, extract from CANBEC, © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission)

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as ‘customer(s)’, ‘meeting’, ‘sales’, ‘order(s)’ and so forth.2 Interestingly, some grammatical words still appear near the top of the list, for example ‘we’, ‘the’, ‘if’, ‘us’, ‘so’. This indicates that even though these words have a high frequency in the language in general, they are nevertheless still unusually frequent in spoken business discourse. One reason for the high frequency of some of these keywords is that many of them occur as part of re-occurring phrases or ‘chunks’, as we shall see. A number of backchannels and fillers are also in the list (‘okay’, ‘hmm’, ‘er’), which highlights the interactive nature of workplace meetings. What is also striking is the position of the semi-modal ‘need’ in the list in tenth position and the presence of the words ‘issue’ and ‘problem’. Even such minimal information as provided by a keyword list affords an intriguing glimpse into the world of spoken business discourse: there seems to be more emphasis on the group, that is the company or organization (‘we’, ‘us’), than the individual; discourse markers like ‘if’ and ‘so’ seem to point to the importance of negotiating; and discussing and/or resolving problems seems to be a key activity (‘need’, ‘issue’, ‘problem’). Nelson (2000a, 2000b) also produced frequency and keyword lists for the Business English Corpus (BEC), using the 2 million word BNC sampler corpus (a subset of the British National Corpus), consisting of ‘general English’, as a reference corpus. In the list of the 100 most key words in BEC, lexical business words are much more in evidence than in CANBEC, showing words like ‘business’, ‘market’, ‘customer’, ‘supplier, ‘sale’, ‘management’ in the top 10 (see Nelson 2000b, ‘The 100 most “key” words in the Business English Corpus’). This can be explained by the fact that BEC includes written as well as spoken discourse (therefore interactive features are less in evidence), and is composed not only of ‘language doing’ business (as is the case for CANBEC), but also ‘language about’ business. When language is used to do business, the business world forms part of the assumed shared knowledge between the participants, but is not always referred to explicitly; whereas in talking about business (e.g. in interviews or magazines), the business world is referred to explicitly with business lexis, such as ‘market’, ‘export, ‘merger’. The keywords in BEC fall into five semantic categories: ‘people in business’, ‘business activities’, ‘business actions’, business descriptions’ and ‘business events and entities’ (Nelson 2006, p. 222). Table 3.2 shows examples of keywords in each of these categories: Table 3.2

Examples of top 50 keywords in BEC in 5 semantic categories

People in Business

Business Activities

Business Actions

Business Descriptions

Business Events and Entities

Customer Manager Supplier Distributor Staff

business investment delivery development payment

sell manage achieve improve operate

high big international successful best

sale merger export performance market

Source: Adapted from Nelson (2000b)


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As with CANBEC, even looking only at keywords points to some interesting general tendencies in the lexis. Nelson (2000b) notes that the key lexis is overtly positive in nature (e.g. ‘achieve’, ‘improve’, ‘best’, ‘successful’) with very few negative words. It is also dynamic and action-orientated (e.g. ‘manage’, ‘operate’, ‘export’) and clearly non-emotive: adjectives like ‘nice’, ‘lovely’ ‘terrible’ are negatively key, meaning they occur less frequently than is the norm. Nelson also observes that most of the adjectives refer to things, such as products and companies (e.g. ‘big banks’, ‘international company’), rather than to people. One interesting difference between the keywords in BEC and CANBEC is that while in BEC there are few keywords with a negative meaning or connotation, in CANBEC ‘problem’ and ‘issue’ are in the top 50 keywords. This again highlights the difference between ‘language about’ and ‘language doing’ business: in talking or writing about business (usually for public consumption), the emphasis will often be on successes and positive developments, whereas when actually engaged in doing business, the focus is often on problem-solving of some kind, as we shall see in analysing business and workplace discourse in more detail. A keyword list is clearly limited in what it can tell us about workplace or business discourse as a whole. Nevertheless, both Nelson’s and Handford’s work on business English corpora show that frequency and keyword lists provide a kind of window onto discourse, pointing to potential areas of interest to explore further, both in terms of the collocations and phrases these words enter into, and the type of pragmatic and discoursal function they perform, as discussed in the rest of this section.

3.3.3 Collocations and chunks Collocations and semantic prosody Words that have been identified by corpus software as frequent or key, can then be examined in more detail using concordancing. Concordance programmes provided by corpus software such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1999) will find all – or a selection of – instances of a search word or phrase in the corpus. These are displayed in ‘concordance lines’, which show the word/phrase in the middle of the screen and seven or eight words of co-text on either side. This allows the researcher to identify common collocations and phraseological patterns containing the search word or phrase. Figure 3.1 shows an example of a concordance from Nelson’s (2000a) research using BEC. The search phrase is ‘high interest rate’, and the concordance shows collocations occurring to the immediate left of this phrase, for example ‘extremely’ and ‘murderously’. Nelson (2006) created concordances for 10 keywords in each of the semantic categories in which these had been grouped (see section 3.3.2 above). He then analysed the collocations for each keyword according to their ‘semantic prosodies’. The term ‘semantic prosody’ (Louw 1993) refers to the meanings and

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Figure 3.1 Concordance for ‘high interest rate’ (Source: From Nelson 2000b, Chapter 8, 8.2.12)

connotations that a word acquires by being consistently used with certain collocates. Most frequently, ‘semantic prosody’ is used to refer to positive or negative associations of a word acquired through its collocational environment, but Nelson also uses it for other types of semantic meaning emerging from frequent collocations. For example, one prosody identified for the keyword ‘manager’ is ‘titles’, as in the collocations ‘General Manager’ or ‘Senior IT Manager’. Nelson found that many of the prosodies identified were shared by several keywords, for example four key adjectives, ‘high’, ‘low’, ‘competitive’ and ‘corporate’ shared the semantic prosody of ‘extremes’, for example: z ‘extremely high interest rates’ z ‘coffee stocks are exceptionally low’ z ‘powerful corporate brands’ z ‘extremely competitive’

Therefore, his analysis of the prosodies of keywords shows that the semantic sets into which the keywords are grouped, such as ‘people in business’ or ‘business activities’, are semantically linked to one another through shared semantic prosodies. But are these semantic prosodies specific to business? In order to answer this question, Nelson (2006, pp. 229–231) compared five of the keywords from BEC with the same words in the BNC sampler corpus. What he found was that, in a business environment, collocates become more fixed, that is a larger percentage of the collocations in BEC formed part of semantic-prosodic sets than in the BNC, where collocations were more varied. He also found that there were some unique business-related semantic prosodies. For example, in the BNC, ‘global’ has collocations in two semantic sets with ‘general’ prosodies: ‘climate’ (e.g. ‘global warming’) and ‘people’ (e.g. ‘global consumer’); whereas in BEC it has collocations in six semantic sets which all have a ‘business’ prosody: ‘business characteristics/qualities’, ‘business activities’, ‘products’, ‘companies’, ‘people’, ‘economic/financial indicators’ (e.g. ‘global economic indicators’). These findings seem to provide confirmation of Drew and Heritage’s (1992) assertion that there are ‘constraints on allowable contributions’ (ibid., p. 22) in institutional discourse. The fixing of collocational


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patterns into particular semantic sets represents a restriction of the linguistic choices available to speakers and writers. Such a convergence of results using corpus linguistic methods with findings arrived at from a micro-analysis of interactive turn-taking (as practised by conversation analysts) provides convincing evidence that these findings are robust.

Chunks In addition to the type of collocation discussed above, where the focus tends to be on lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjective), many of the keywords in CANBEC and BEC frequently occurred in particular phrasal strings or ‘chunks’ of two or more words, which partly accounts for their high frequency. For example, ‘we need to’ is a very high-frequency chunk in BEC, and in CANBEC, ‘need’ frequently occurs in the following combinations of two to five words (Handford 2007, forthcoming): z z z z

‘need to’ ‘we need to’ ‘we need to do’ ‘I think we need to’

Such recurring strings of words have been given different labels: ‘lexical bundles’ (Biber et al. 1999), ‘formulaic sequences’ (Wray 2002, Schmitt 2004), ‘chunks’ ( De Cock 2000, O’Keeffe et al. 2007) and ‘clusters’ (Handford 2007, forthcoming). Corpus software can identify such ‘chunks’ (the term that will be used here), but some minimal frequency needs to be set as a cut-off point to determine whether or not a string qualifies as a chunk. Biber et al. and Handford stipulate a minimal frequency of at least 10 occurrences per million words, whereas O’Keeffe et al. set a minimal frequency of 20 per 5 million words, in order to capture a greater number of low-frequency six-word chunks. A computer can only identify strings of words, but cannot decide whether or not these strings are meaningful in any way. It will therefore also pick out syntactically incomplete strings, such as ‘a bit of’ or ‘at the end of’, as well as chunks that have ‘semantic unity and syntactic integrity’ (O’Keeffe et al. 2007, p. 64), for example ‘at the end of the day’. O’Keeffe et al. (ibid., pp. 70–71) argue that many such syntactic fragments nevertheless have ‘pragmatic integrity’, and should therefore be considered meaningful chunks. They often perform particular pragmatic or discourse functions, for example ‘a bit of’ is routinely used as a ‘frame’ to downtone utterances, for example ‘a bit of a mess/ problem/nuisance’ (ibid.). A number of corpus studies of specialized genres have shown that such chunks often perform specific pragmatic functions, and therefore play a key role within the genre (Oakey 2002; Simpson 2004; Handford 2007, forthcoming; O’Keeffe et al. 2007). Simpson examines the most frequent ‘formulaic

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expressions’ in spoken academic discourse from the Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English (MICASE) and shows that these perform a number of discourse-organizing and interpersonal functions. For example, the chunk ‘look at it’ is used by American university professors to present contrasting perspectives on an issue (e.g. ‘let’s look at it another way’), which is a key pragmatic function in academic discourse. Simpson (2004, pp. 59–60) concludes that ‘seemingly transparent formulaic expression(s) [are] used to introduce meanings that lie at the heart of discourse in the academy.’ Other studies of the role of chunks within particular genres are Oakey (2002), who examines the functions of ‘lexical phrases’ across different written academic genres, and McCarthy and Handford (2004) and O’Keeffe et al. (2007), who compare chunks and their pragmatic functions in spoken academic and business discourse. Here we look in some detail at the most frequent chunks identified by Handford (forthcoming) in CANBEC, and compare a selection of these with their use in the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE-bus, see Research Centre for Professional Communication in English website). One reason why studying chunks is important in identifying the characteristics of workplace language is their sheer ubiquity and frequency. A number of chunks in CANBEC have a higher frequency than some very common single words (ibid.). The chunks with the highest frequency, ‘you know’ and ‘I think’, are more frequent than ‘really’ and ‘work’; and longer, less frequent chunks like ‘ I don’t know’ and ‘at the end of the day’ still occur more frequently than the business nouns ‘industry’ and ‘profit’. Handford searched for chunks (or ‘clusters’) of two to six words, and categorized these, following Simpson (2004) into two broad functional categories: discourse marking and interactional functions. Discourse marking categories include such functions as focusing, linking and summarizing; interactional categories include a wide variety of functions, such as checking understanding, hedging, hypothesizing, evaluating. Below is a list of the four most frequent two- three- and four-word chunks found in CANBEC: Two-word chunks you know I think of the I mean Three-word chunks I don’t know a lot of at the moment we need to


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four-word chunks: at the end of the end of the have a look at a bit of a (extract from CANBEC, © Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission) A search for the same chunks in HKCSE-bus revealed that all these chunks also occurred at least 10 times per 1 million words here, and therefore qualify as chunks (according to Handford’s cut-off point).3 However, on the whole there was quite a disparity in the relative frequencies of the items in the two corpora. The only chunks that had broadly similar frequencies were ‘I think’, ‘I mean’, ‘I don’t know’ and ‘at the end of’. A more detailed examination of the contexts of uses of the various chunks in both corpora would be necessary to explain this disparity in frequency, but there are a number of possible reasons. One reason could be the speaker composition of the corpus: most participants in CANBEC are native speakers, with recordings mostly made in the United Kingdom; whereas HKCSE is composed of one-third Hong Kong Chinese speakers, and all recordings were made in Hong Kong. Another important factor could be the different genres included in the corpora. While both are corpora of spoken business and workplace discourse, CANBEC is composed mainly of business meetings, whereas HKCSE-bus contains a greater variety of workplace genres, such as job interviews and presentations. If chunks perform specific functions within a genre, one would expect their frequency and function to vary from genre to genre. A more detailed comparison of one three-word chunk, ‘so I think’, which was very frequent and had similar frequencies in both corpora, is quite revealing. In CANBEC ‘so I think’ performs a number of functions: most commonly it is used for summarizing, but also for explaining, elaborating and disagreeing (Handford forthcoming). It occurs more frequently in ‘external meetings’ (between companies) than in ‘internal meetings’ (between colleagues), and in these internal meetings it is frequently used as a ‘tactical summary’ (Charles and Charles 1999), where a speaker summarizes the discussion in a way that is favourable to his or her own position. In HKCSE-bus, ‘so I think’ is used quite differently. Many of the 40 instances of the chunk occur in job placement interviews in Hong Kong hotels with students on a BA programme in Hotel Management (Warren 2006). Very broadly it still has a summarizing function, due largely to the discourse marking function of ‘so’ (Schriffrin 1987), but both interviewers and interviewees use it in specific ways within the job interview. Interviewers seem to use the chunk to perform a broader range of functions than interviewees, which is perhaps a reflection of their greater power in the interview. One way

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it is used by interviewers is to move to the next stage of the interview, for example: Example 3.14 so um so I think it’s a great time for for us actually explore a little bit * um a: ** mhm you know on the different departments in the particular hotel that you might be interested in Another way this chunk is used by the interviewer is to highlight some key aspect of the job, here that the hours are long: Example 3.2 it’s not like another shop or bank it closes so you can’t (.) but basically we are open all the time a: mm B: so I think in our industry you when you’re committed* a: **mm B: you will find that hours can be quite long a: mm mm But they also use it to summarize benefits of the placement for the interviewee in terms of gaining experience for their career, e.g.: Example 3.3 * so I think this is er would be eventually quite interesting a: ** mhm mm to do that at the beginning * also to exactly some practical (.) training some cross a: ** to get more comprehenInterviewees seem to use this chunk primarily to provide an ‘upshot’ of their answer to a question posed by the interviewer, for example: Example 3.4 a: ah yeah I I should say two or three but in fact I I can go um which department I can go is is not very depend on my preference because I think every department for me is er very fresh so I think er it is not a concrete answer on that kind of question In a number of instances, this involves, summarizing their suitability for or reasons for wanting the job, e.g.: Example 3.5 a: and to see er their er how to deal with the guest when the guest have er when the guest is demanding *and so I think it’s very interesting for me b: **mm


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Here the interviewee has been explaining why she would like to work in the front office of the hotel for her placement, and the summary of this explanation is introduced by ‘so I think’ (Warren 2006). The analysis of chunks in both CANBEC and HKCSE shows that identifying high-frequency chunks in a specific register, such as workplace discourse, not only provides a more complete picture of the lexico-grammatical characteristics of the register, but also leads to a discovery of important pragmatic functions performed by these chunks in workplace interactions. As we have seen, high-frequency chunks can perform quite specific functions within a genre, and thus constitute a kind of ‘generic fingerprint’ (Farr 2007). Therefore the identification of high-frequency words and chunks through corpus methods provides a kind of window onto discourse, pointing the researcher to aspects of the data to explore in more detail from the point of view of pragmatics and genre.

3.4 Pragmatic features Something as bare as a frequency or keyword list can provide a ‘systematic point of entry’(Adolphs et al. 2004, p. 14) into the data. Concordance searches for keyword collocations can then be carried out, and examination of the contexts in which these collocations occur may then lead on to exploring their pragmatic functions. Such an approach is used by Cheng (2004) to study checking out discourse in recordings of hotel interactions from HKCSE-bus. A frequency list generated with corpus software showed that the lexical item ‘minibar’ was unexpectedly frequent and occurred in all the checking out interactions. The next step was then to create concordances for the most frequent items. Studying concordance lines of frequent items in spoken data is interesting not only to find common collocations, but also to discover whether any of the items are used predominantly by one particular speaker (ibid., p. 145). In service encounters such as hotel front desk interactions, there is a clear role distinction between the participants: certain words will be used more, or even exclusively, by hotel staff, for example ‘sir’/ ‘madam’. Interestingly, the word ‘minibar’ was used exclusively by hotel staff and never by a guest. This led to a qualitative examination of the discourse context of ‘minibar’, ranging from a study of politeness features5 it was (or was not) used with, the intonation patterns in which the word occurred, to the positioning of the lexical item within the structural organization of the discourse. The findings from this analysis were that the hotel’s corporate message of ‘customer care’ was frequently at odds with what actually happened in checking out discourses, in particular the way receptionists handled asking about use of the minibar. For example, transcribing the data using Brazil’s (1985 and 1997)

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discourse intonation model showed that most of the questions to the guests regarding the minibar had rising intonation, e.g.: Example 3.6 b: //Ê HAVE you got a minibar KEY// B: //Ì I wasn’t GIven one// (Cheng 2004, p. 150) In the discourse intonation model, rising tone indicates an assumption of shared knowledge, whereas falling tone marks the utterance as communicating new information. By using rising tone, the receptionist projects an assumption that the answer will be ‘yes’; moreover the use of a rise, instead of a fall-rise, adds ‘insistence’ or ‘forcefulness’ to the utterance, as this tone tends to be used by dominant speakers (Brazil 1997, pp. 86–98). Cheng (2004. p. 153) notes that the choice of rising tone is probably not appropriate in this context, which could explain the fact that the guests’ negative responses tended to be quite emphatic. Another workplace study which takes the same approach, starting with a keyword list and concordances, leading to an investigation of pragmatic features of the discourse, is Adolphs et al.’s (2004) examination of a small corpus (totalling approximately 60,000 words) of telephone calls to NHS Direct, a telephone advice service provided by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. The telephone calls were made by researchers, posing as members of the public, to nurses and health advisors working for NHS Direct, who did not know which of the calls were made by the researchers. Once medical terminology had been removed from the keyword list, the remaining lexical items fell into the following categories: negatives, imperatives, pronouns, vague language, affirmations/positive backchannels and directives. A qualitative examination of items in these categories in the phone call transcripts showed that many of them performed interpersonal functions which were important in eliciting symptoms from the callers and giving them advice. Moreover, they often related to particular phases of the interaction. At the beginning of the phone call, the personal pronouns ‘you’ and ‘your’ are frequently used to secure the caller’s involvement. The use of backchannel responses, such as ‘okay’, and ‘right’ is significantly higher in the corpus compared to a reference corpus of general spoken English (CANCODE), signalling active listenership on the part of the health professionals. Nurses and advisors often use modal items, such as ‘may’ and ‘can’ as politeness markers, introducing ‘optionality into the conversation and thus give the appearance of allowing the patient to make their own decision as to whether or not to follow the advice’ (ibid., p. 18). The vague expression ‘or anything’


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occurs frequently, and seems to have the function of inviting patients to add their own description to the proposed symptoms, for example: Example 3.7 N: And so there’s no swelling anywhere to your face or anything? (Adolphs et al. 2004, p. 19) Once symptoms have been elicited, the interaction moves to the advice-giving stage, and here the health professionals tend to depersonalize the advice by referring to external sources of authority, such as the British Medical Association’s guidelines. The words ‘advise’, ‘advice’, ‘suggest’ are key, and one reason for this seems to be their use at this stage of the interaction for impersonal constructions such as ‘they’ll be able to advise/suggest . . .’. The phone calls usually finish with a ‘convergence coda’, in which the advisors or nurses summarize the discussion and try to secure assent from the caller to adopt a suggested course of action. Adolphs et al. (ibid.) conclude that this small-scale study illustrates ways in which corpus linguistic methods, which have had little application in studies of health care communication, can complement and enhance findings arrived at through discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Both Cheng’s (2004) and Adolphs et al.’s (2004) study are excellent examples of combining quantitative with qualitative methods to analyse the characteristics of workplace discourse in a way that is corpus-driven. That is, the initial quantitative findings, obtained using corpus methods (such as keywords and concordancing), reveal features of the data which are then further explored using qualitative methods. Another feature both studies share is that the findings have clear applications to the training of professional staff in the respective domains of work examined: the hotel industry and health care. The question of practical applications of research, such as staff training, is returned to in the final chapter.

3.4.1 Specific pragmatic features A number of studies of HKCSE-bus have examined some specific pragmatic features, including a range of speech acts (e.g. agreeing/disagreeing, expressing opinions), and language used for interrupting and checking understanding (Cheng and Warren 2005, Cheng and Warren 2006, Cheng 2007, Cheng and Warren 2007). In examining such specific pragmatic features in a corpus, it is not possible to rely solely on corpus methods to identify the items under investigation, as pragmatic functions can usually be expressed in a variety of ways. Nevertheless, quantitative and qualitative methods can still be usefully combined for such studies.

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Identifying speech acts, such as agreeing and disagreeing, might initially appear fairly straightforward, as corpus software can search for lemmas of lexical items like ‘agree’ (‘agrees’, ‘agreeing’, ‘agreed’, ‘agreement’). However, in naturally occurring data, speech acts are in fact performed indirectly much more frequently than directly. Corpus searches for such direct speech acts tend to yield fairly sparse results, for example the item ‘I disagree’ only occurs eight times in the 5-million-word CANCODE Corpus (McCarthy 1998). A small-scale study of speech acts in corpus of office talk (Koester 2002) showed that direct speech acts are not only rare, but tend to be restricted to some quite specific communicative functions, such as framing stretches of speech and clarifying points, and are frequent only in conflictual, argumentative discourse. Cheng and Warren (2005) came up against the same problem in trying to identify markers of disagreement in HKCSE-bus. In their study, they compare the language presented in English language textbooks for disagreement with the way disagreement is actually performed in the corpus. Searching for the phrases the textbooks listed was also not a fruitful strategy, as very few of these were actually found in the corpus. A qualitative analysis was therefore carried out, and six strategies for expressing disagreement were identified. The strategies used tended to be much more indirect than those found in the textbooks, and Cheng and Warren conclude that they do not provide realistic models for students learning English for their professional careers. In a similar study, ‘opine markers’ (ways of expressing opinions) in textbooks were compared with their actual realizations in the corpus (Cheng and Warren 2006). Again, the opine markers used in the corpus were initially identified qualitatively, and then corpus software was used to determine the frequency of the markers, as well as the relative frequencies of their use by Hong Kong Chinese and native English speakers. Although the items investigated were not derived from corpus analysis (that is the study was corpus-based, rather than corpus-driven), corpus methods were still used to support the study. Both studies found a great discrepancy between the language taught for disagreeing and expressing opinions in English language textbooks, and the linguistic strategies used to express these functions in the corpus. This clearly has pedagogical implications for the teaching of English in Hong Kong, which is of central concern in the studies (see Chapter 7). All the studies discussed in this section on pragmatic features in workplace corpora demonstrate that interactive and interpersonal aspects of language, such as backchannel responses, politeness markers and vague language, are integral to the language used in workplace interactions. They can perform key functions within particular workplace practices; for example, in the NHS Direct phone calls, we saw that backchannels were used to secure the caller’s involvement, and modal items to introduce an element of optionality. Such interpersonal features characterize workplace discourse as much as lexical items and collocations more typically associated with particular domains of work.


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3.5 Corpus and genre Corpus analysis and genre analysis have until recently been quite distinct methods of analysis. But, as already noted several times in this chapter, corpus findings regarding for example keywords and chunks can be quite revealing of key characteristics of a genre. The main lexico-grammatical features can be identified, and these can also provide clues to the discourse structure of the genre. Certain keywords may cluster in particular parts of an interaction or text, and can thus be indicative of the staging of the genre, as found for example by Adolphs et al. (2004) in NHS Direct telephone interactions. Another example is the positioning of the word ‘minibar’ at the beginning of checking out encounters in Hong Kong hotels (Cheng 2004). This section reviews some of the studies that have used corpus methods to investigate workplace genres in terms of both lexico-grammatical patterning and genre or discourse structure.

3.5.1 Lexico-grammar and genre Farr (2007) examined a small corpus (of approximately 80,000 words) of post-observation feedback between tutors and student teachers (the POTTI Corpus). Her aim was to establish the ‘generic fingerprint’ of the genre through an analysis of the most frequent and key words, as well as the most frequent chunks. The analysis showed a high frequency of tokens of listenership (e.g. ‘mm’, ‘mmhm’, okay), as well as hedging words (e.g. ‘sort [of]’, ‘mean’, ‘bit’, ‘maybe’), which suggest that tutors give feedback in a sensitive way. There was also a high incidence of metadiscourse related to teaching, such as, ‘activity’, ‘questions’, ‘correction’ and of cognitive and ‘cathartic’ lexis relating to the process of self-reflection, for example ‘aware’, ‘felt’, ‘challenging’. Farr (ibid., p. 254) argues that such corpus findings can provide ‘documented evidence’ for teacher educators which display their professional strengths as well as shortcomings, and thereby contribute to professional development. Corpus analysis can also be used to compare different workplace genres, for example, ones used within the same organization, or recurring across different workplace contexts. Such a comparison was carried out using the Corpus of American and British Office Talk (ABOT), which is described in Chapter 2. The focus of the study was on interpersonal meaning, and therefore a range of ‘interpersonal markers’ frequently used to express such meanings were compared across the different genres in the corpus: modal verbs, vague language, hedges, intensifiers and idioms. Their frequency and function in the different genres was compared using frequency lists and concordances. A summary of the results comparing the three macro-genres is shown in Figure 3.2 (see also Koester 2006, pp. 72–107). As shown in Figure 3.2, modals and idioms were most frequent in collaborative genres largely due to their evaluative function in expressing judgments and

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modal verbs

least frequent most frequent ← ----------------------------------------------------------------------- → ← Non-transactional ---- Unidirectional ---- Collaborative →

vague language

← Non-transactional ---- Collaborative ---- Unidirectional →

hedges

← Non-transactional ---- Collaborative ---- Unidirectional →

intensiﬁers

Collaborative ← ----------------------------------------------- Non-transactional → Unidirectional

idioms

← Non-transactional ---- Unidirectional ---- Collaborative →

Figure 3.2 Comparison of interpersonal markers in the ABOT Corpus (Source: from Koester 2006, p. 104)

opinions in decision-making, which was by far the most frequently occurring collaborative genre. Furthermore, the discursively equal roles of the participants in these genres licenses the use of more direct deontic modals (e.g. ‘have to’, ‘need’). Example 3.8, an extract from a meeting between an editor and her assistant, illustrates both these features of decision-making: Example 3.8 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Beth Carol Beth Carol Beth

I’ll update this. I don’t need to keep this as it is now ⎣You need to update this too. Right. However, . . . it’s– it’s complex. ⎣You know I’m wondering whether we should have new columns (6) Carol We have to- we have to sit down and think about how we can (7) Beth ⎣Yeah. I’d like to sit down and . . . (8) Carol turn it into a something that could be updated every(from the Cambridge International Corpus, © Cambridge University Press) Vague language and hedges were most frequent in unidirectional genres, where they are used to refer vaguely or implicitly to facts and information (e.g. ‘things’, ‘stuff’), which is the focus of these genres, and in exemplifying or elaborating on explanations (e.g. ‘like’, ‘sort of’, ‘or something’), for example: z I don’t know if I already explained this or not, but . . . the stuff that’s already

been paid . . . z You can give a reason for the free, you know, like gratis copy or something

They also perform a politeness function, in allowing speakers to mitigate or minimize the unequal discursive relationship in these genres. Finally, intensifiers were used most frequently in non-transactional encounters, reflecting an orientation towards relationship-building through convergence


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and heightened involvement. They often modify or occur in the vicinity of evaluative adjectives (e.g. ‘ just dreadful’, ‘really great’), which contributes to the sense of involvement, as illustrated in Example 3.9 below, where the speaker describes a motorway accident she witnessed to her colleagues: Example 3.9 Vicky Liz

You could actually smell– all the smoke coming up, ⎣<Susan>: Yeah,⎦ /??/ was just being blown, It was horrible = = ↑ O:h glo:ry!

The differences in the use and frequency of the interpersonal markers across the different genres indicates that genre, and by extension the discursive roles played within the genres, has a significant impact on linguistic choice, and is thus a central factor accounting for language variation within workplace talk (Koester 2006). An interesting, and somewhat unexpected finding from the study is that most interpersonal markers (all except intensifiers) occurred less frequently in the non-transactional genres, than in genres where participants focused on workplace tasks. One of the main reasons for this seems to be that many of these markers were frequently used for politeness functions, which play a greater role in transactional than relational talk. It may also have something to do with the types of markers investigated, but it highlights once more the importance of interpersonal aspects of workplace interaction.

3.5.2 Move and discourse-structure Identifying lexico-grammatical patterning in corpora can be a means not only to obtain a ‘fingerprint’ or snapshot of a genre, but can also provide an ‘entry point’ to the data in order to explore further features of the genre, including rhetorical structure. Moreover, keywords and concordance analysis can be combined with an analysis of the phases or ‘moves’ of the genre, for example using a ‘move structure’ analysis (Swales 1990). In the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP), a number of recent studies have combined corpus linguistic methods with text or genre analysis to examine written academic or professional genres (Flowerdew 1998, 2003; Upton and Connor 2001; Connor and Gladkov 2004; Connor and Upton 2004b, Hyland 2000, 2002; Tribble 2002). Tribble (ibid.) proposes a framework for analysing a text from a specific genre (e.g. a report or an article) which explicitly incorporates genre analytical processes, such as identifying the social context and the communicative purposes, in combination with corpus methods, including keywords, frequency lists and concordances. A number of studies of written genres have combined corpus methods with move structure analysis. These include Connor and Upton’s (2004b) analysis of grant proposals and Connor and Gladkov’s (2004) study of rhetorical appeals in fundraising direct mail letters.

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A study of particular relevance for workplace discourse is Upton and Connor’s (2001) analysis of a corpus of job-application letters, as letters of application are obviously an important written genre in all areas of work. The corpus used, the Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC), is composed of 200 job application letters and résumés written by business communication students from five different countries as part of a writing course. For this study, 153 letters from the corpus written by students from three countries (Belgium, Finland and the USA) were analysed. A ‘manual’ analysis of the rhetorical move structure of the genre (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993) was carried out, and then positive and negative politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1978/87) were identified using corpus methods. The linguistic strategies used for politeness were first identified qualitatively so that corpus software could then be used to search automatically for politeness features. The study reports the use of politeness features in two of the moves: Move 4 – ‘indicating a desire for an interview or further contact’, and Move 5 – ‘expressing politeness (pleasantries) or appreciation at the end of the letter’. The results showed a number of differences in the politeness features used by the writers from the three countries, but their were no clear differences in the frequency of either positive or negative politeness strategies used by any of the groups . There was, however, a tendency for the American writers to use more patterned, formulaic language than the Belgians or the Finns. The study, therefore, is interesting not only in the way it combines corpus analysis and genre analysis, but also in terms of its findings concerning cross-cultural writing. As we have seen, Cheng’s (2004) and Adolphs et al.’s (2004) studies showed that keywords can be revealing of discourse or genre structure. The final examples in this section show how just one keyword can be the starting point for exploring discourse structure. As we saw in section 3.3.2 above, in examining keywords in CANBEC, the largest of the workplace corpora examined here, the lexical items ‘problem’ and ‘issue’ are unusually frequent in the corpus, and point to problemsolving as a central activity in workplace and business discourse (Handford 2007, forthcoming). This is similar in the ABOT Corpus, where the word ‘problem’ and its lemmas (‘problems’, ‘problematic’) occurred 26 times, which is quite frequent for a lexical item in a corpus of this size. As a measure of comparison: this is slightly more frequent than the grammatical items ‘might’, ‘much’ and ‘still’. Problem-solving was also a frequent activity in many of the interactions, in particular those involving decision-making (Koester 2000, 2006). A qualitative analysis of encounters involving problem-solving showed that they frequently followed a problem-solution pattern, as identified by Hoey (1983, 1994), and that certain lexical items, which according to Hoey are signal words for the pattern, often occurred as markers of its three phases, for example: z Problem phase: ‘problem’, ‘difficult’ z Response/ Solution phase: ‘response’, ‘result’, ‘figure out’ z Evaluation phase: ‘work’, ‘good’


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Example 3.10 illustrates how such signal words can be used by speakers to initiate a problem-solution pattern. It shows the beginning of a meeting between Chris, the president of a family-run North American business, with his sales manager, Joe. The genre is reporting, which, like decision-making, also frequently followed a problem-solution pattern. Lexical items used as lexical signals of the pattern are in underlined. Example 3.10 ‘Discussing Computer Problems’ (1) Chris Haven’t seen much in the way of sales the last half of the week. (2) Joe .hh Well, a lot of the media, the- the orders have been very difficult getting out. Stuff is– is jammed. (3) Chris Oh they didn’t go out? (4) Joe Yeah. Anne’s orders are clogged. And . . . trying to get out heheh (5) Chris ⎣Heheh ⎣clogged orders! (6) Joe Clogged orders! .hh they can’t get out o’ the system. (7) Chris ⎣Oh no! (8) Chris Well, hh Okay(9) Joe ⎣ I’ve got uh . . . (10) Chris John’s- (Well–) (11) Joe Well, uh he’s been working on ‘em to get ‘em out, but she’s been → (12) Chris ⎣/Really/ (13) Joe goin’ crazy trying to get– she’s- she’s written . . . four or five orders this week. An’ uh they haven’t gone out, .hh I had problems too [. . .] There is a clustering of lexical items signalling the presence of a problem at the beginning of the encounter: ‘difficult’, ‘jammed’, ‘clogged’. A little later, from turn 11 onwards, Joe begins to talk about what his response to the problem has been, signalled by ‘working’ and ‘goin’ crazy trying’, but this is evaluated negatively (‘they haven’t gone out’), and then further ‘problems’ are mentioned (turn 13). These signal items are often spoken with emphatic stress (indicated by italics), which is a further indication that they are key items in the discourse. The word ‘problem’ occurs four times in this encounter, which is quite frequent, considering there are only 26 instances in the whole corpus. The rest of the conversation (not shown here) then goes through the phases of the problem-solution pattern, using some of the following lexical signals: z Response: ‘good response’, ‘result’, ‘handled’ z Positive Evaluation: ‘look pretty good’, ‘that’s good’, ‘hoping’

Interestingly, a number of the signal items are metaphorical or idiomatic (‘jammed’, ‘clogged’, goin’ crazy’), which was fairly typical of most problem-solving

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encounters (Koester 2000). O’Keeffe et al. (2007, pp. 214–215) also found that idioms and metaphors were frequently used to discuss problems in CANBEC, and remark that they ‘frame’ the problems discussed in a particular way. In discussing the computer problems (example 3.10), the creative metaphor ‘clogged orders’ is treated humorously, incurring laughter and repetition, which goes some way in lightening the tone of the meeting, which began in an almost threatening manner: ‘Haven’t seen much in the way of sales the last half of the week.’ As discussing problems may be quite face-threatening, especially if someone is being made responsible for a problem, idioms and metaphors are useful interpersonal devices which can mitigate such threats to face.6 A study from quite a different area of professional discourse which examines problem-solution patterns from a corpus perspective is Flowerdew’s (2003) comparison of a student and professional corpus of technical writing, each consisting of 250,000 words. Flowerdew combines corpus analysis with a systemicfunctional analysis using the ‘appraisal’ system (Martin 2000, 2004). Keyword lists were first generated to discover keywords associated with the problemsolution pattern. The keywords were then categorized, following the appraisal system, as ‘inscribed’ (explicitly signalled for example ‘problem’) or ‘evoked’ (signalling through connotation, e.g. ‘pollution’), and then collocational preferences and grammatical patterns were examined through concordancing. This analysis revealed a number of differences between the professional and the student reports, for example the students used more ‘evoked’ signals, and fewer ‘inscribed’ ones, than the professionals. The studies discussed here show how combining corpus methods, such as keyword analysis and concordancing, with more qualitative lexical and/or grammatical analysis can result in a description which is at the same time discursively rich and quantitatively robust. It means, for example, that lexical items which are semantically related to keywords, but not themselves very frequent, can be included in the analysis, for example the idiomatic and metaphorical expressions used in spoken workplace interactions as signals of problems. The clustering of semantically related lexical items in certain parts of the text or interaction creates a network of lexical cohesion, which contributes to the structuring of the discourse into the different phases of a text pattern or moves of a generic pattern. A more delicate analysis of move structure is also possible through quantitative analysis of linguistic features of individual moves, as in Upton and Connor’s (2001) study of politeness features in two moves of job-application letters.

3.6 Discussion and conclusion This chapter set out to answer the question: What are the distinctive characteristics of workplace discourse? McCarthy and Handford’s (2004) comparison of spoken business English (SBE) with everyday conversation had


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a similar goal: to discover to what extent SBE is like or unlike everyday informal conversation, and their findings are therefore relevant in answering this question. McCarthy and Handford conclude that SBE is indeed different from everyday conversation, and that it is ‘an institutional form of talk’ (ibid., p. 187). Nevertheless, they also found that SBE shares many features with conversation in terms of its ‘orientation towards comity, convergence, and satisfactory and non-threatening relationships’ (ibid.). The findings in this chapter confirm McCarthy and Handford’s conclusions. Furthermore, the broader scope, both in terms of the discourse type (spoken and written workplace discourse), and the different corpora examined, allows us to expand on them. The insights gained from applying corpus analysis to different ‘levels’ of discourse (lexis, chunks and genre) all contribute to confirming that workplace discourse is indeed ‘institutional’ and exhibits the three distinctive characteristics of institutional discourse that Drew and Heritage (1992, p. 22) stipulated (see Chapter 1): 1. goal orientation 2. special and particular constraints 3. special inferential frameworks and procedures By drawing on quantitatively-based corpus findings, it is possible to be much more specific about what this actually means in terms of specific discourse characteristics. The focus on institutional goals is reflected first of all in the fact that participants orient less to personal and subjective issues than in everyday conversation, as Nelson (2000b) demonstrates in showing that emotive language is negatively key in the BEC corpus. Frequent keywords in BEC and CANBEC also reflect this focus, for example through the unusually high frequency of the personal pronoun ‘we’, and with entities (products and companies) being talked and written about more than people. Goal orientation is also reflected in Nelson’s finding from keyword analysis that business language is action-oriented. As we have seen, this is also true of workplace discourse in general, and this is reflected at all levels of discourse. In particular, we find much talk of necessary or desirable actions through the use of deontic modals, for example in the highly frequent chunks ‘we need’/’we need to’/’we need to do’. Deontic modals were highly frequent in both CANBEC and ABOT; and in both corpora, decision-making and problem-solving, along with evaluating, were found to be key activities. Furthermore, the analysis of a number of workplace genres (for example the NHS Direct telephone calls) showed that these are staged and goal-oriented activities. The second characteristic of institutional discourse, special and particular constraints, was also confirmed through corpus analysis. Nelson (2006) found that collocations in the business corpus were more restricted than in the general corpus, and that ‘business lexis is largely formed from a limited number of semantic groups’ (ibid., p. 225). Such ‘constraints’ may also mean that the available linguistic and interactional choices are limited on the basis of the

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institutional or discursive roles of participants. For example, in data from the business sub-corpus of HKCSE, the word ‘minibar’ was only used by hotel staff, and in job placement interviews, interviewers used the chunk ‘so I think’ to perform a greater range of functions than interviewees. Corpus analysis seems to be particularly useful in revealing the special inferential frameworks in operation in some workplace contexts, in enabling the discovery of specific lexis, collocations, prosodies and chunks and their respective functions. As we have seen, the function of the same chunk can be quite different from one workplace context to another (e.g. ‘so I think’), and such chunks can therefore have very specific pragmatic functions within a particular genre. While corpus analysis, on the one hand, confirms the institutional character of workplace discourse, the high frequency of interactive and interpersonal features, such as backchannel responses, vague language, idioms and various politeness markers, also clearly highlights the importance of interpersonal aspects of both spoken and written workplace interaction. However, the interpersonal dimension here is actually distinct in a number of ways from social or intimate interactions. This is largely due to the asymmetry we often find in workplace discourse, and which is another key characteristic of institutional discourse in general (Heritage 1997). Because of the power difference and special role relationships in many workplace interactions, politeness strategies involving, for example, hedging, vague language and idioms play an extremely important role in maintaining and reinforcing workplace relationships. This phenomenon is in evidence in a number of the studies and examples presented in this chapter, for instance: z in the advice given to callers in the NHS Direct data, z the use of politeness strategies in letters of application (from the IBLC Corpus), z the use of hedges and vague language in unidirectional genres in the ABOT

Corpus, z the use of idioms to discuss problems, in the ABOT Corpus.

An example of not using such strategies appropriately was found in the checking out discourse of hotel staff in Hong Kong. Corpus methods also reveal very clearly that such politeness strategies are not evenly distributed in all workplace interactions, but vary according to the particular role relationships and the genre being performed. So, for example, strategies showing ‘listenership’ (e.g. ‘mmhm’, ‘okay’) were particularly prominent in the NHS direct calls and in feedback given to trainee teachers (in data from the POTTI Corpus). The corpus linguistic studies reviewed here, which have examined spoken and written discourse in a wide range of professional and organizational settings, have highlighted a number of characteristics that are common to most workplace discourse. At the same time, the findings of corpus studies across


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these different communities of practice reveal a great variability (e.g. the difference in frequency of common chunks in CANBEC and HKCSE-bus), which make it difficult to generalize across all the different workplace contexts. The linguistic and discursive patterns identified in specific workplace contexts provide evidence of the practices developed within these workplace communities. As Handford (forthcoming) argues, ‘the corpus as an objective, quantifiable record of what comes naturally, can enable us to make inferences about the linguistic manifestations of these practices’ (ibid.). Perhaps the most important lesson from corpus analysis is that workplace discourse varies in line with the goals, role relationships and activities of the participants. But this variation is not random: by combining quantitative and qualitative methods, it can be traced to the specific practices within each workplace community. As demonstrated amply in this chapter, it is a combination of quantitative corpus methods with more qualitative methods, such as discourse and genre analysis, which can provide the most rich and differentiated account of workplace interactions.

Chapter 4

Working Together and Getting People to Do Things: Directives, Procedural Discourse and Training

4.1 Introduction Among the many activities that people engage in at work, getting others to carry out tasks is a key workplace concern. If decision-making is the most important collaborative task, as evidence from both corpus-based and discourse-based studies strongly suggests (see Chapters 2 and 3), procedural discourse, involving instructions and explanations, is the most prominent ‘unidirectional’ activity across most workplace contexts. In the ABOT corpus of office talk, procedural discourse is the second most frequently occurring genre after decision-making (see Chapter 2), accounting for 15 per cent of the corpus. Decision-making has already been examined in some detail in the previous two chapters, but procedural discourse has as yet only been mentioned in passing. Procedural discourse ‘involves a discursively dominant speaker telling an addressee how to do something or what to do’ (Koester, 2006, p. 43). In the ABOT Corpus, two procedural sub-genres were identified: (1) general instructions or explanations of procedures, for example in training a new employee, and (2) directives or instructions relating to a specific instance, involving present, future or even past activities (e.g. in the case of a reprimand). Such specific instructions were frequently prompted by queries from subordinates to managers. Another sub-genre, which shares some properties of both procedural discourse and decision-making discourse, and can thus be considered a hybrid genre, is advice-giving (see Koester 2006, pp. 43–50). As mentioned in Chapter 2.3.2, procedural discourse is typically an ‘action-based’ genre, where speakers interact with ‘artefacts’ in their environment. Directives play an important role within encounters involving instructions or procedures. Numerous studies have examined directives and requests in institutional and workplace settings (e.g. Ervin-Tripp 1976, Puhfal-Bax 1986, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004), and these studies are reviewed at the beginning of the chapter. However, procedural discourse as a genre involves much more than only directive speech acts: they are just some of the elements that shape the genre, alongside others, such as the roles of the participants and

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the turn-taking structure. Furthermore, as we shall see, directives also occur within other genres, such as decision-making, in which the main goal of the encounter is not to convey instructions or explanations. The chapter therefore examines procedural discourse more broadly, drawing on both corpus analysis and discourse analysis to explore the characteristics of the genre and the role of directives within it. First, the results of some corpus-based investigations of a range of linguistic devices used in procedural discourse are reviewed. Then the focus narrows to directives in particular, to compare their deployment in procedural discourse to other workplace genres. In the final part of the chapter, individual procedural encounters are examined in more detail, and the focus will be on some of the interpersonal discursive devices which are particularly prevalent in procedural encounters in which a new employee is being trained. Of course learning about a job does not take place exclusively in formal training sessions, therefore the chapter finishes with a more general look at training, apprenticeship and workplace learning.

4.2 Previous studies of directives Directives have been examined in a variety of face to face workplace and institutional situations, including interactions between migrant farm workers and their supervisors (Weigel and Weigel 1985), university office talk (Pufahl Bax 1986), doctor-patient encounters (West 1990, Harris 2003), police stations and magistrate’s courts (Harris 2003) and workplace meetings (Bilbow 1997, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004). These studies show that directives can have a variety of realizations, from imperatives, to modals of obligation, such as ‘have to’ or ‘need to’, through to more indirect requests, for example using epistemic modals, such as ‘would’ and ‘could’, as the following examples from different procedural encounters in the ABOT Corpus illustrate: z so whenever I get in: a new one, go to the: corresponding pile, an’ see if . . . z but what you need to do is set your dates . . . z I would have quick word with Paul . . .

This variety in the form of directives probably accounts for the considerable attention directives have received, especially within pragmatics, where the focus has been on explaining how indirect speech acts are interpreted (Searle 1975, Levinson 1983). As previous studies have shown, a range of factors can influence the form of a directive or request. An early study of directives in a range of everyday and workplace contexts, including family, offices, service encounters (Ervin-Tripp 1976), established that indirect directives are interpreted without recourse to the ‘literal’ meaning of the utterance, but are routinely interpreted as such on the basis of certain contextual factors, in particular the setting, the ongoing activity and the relationship between the speakers. Subsequent studies have identified a range of factors influencing the form of directives.

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The institutional context is one key variable: in ‘blue collar’ contexts, such as factories, imperatives seem to dominate (Weigel and Weigel 1985, Bernsten 1998, Holmes and Stubbe 2003); whereas in ‘white collar’ office settings, more indirect, modalized forms seem to be preferred (Pufahl Bax 1986, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Koester 2006). Pufahl Bax, who examined directives in an American university office, also found that most spoken directives were preceded by a pre-sequence, checking the addressee’s availability, which further served to mitigate the imposition of the request or order. A particularly striking example of the importance of workplace settings in relation to the form of directives is from a study of in-flight directives by air crew members (Linde 1988). The study found that in emergency situations, mitigated directives were more likely to lead to failure than direct ones, as they were more likely to be misinterpreted. In Pufahl Bax’s study of university offices, mode was also found to be a crucial factor influencing the form of the directive: over 70 per cent of the written directives were imperatives, compared with less than 50 per cent of the spoken ones, and were thus much more direct. Whether or not the task is routine also seems to influence the form of the directive. Routine directives are less face-threatening (see below) and do not need to be mitigated as much as non-routine ones (Harris 2003, p. 43). Thus Holmes and Stubbe 2003 (p. 33) attribute the prevalence of the imperative form for directives in factories to the fact that they tended to involve routine tasks and clear, uncontested power relationships. Social, ethnic and cultural factors can also play a role in inter-ethnic or intercultural interactions (Weigel and Weigel 1985, Blum-Kulka et al. 1989, Bilbow 1997). Bilbow found there were differences in the form of directives used by Chinese and Western participants in cross-cultural business meetings, and that the impressions created by these directives on their recipients were also filtered through cultural perceptions. Gender differences in giving directives have also been examined (Goodwin, 1990, West 1990). In an analysis of doctor-patient encounters, West found that male doctors employed more bald, or even ‘aggravated’ forms of directives, while female doctors used more mitigated directives, which tended to minimize status difference. Institutional rank and power would seem to be an obvious variable to take into account when analysing the form of a directive, but most studies show that there is no one-to-one relationship between the form of a directive and the power of the speakers. That is to say, most studies, at least of white-collar settings, found that higher-ranking speakers also use indirect forms (Puhfahl Bax 1986, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004, Koester 2006); for example Harris (2003) concludes that ‘relatively powerful institutional members also make extensive use of mitigating forms and other politeness strategies’ (pp. 36–37). Nevertheless, more powerful members do have the option of using more direct forms, as indicated by Holmes and Stubbe’s (2003) finding that imperatives and other direct forms were used more frequently by managers talking to a subordinates than the other way round.


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Holmes and Stubbe (ibid.) see power (the institutional relationship) and politeness (concern for relational goals) as two major factors which influence speakers’ choice of strategy in all types of workplace interactions. Harris (2003) notes that politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1978/87) has not been applied much to institutional contexts, but argues that it can be a powerful analytical tool. According to politeness theory, certain communicative acts can threaten the ‘positive’ or ‘negative face’ of a speaker or their interlocutor:’positive face’ being an individual’s positive self-image and feeling of self-worth, and ‘negative face’ the claim to self-determination and freedom of action (ibid.). Speakers therefore may choose to use politeness strategies to mitigate the force of a face-threatening act. According to Brown and Levinson, the seriousness or ‘weightiness’ of a facethreatening act, and therefore the need to mitigate, depends on three factors: power, social distance and imposition of task. Harris suggests that politeness theory can be applied to workplace contexts, but that, in addition to Brown and Levinson’s three factors, institutional norms must also be taken into account in determining the weightiness of a face-threatening act. Most studies agree that the reason more powerful speakers use politeness strategies is because they want to foster a good relationship with subordinates; as Pufahl Bax (1986, p. 689) notes ‘although the interlocutors are aware of rank differences, they are also interested in building and cementing a social relationship as individuals who share common goals’. In her study of directives and other ‘control acts’ (see below) in white-collar offices, Vine (2004, p. 199) concludes that ‘even when there is a power/status difference, the joint effort and cooperation/negotiation may be more striking than the displays of power and acquiescence.’ The sharing of common goals seems to be key. In Harris’s (2003) study, in which three institutional settings were examined (magistrates’ courts, doctors’ surgeries and a police station), very direct and even face-threatening directives were used in two interactions from the magistrates’ courts. Harris concludes that this is because the interlocutors (the judge and the defendant) have conflicting goals. A similar conclusion is reached in Weigel and Weigel’s (1985) study of migrant farm workers, which found that imperatives were used exclusively for directives, regardless of factors such as rank, familiarity or nature of the task. In addition to possible factors, such as social class and ethnicity, the most compelling explanation was the antagonistic relationships that existed between the migrant farm workers and their bosses. The discursive context in which a directive occurs also influences its form and the way it is interpreted. Vine’s (2004) study of ‘control acts’ (directives, requests and advice) in interactions collected from government offices (part of the Wellington, New Zealand Language in the Workplace Project) is one of the few studies that analyses directives in their extended context. According to Vine, control acts can be mitigated either ‘internally’ or ‘externally’. Internal modification (or mitigation) occurs through the actual form chosen for the directive, for example by using a modal verb, rather than an imperative (ibid., pp. 93–120). However, a control act may also be mitigated externally through

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discourse moves that occur before or after the directive or request. When a directive is preceded by extensive related discussion or negotiation, less internal modification may be required (ibid., p. 145).

4.3 A corpus-informed study of procedural workplace discourse Most of the studies reviewed above (with the exception of Vine 2004) have tended to examine directives in minimal contexts, rather than in the context of extended instruction-giving discourse. However, as already noted in the introduction to this chapter, spoken procedural discourse involves much more than simply issuing directives: it is an interactive accomplishment between two or more interlocutors. As Vine points out, ‘utterances related to a control act may occur over an extended period or they may be separated by discussion of other topics’ (ibid., p. 145). This section reviews the results of a corpus linguistic analysis of a range of lexico-grammatical devices in procedural discourse compared to other genres in the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2006). The findings indicate that genre has a significant impact on speakers’ lexico-grammatical choices, such as modal verbs or adverbial hedges, which play a central role in giving directives. As described in Chapter 3.5.1, the following ‘interpersonal markers’ were compared across all the genres in the corpus: z modal verbs z vague language z hedges and intensifiers z idioms

The analysis of the interpersonal markers used in procedural discourse did not focus exclusively on directives, but all discourse produced by both instruction-givers and instruction-receivers, was included. The results of the corpus analysis for procedural discourse were quite revealing. While, as one would expect in discourse involving instructions and directives, deontic modal verbs (expressing obligation and necessity) occurred with aboveaverage frequency in procedural discourse in the corpus, the frequency of the modals analysed varied inversely with the degree of directness with which they express obligation:

Figure 4.1 Frequency of deontic modals in procedural discourse


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The modal verbs expressing a stronger obligation or necessity, ‘need to’ and ‘have to’, were least frequent; whereas ‘want to’, which taken at face value, actually expresses desire or inclination, rather than obligation, occurred the most frequently. The only direct way of expressing obligation with ‘want to’ (‘I want you to . . .’) did not occur at all in procedural discourse; in fact, ‘you want . . .’ was more than twice as frequent as ‘I want . . .’ in the corpus as a whole. About half of these second person collocations occurred in giving or receiving instructions: Example 4.1 (a) Instruction-giving: z so you wanna make sure you got one through six here, (b) Instruction-receiving: z so what do you want over here for these A ‘want’ statement (‘you wanna’), as shown in example 4.1a above, is a fairly routine form of directive, but avoids the potential face-threat of ‘I want you to’. In some instances ‘want (to)’ in instructions was used to indicate real choices, as in: Example 4.2 z

If you want to, you can . . . separate them

With the other (stronger) deontic modals, unmitigated directives using the second person pronoun (‘you need’, ‘you have to’, ‘you should’) hardly occurred. Over half of the uses of should were with the first person pronoun ‘I’, and involved queries from instruction-receivers, such as: Example 4.3 z

What should I do. Just– get the estimate. . .

It is also striking that besides the four deontic modals analysed (‘have to’, ‘should’, ‘need to’ and ‘want to’) only three others were used in procedural discourse in the corpus (‘mustn’t’, ‘ought to’ and ‘be supposed to’) and each was used only once, while ‘must’ did not occur at all.1 |A number of epistemic modal verbs, expressing possibility or degrees of commitment to the truth of an utterance (see Koester 2006, pp. 72–107), also occurred with above-average frequency in procedural discourse: ‘can’, ‘could’ ‘will’, ‘would’. These were used in a number of ways by both instruction-givers and receivers, for example ‘can’ was frequently used by instruction-givers to indicate choices, as in example 4.2 above. They were also used for mitigated directives, for example: Example 4.4 So . . . I would do this . . . staple that bill of lading onto that invoice

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Other interpersonal markers which occurred more frequently in procedural discourse compared to the corpus average were hedges (e.g. ‘just’, ‘like’) and vague language (e.g. ‘things’, ‘stuff’, ‘or something’). Instructions were frequently hedged using ‘just’, for instance: Example 4.5 z

But . . . you can just say you do . . . uhm . . . white- sheet size is one twenty by one eighty,. . .

Overall then, in interactions in the corpus involving directives and instructions, direct forms seem to be avoided and more indirect or mitigated alternatives preferred. The following example shows a clustering of such devices, including adverbial hedges, modal verbs and vague language: Example 4.6 Beth

Oh it’s really- it’s really easy to do it. I mean :hh actually, I think if you just wanna send them to a friend or something, you could order them through the gratis order form. (From Cambridge International Corpus © Cambridge University Press)

4.4 Directives in transactional and collaborative talk The results from the ABOT corpus converge with findings from other studies of office environments, indicating that more indirect forms are used for directives in such workplace settings (see 4.2 above). But, as already mentioned, previous studies have mostly looked at directives within minimal interactional contexts, rather than in the context of genre. Directives are central speech acts in procedural discourse, but they do occur in other genres as well. If genre has a significant impact on speakers’ lexico-grammatical choices, as the findings from the ABOT corpus indicate, then it is likely that the form and function of directives will be affected by genre as well. Building on the original study of the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2006), this section examines directives and requests in procedural discourse compared with other workplace genres. The question to be addressed is whether directives which are part of a procedural encounter, for example training a new member of staff, are similar in form and function to directives which occur in the course of other generic activity, such as a collaborative decisionmaking encounter. It will be argued that the extended interactive context plays a key role in the interpretation of directives. Furthermore, as is shown with examples from the corpus, directives are only some of the elements which constitute procedural talk. As decision-making (with a total data count of 8,782 words) and procedural discourse (with 5,195 words) are the two most frequently occurring genres in


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the corpus, it makes sense to compare directives in these two genres. Furthermore, both the participants’ goals and the discursive relationship in these genres contrast. Procedural discourse involves asking or enabling others to carry out particular actions, while in decision-making the goal is to collaboratively agree on actions. Procedural discourse is therefore a unidirectional genre, where one of the speakers is discursively dominant, whereas decisionmaking is collaborative, with participants playing more or less equal roles (see Chapter 2.2). If we examine the same lexico-grammatical items reviewed above for procedural discourse (modal verbs, hedges and vague language) in decision-making discourse in general, the differences are striking. As in procedural discourse, deontic modals all occurred with above-average frequency, but the more forceful modals (‘have to’, ‘need to’, ‘should’) were all used comparatively more frequently in decision-making than in procedural discourse, while ‘want to’ was used less frequently. Hedges and vague language, on the other hand, were very infrequent compared both with their occurrence in procedural discourse and in the corpus as a whole (see Koester 2006). For the investigation of directives and requests, another unidirectional genre, requesting action or favour-seeking (comprising 1,250 words), was examined together with procedural discourse. Like procedural discourse, this genre involves a discursively dominant speaker getting the addressee to perform some action or actions. However it is distinct from procedural discourse, in that the communicative purpose of the interaction is not to instruct or enable the addressee to perform a task, but to obtain or secure a service or favour from the addressee. For example, one requesting episode (which is part of a longer meeting) involves a junior editor requesting a signature from a senior editor for some documentation she is working on. This is followed, in the same meeting, by a procedural episode, in which the junior editor explains to the senior editor how to order free books. As this example shows, the discursively dominant speaker (the one obtaining the service or giving the instructions) is not necessarily the institutional superior. In both these genres, directives and/or requests occur frequently, and the two genres also share a number of lexico-grammatical features, as revealed by the corpus analysis. Forceful deontic modals (‘have to, ‘should’) are even less frequent in requesting than in procedural discourse (but still have aboveaverage frequencies), and most epistemic modals (‘will’, ‘would’, ‘could’) are even more frequent, and also occur with above-average frequency. The two genres together thus comprise a data set that contrasts both in communicative purpose and lexico-grammatical characteristics with decision-making. Directives and requests in procedural and requesting discourse were therefore examined together, and compared to directives and requests in decisionmaking. Directives and requests both have the purpose of getting the addressee to perform an action; that is they are both ‘contral acts’, according to Vine 2004 (pp. 26–27). However, these two speech acts are not always distinguished clearly

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in the literature (see ibid., pp. 15–37). The most compelling distinguishing factors to have been suggested relate to expectation of compliance and right of refusal (ibid., pp, 29–31). With directives, compliance is usually expected, whereas the addressee has the right to refuse requests. This is usually linked to the power relationship between the speaker and addressee; as Pufahl Bax (1986, p. 675) points out, someone who orders rather than requests is necessarily in a position of power. However, whether or not the requested action falls within the addressee’s regular workplace duties is also an important factor. While most requests in the ABOT corpus are addressed to people of a higher or equal status, there are some examples of requests to someone of a lower status, if the request or favour goes beyond what the addressee is normally expected to do. Requests, not surprisingly, typically occur in requesting encounters and directives in procedural encounters, but they can occur in either genre, as genres are defined by the overall communicative purpose of the encounter or generic episode, not by the specific speech acts which occur within them. A total of 159 instances of directives and requests were identified, 94 of these in procedural discourse and requesting, and 65 in decision-making. Directives and requests took a range of forms from imperatives to various modals, as shown below (from most to least forceful): z Imperatives:

– Bald imperative + ‘you’ imperative – ‘just’ + imperative z Modals:

– – – – – – – – – – –

mustn’t have (got) to need (to) should ought to supposed to want to can could would might

z Let’s, Let me

The modal verb ‘can’ was the most frequent form chosen for directives and requests (with a total of 33 occurrences), followed by both types of imperative (29 occurrences in total), and then the modals ‘have (got) to’, ‘want to’, ‘need (to)’ and ‘would’ (with frequencies ranging from 24 to 11). Vine (2004, pp. 106–108) found similar frequencies for modal verbs used for directives and


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Density of directives and requests 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1

Procedural and requesting:14.58 Decision-making: 7.4

0.5 0

) ld ld ld e ht to to ) 't s n to p. ca ot) t (to ' im tive d (to ou ou ou t m ig ht ed ustn c sh /le m ug s m w (g wan you era ee o s o ' t p n /' pp ve le es ' im su ha tiv just a ' r pe im

Figure 4.2 Density of directives and requests

requests in her data from the Wellington Corpus, with ‘can’ being the most frequent, and ‘need to’, ‘have to’ and ‘would’ all having high frequencies. Figure 4.2 shows how frequently each item was used for directives or requests in the two sub-corpora. As the decision-making sub-corpus (with 8,782 words) is larger than the procedural and requesting discourse sub-corpora put together (totalling 6,445 words), the density (that is frequency per 1,000 words) of the directives/requests in each data set, rather than absolute frequencies, are shown. A range of linguistic forms are used for directives in both sub-corpora examined, but there are some noticeable differences in frequency. As one would expect, directives and request are much more frequent in procedural/requesting genres than in decision-making, occurring about twice as frequently here, with a density of 14.58 (per thousand words) compared with 7.4 in decision-making. Not surprisingly, therefore, imperatives occur much more frequently in the two unidirectional genres. However, the majority of these are hedged with ‘just’; bald imperatives and ‘you’ imperatives are less frequent in procedural discourse and requesting, while the reverse is the case in decision-making. Some examples of each type of imperative from the sample are given below: bald imperative (Decision-making): z Ask her to stick it in

‘you’ imperative (Procedural discourse): z Basically what you do, you get– you get a piece of self-adhesive, right?

‘just’ imperative (Requesting): z Just e-mail me the names

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Less forceful, indirect modals, ‘can’, ‘want to’, ‘would’ are used much more frequently in procedural/requesting discourse than in decision-making. On the other hand, the stronger modals, ‘have to (got) to’, ‘need (to)’, ‘should’ are used more frequently in decision-making. A number of examples of speakers using a range of modals in the different genres are shown below: Procedural Discourse: z this has to go to the committee z then . . . we wanna keep the two cover sheets z you can go ahead an’ put it back in here z I would have a quick word with Paul an’ just say look this is what Zenith

are after Requesting: z Oh you know what. While you’re here, can you sign off on the reprint card? z A:nd uh the pack. I need you to sign off on the pack too z You couldn’t do the documentation, fo- fo:r . . . Double U, could you?

Decision-making: z Yeah. I mean you have to have this cut-off date z ↑ First of all you gotta speak to Trevor . . . . And find out what he’s pla–

prepared to do . . . . z You need to update this too z Do you wanna chat to her z But it may need- need to be modified, so if you could take a look at it

and see. . . While more direct as well as more mitigated forms are used in all three genres, it is noteworthy that the potentially more face-threatening use of second person pronoun with ‘have (got) to’ (‘you have to’, ‘you gotta’) only occurs in decisionmaking. This is all the more noteworthy in light of Handford’s (2007) finding that ‘you have to’ is a highly frequent cluster in CANBEC. Of course, ‘you have to’ may not carry any face-threat at all if the ‘you’ is general, rather than referring to the addressee; But it seems that even when the addressee is meant with ‘you’, this cluster carries less potential face threat in decision-making encounters than in procedural or requesting discourse, as discussed below. The use of ‘let’s’ is interesting, as such a call for joint action is typically a suggestion. Suggestions or advice can be distinguished from directives or requests, in that they benefit the hearer, rather than the speaker (Vine 2004, pp. 30–31). Some of the instances counted in decision-making are on the borderline between requests and suggestions, as in example 4.7, where two co-workers are inspecting a label: Example 4.7 z Let’s have a look at that one then


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However, as the colleague then takes the label from her co-worker, this can be interpreted as a request to be given the label. The discursive context in procedural encounters, makes the interpretation of ‘let’s’ as a directive more straightforward, as in example 4.8: Example 4.8 Meg Thi::s. . . . Uh– is this just a– d– do I just treat this– Ann Hmmm. . . . Let’s treat that as an invoice. for one case at twenty-seven bucks. an’ that’s it, Meg, a new employee, is asking her manager, Ann, various questions about accounting procedures, and ‘let’s’ is clearly used to instruct Meg about the correct procedure to follow. ‘Let me’ is also used in a few instances as a directive or request, as here, in another procedural encounter, where the speaker hands the addressee some forms: z So let me give you that

To sum up, then, a quantitative comparison of directives and requests in the two sub-corpora shows that, although these speech acts are more frequent in procedural and requesting discourse than in decision-making, they tend to be more indirect and hedged. The question is, why should this be the case? As previous research suggests, the most obvious reason to use more indirect forms is negative politeness, that is to mitigate the threat to the addressee’s negative face (the freedom from interference) which such a speech act implies. But, why should directives be ‘less polite’ when they occur in the context of decision-making? In order to have a complete picture of directives in the different genres, it is essential to examine the more extended discourse context. In particular, it is important to consider how directives are taken up and responded to by the addressee, and their role in the genre as a whole. Two extracts, one from a procedural encounter, and one from decision-making, are examined to explore these issues.2 Example 4.9 shows a longer extract from the encounter in which the adjacency pair in example 4.8 above occurred. The two co-workers, Ann and Meg, work in the back office of a food retailer (a North American co-operative). Ann is the bookkeeper, and is training Meg, her new assistant. They are going over procedures to do with invoices (directives are underlined). Example 4.9 Procedural Discourse: ‘Sorting Invoices’ (39) Ann There’s tha:t, The question i:s. . . (40) Meg ⎣Is whether they actually match?

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(41) Ann

Yeah. Whether they . . . yeah. Then the next thing you do: is . . . There should also be a ↓ packing slip for this one here. So . . . I would do this . . . staple that bill of lading onto that invoice, ‘cause we know those two go together, [9] (42) Meg So they’re all in /this ?/ [8] (43) Ann Okay, a:nd . . . ↑ Just- assuming that our packing slip’s gonna from upstairs, ↓ you can go ahead an’ put it back in here. An’ then at– like at the end o’ the month . . . we’ll look through here an’ say wait a second. ↓ what happened to that packing slip an’ figure it out then. (44) Meg ⎣Okay. . . . Alright. An’ the:n: . . . other things I/had ? on totally/Thi::s. . . . Uh- is this just a– d– do I just treat this(45) Ann Hmmm. . . . Let’s treat that as an invoice. for one case at twenty-seven bucks. an’ that’s it, (46) Meg ⎣ Okay, The discursive roles of instruction-giver and instruction-receiver are quite clear-cut in the encounter shown in example 4.9. The interaction is obviously ‘unidirectional’, in that there an asymmetry in the roles and the expert knowledge of the participants, which results in a one-way transfer of information. Ann gives instructions using a variety of forms, while Meg either acknowledges that she has understood the instructions (e.g. ‘okay’) or asks questions, e.g.: ‘So they’re all in this?’ Ann uses mostly modalized directives: ‘there should be’, ‘I would do this’, ‘you can go ahead’. There is only one imperative, but this is a ‘you’ imperative (‘the next thing you do’), not a bald imperative. Interestingly, two of the directives are framed as joint action: ‘we’ll look through here’, ‘Let’s treat that as’. The findings from the corpus analysis, that directives in procedural discourse take a range of forms, but are mostly quite indirect, is confirmed in this data extract. Example 4.10 shows the use of directives in a decision-making encounter. This is from a meeting in the editorial office of a North American publishing company, and the two speakers, Carol and Beth, are discussing how they can improve a particular procedure. Beth is an assistant editor, and Carol is her boss. Example 4.10 Decision-making: ‘Updating reprints’ (26) Carol .hh Yeah. .hh Anyway. I mean a– we– we have to . . . I want you to take a look at this. and see how you could use this, a:s a daily update. So that whenever you have a reprint, you just put the information in, (27) Beth Mhm, (28) Carol and uh. . .


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⎣Right so I never have to pull out all the folders at once. again, and go through it as a whole . . . humongous project. (30) Carol Exactly. So that you would have a– a running uh . . . (31) Beth Yeah. Like a running . . . (32) Carol ⎣a record of . . . (33) Beth record of exactly what’s happening at any one time. (34) Carol ⎣Exactly. (35) Carol Mhm, (36) Beth ⎣Mhm, (37) Beth Yeah. I was looking at that yesterday, an’ I can put in, . . . um . . . I don’t have to put in when a reprint comes in, but every time a reprint comes in, or a reprint goes . . . into production, starts. (38) Carol Mhm, (39) Beth Then I can check this and make sure that the date is correct, Um and when I get a unit cost, when I get a bound cost back, after a reprint. Then I can put that in, as a last printing. (40) Carol ⎣Mhm ⎣Right. (From Cambridge International Corpus © Cambridge University Press) (29) Beth

The extract shown in example 4.10 (which starts in the middle of the meeting) begins with a very direct, and potentially face-threatening directive (‘I want you to’), which is then elaborated with the epistemic modals ‘could’ and ‘would’ (turns 26 and 30), which are used for hypothesizing, rather than for mitigating. This use of ‘I want you to’ is striking, as there are no occurrences of this in procedural discourse and requesting; in fact this is the only example in the whole corpus. It is possible that the force of the directive is mitigated to some extent by the preceding ‘false start’ (‘we-we have to . . .’), but Carol nevertheless chooses a fairly bald directive from among the range of possible choices. Another noticeable difference between this extract and the previous one is the way the addressee, Beth, responds. Unlike, Meg in example 4.9, she does not simply acknowledge or check understanding, but takes an active role in making suggestions. This impacts on the turn-taking structure in two ways. First, as both speakers actively contribute suggestions, there are a large number of overlapping and collaboratively constructed turns, for example: (29) Carol Exactly. So that you would have a– a running uh . . . (30) Beth Yeah. Like a running . . . (31) Carol ⎣a record of . . . (32) Beth record of exactly what’s happening at any one time. (33) Carol ⎣Exactly. From turns 37 to 40, Beth makes another suggestion, and Carol simply listens and provides back-channels (‘mhm’). There is thus, secondly, a kind of reversal of the roles of superior and subordinate observed in example 4.9, where Meg,

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the subordinate is the one who listens and acknowledges understanding. Although the institutional relationship is the same in both encounters (managersubordinate), the discursive relationship is quite different. As Beth’s manager, Carol has the authority to tell her to do something, but it is clear from the way Beth responds to the directive, and how the interaction develops, that the participants play a collaborative role in this encounter; that is they are trying jointly to solve a particular problem. Vine (2004, p. 145 ), who also investigated directives in the context of interactions between managers and subordinates, observes that managers acknowledge and respect the domain of responsibility of their staff (especially senior staff), by supporting their plans of action, as Carol does in this encounter. In terms of the goal of the encounter (problem-solving or decision-making), there is no clear division and asymmetry of roles, unlike in the instruction-giving encounter (example 4.9). This extract is illustrative of the general tendency revealed by the corpus analysis that more direct forms are used (e.g. emphatic deontic modals) and that there is less mitigation (e.g. vague language and hedges) in decision-making conversations than in procedural encounters. The explanation for this would seem to be in the different discursive roles of the participants in each of these genres. In decision-making discourse, as in other collaborative genres (see Chapter 2.2), the more equal roles of the participants seems to reduce the risk of performing face-threatening acts, thereby lessening the need for mitigation. In procedural discourse and requesting, on the other hand, the opposite is true, and participants attempt to minimize, through politeness strategies, the interactional asymmetry which results from the role allocation in the genre. These findings are based on a relatively small data set, but they are supported by a study of hedges in CANBEC (Handford, forthcoming), which found that hedges were more frequent in meetings with a procedural focus, than in those involving decision-making.3 The analysis of directives in two different genre sets has shown that the form and discourse context of directives is influenced by the genre in which it occurs. Not only were there marked differences in the frequencies of different forms of directive in the genres compared, but the sequential placement and interactive treatment of directives by the participants differed markedly. Genre is thus a key factor influencing the realization of directives, in addition to other factors identified by previous studies, such as institutional context, nature of the task and power.

4.5 Solidarity and involvement strategies in procedural talk involving training The importance of politeness to mitigate potential face-threats in procedural discourse has been emphasized in the previous section. But, the interpersonal features found in workplace discourse include strategies that go beyond


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politeness, and include what I describe as ‘solidarity’: ‘the affective dimension of interpersonal relations’ involving ‘the expression of mutuality and common ground’ (Koester 2006, p. 62). For example, in example 4.9 above, the bookkeeper (Ann), in training her new assistant (Meg), formulates a number of directives in a way that projects them as her own action or as joint action, when in fact it is Meg who will be carrying out the task: z I would do this (turn 41) z we’ll look through here (turn 43) z Let’s treat that as an invoice (turn 45)

Here, and in other procedural encounters (see Koester 2006, pp. 115–118) there seems to be an effort on the instruction-giver’s part to make the one-way process of instruction-giving more interactive and interpersonal. The high density of solidarity strategies in this encounter may be linked to the fact it does not involve routine directives (which require less mitigation), but training a new employee, a situation in which establishing a good relationship is particularly important. One particular procedural encounter from the ABOT Corpus, in which a new employee is trained, stands out as being the only one to use extensively a combination of particular strategies, which, according to Tannen (1989) create ‘involvement’: an internal, even emotional connection individuals feel which binds them to other people as well as to place, things, activities, ideas, memories, and words (p. 12). Tannen (ibid., p. 17) describes a range of ‘involvement strategies’, such as rhythm, repetition, tropes, dialogue, narrative, imagery and detail. The ones that are particularly salient in this encounter are narrative, constructed dialogue and detail. The encounter (‘Adhesive labels’, see Appendix I) takes place in the branch office of a British paper supplier between the branch manager, Ben, and a new, very young sales rep, Sam. Sam has approached Ben with a problem regarding a particular type of label he needs to get for a customer, and Ben launches into a lengthy explanation of the process involved in printing on labels and some of the problems that could occur. What is striking about the explanation is that it is done via the setting up of a hypothetical scenario which is structured as a narrative, going through all the phases of narrative structure identified by Labov (1972): abstract, orientation, complicating action, resolution, coda. The encounter begins with Sam explaining what his problem is. There is then a clear switch to narrative genre in Ben’s next turn, marked by a number of prosodic and turn-constructional features: pausing, a discourse marker (‘alright’), false starts and a step up in pitch (↑). Here Ben sets

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up a hypothetical situation, which functions as a kind of abstract to (or summary) of the story, as it states the problem the narrative is designed to solve: Example 4.11 (6) Sam

[2] (7) Ben

‘Cause if we can get hold of ‘em I mean he– he said he can get ‘em from Merchant’s Paper . . . So I don’t- know if they actually . . . stock them themselves or they’re getting hold of ‘em somehow, but they– he said he doesn’t like them, so he doesn’t wanna go through them, (Alright) What does happen, if . . . ↑If you look at . . . uhm . . . [4] Somebody comes on to you an’ says . . . we want some twenty millimetre . . . circular labels. right?

This ‘story opener’ in turn 7 (‘somebody comes on to you an’ says’) is recognizable as a kind of framing device used to set up a hypothetical example. There is some evidence in the corpus that this is a semi-lexicalized phrase with a pragmatic specialization for projecting hypothetical scenarios. Other variations of the pattern found in the corpus are: z if somebody else comes along . . . z if somebody like yourself go along . . .

Ben’s next turn functions as the orientation of the narrative, providing relevant background information to the imaginary situation: Example 4.12 (9) Ben

An’ he might have already done the job before, . . . So what they do:, is they– if they’ve done the job before:, they . . . print onto these– onto these labels, ⎣Sam: Yeah⎦ wi– with a printing plate yeah?

From turns 11–23 Ben then describes a series of hypothetical events linked with the discourse marker ‘so’, which make up the complicating action, that is the main events of the narrative: Example 4.13 (13) Ben

So. . . what they do, is /they then say/ right okay, right,. . . [3 sec: Ben drawing a diagram] Here’s our– here’s our sheet, of labels ⎣Sam: Yeah,⎦ an’– they’re twenty millimetre circular labels. [8 sec: Ben drawing and making some noises] You got the– got the drift. ↑ There– That’s– that’s your sheet o’ labels right, ↓ where the circular /holes/ are,

Working Together and Getting People to Do Things (14) Sam [2] (15) Ben

(16) Sam

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⎣Mm /So . . ./ we say ↑ hm! Done the job before, you wanna print ‘em again, . . . We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . . ↓ Alright? (Yeah)

The narrative is ‘animated’ with hypothetical reported speech (turn 15: ‘so . . . we say . . .’) and visual aids which Ben creates as he goes along (this accounts for several fairly long pauses in which he draws some diagrams). This builds up to a narrative peak in turn 23, where the imaginary printing process runs into serious problems, and here the narrative build-up is highlighted by the use of sound effects and expletives: Example 4.14 (23) [. . .] an’ here comes our labels. [whistles and draws] Oh fuck! Where are all those little peanuts gonna go, they’re gonna go nowhere near his fucking labels, In turn 25 the narrative moves into the resolution phase, with Ben proposing two possible solutions to this problem: Example 4.15 (25) So, . . . the thing is, he’s got two options. He can either use, exactly the same . . . labels . . . again, [. . .] ↑Or, . . . he says well I don’t wanna use those people anymore, . . . plates a bit knackered anyway. So I have to:, get another plate made up, that m- matches that format that /lay down of/ labels. The end of the narrative is signalled by a ‘coda’, which makes an overall comment on the story, and marks a return from the hypothetical situation to the here and now (Labov 1972, Eggins and Slade 1997): Example 4.16 (40) Ben

↓Which is quite an expensive . . . (way of uh you know,) ↑So what you really need to do, is– is to say to him, we can supply you, cir– twenty millimetre circular labels, ⎣Sam: Yeah,⎦ A:nd . . . we can do JDS, and say . . . tell him that our maximum size, . . . [. . .]

Besides serving as a link from the story world back to the real world, the coda elucidates the point of the narrative, in this case telling Sam what he needs to do about his current problem. This provides the justification for the story: the

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point of the lengthy, detailed explanation was of course to enable Sam to understand how to solve his problem. The rest of the encounter from turns 40–59 resembles other procedural encounters, with Ben proposing various courses of action using a variety of modal verbs (‘need’, ‘want (to)’, ‘can’, ‘might’, ‘would’). The question is, why does Ben use these involvement strategies, structuring his explanation as a narrative, and going into such elaborate detail in describing the process, when there might have been more efficient ways of structuring this explanation? Tannen (1989, p. 104) sees storytelling as ‘a key element in the establishment of interpersonal involvement in conversation: it heightens the active participation of listeners’. By structuring his explanation as a narrative, Ben attempts to engage Sam’s attention and make the explanation more interesting and memorable. As noted in Chapter 2.3.2, where a brief extract from this encounter is shown (example 2.9), this narrative is part of a ‘virtual world’ created by Ben on the spur of the moment to serve the pedagogical goal of the encounter. His use of constructed dialogue, using hypothetical reported speech, is a further device that makes the explanation more lively, e.g. (example 4.13 above): (15) Ben /So . . . / we say ↑ hm! Done the job before, you wanna print ‘emagain, . . . We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . . ↓ A number of researchers have observed that speech reporting is used by storytellers as a narrative device. For Labov (1972), reported speech constitutes ‘embedded evaluation’, which comments on the events of the narrative, and Baynham (1991) observes that direct speech is used especially during the complicating action and narrative peak to heighten the drama of the story. Tannen (1989, p. 133) also sees constructed dialogue as a dramatic device which casts the listeners into the role of active interpreting audience. Constructed dialogue is also used in some other procedural encounters in order to exemplify an aspect of the procedure: Example 4.17 Well I order things free mostly, Like if somebody . . . calls up and says– like even a friend of Carol will say you know, can I have this book. an’ Carol’ll e-mail me, an’ say could you just send them this. and I send it free. (From Cambridge International Corpus © Cambridge University Press) Like in example 4.11 above, the speaker frames the upcoming discourse as a hypothetical situation: ‘like if somebody calls up and says . . .’, similar to the frame used by Ben (‘somebody comes on to you an’ says . . .’). This hypothetical situation is then exemplified with reported speech, and, as in the ‘Adhesive Labels’ encounter, has the effect of making the explanation more vivid and lively.


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However, in no other procedural encounter is hypothetical reported speech embedded in such an extended narrative as in Ben’s explanation to Sam. Finally Tannen (1989, p. 135) notes that the use of detail evokes images and scenes (which are often linked to emotions). Ben goes into minute detail, creating a situation where labels for peanuts are to be printed, all accompanied with an illustration: Example 4.18 (19) Ben

(20) Sam

[drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks] so on each one o’ those, . . . they’re just white labels, and in the middle o’ that you might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a couple o’ legs and a couple o’ arms ↓ an’ /?/ an’ put peanuts under it right? Alright? ⎣Yeah . . . [chuckles]

Sam’s chuckle as a reaction to this is an indication that Ben is successful in creating involvement with these details. He not only tells a story, but puts on a whole show, using visual aids (the diagrams which he draws), gestures, to describe the printing process, and various exclamations and sound effects: Example 4.19 (21) Ben So all you’ve got on here, . . . is loads o’ little peanuts, with arms an’ legs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going round an’ round a cylinder, . . . that’s /flat/ wrapped round a cylinder like that right, . . . an’ here comes all the labels yeah? . . . So here comes these labels, . . . an’ all those little . . . peanuts, land, right in the middle of all those . . . labels, right? (22) Sam Yeah, (23) Ben Bonzai! Alright so we come along, an’ we go ↑yeah! . . . We do labels, These involvement strategies used by Ben have a similar effect to some of the solidarity strategies used in other procedural encounters: they serve to make the discourse more interactive and interpersonal. The situation here is of course quite different from an encounter between intimates or friends (such as those examined by Tannen), in which creating interpersonal rapport is the main goal. Throughout this encounter the participants remain task-focused, and Ben’s narrative is clearly not an off-task relational episode of some kind (see Chapter 5). In fact it serves a very important task goal: instructing a new employee in a procedure he needs to be familiar with. The virtual world created by Ben through involvement strategies thus clearly serves a purpose in terms of the transactional goal: these strategies are designed to make the explanations more understandable, meaningful and memorable.

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An interview I conducted with Ben after this encounter provides evidence that he used these strategies deliberately. In the interview, Ben spoke about the importance of training new sales reps and expressed his dissatisfaction with some of the trainers they had employed, who used what he called ‘textbook methods’, rather than adapting the training to the particular needs of the company. In addition to serving as training tools that are specifically adapted to the needs of the trainee and the situation, the involvement strategies used by Ben are also important in building a relationship with a new employee: as well as constructing an identity of himself as raconteur and entertainer, he establishes the working relationship as a friendly and informal one. Both the training encounters examined so far in this chapter (‘Sorting Invoices’, examples 4.9–4.10, and ‘Adhesive Labels’, examples 4.11–4.19) show trainers making extensive use of solidarity and involvement strategies, and these seem to be particularly important in situations in which new recruits are being trained. Having considered training as a specific kind of procedural genre, the final section of this chapter considers training, apprenticeship and workplace learning more generally.

4.6 Training, apprenticeship and workplace learning Learning at work takes place in a range of contexts, from targeted training to ‘learning by doing’ in the course of carrying out workplace duties. At the formal training end of the continuum, outside trainers might be called in to run in-house training sessions for staff. Also, more senior members of staff may formally induct new recruits, as in the ‘Sorting Invoices’ encounter (Example 4.9–4.10) between Ann and Meg, or opportunities for instruction may arise spontaneously in dealing with new employees, as in the conversation between Ben and Sam about adhesive labels (Example 4.11–4.19). Learning also takes place outside such procedural encounters which explicitly focus on instruction. Apprenticeship into a trade or profession frequently involves a more senior member of staff observing and evaluating a new employee in how they perform their duties. In the medical profession, for example, newly qualified doctors work as ‘residents’ in hospitals in the United States of America, where they are supervised by experienced doctors. Erickson (1999) describes supervisory sessions in which residents or ‘interns’ have to make medical case presentations to an experienced doctor as part of their apprenticeship. The case presentation is a distinct professional speech genre, consisting of both narrative segments, where an intern presents the medical case of a patient they have just examined to a senior physician (a preceptor), and interactive segments, where the preceptor asks the intern questions. In this pedagogical situation, interns learn through modelling, rather than direct instruction. These sessions are underpinned by an ‘implicit educational contract’ (ibid.,


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p. 121), whereby the interns are treated like ‘real doctors’, and therefore feedback given by the preceptors tends to be indirect. Rather than being given explicit instruction, the interns learn the genre of case presentation by gradually ‘appropriating the voice’ of the genre (ibid., p. 137), which includes, for example, learning to switch between formal style (using professional terminology) and informal style (‘quasi-lay’ terminology). Discussions of workplace learning have been much influenced by Wenger’s (1998) notion of communities of practice (see Chapter 1), where learning is seen as ever-increasing social participation in the community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991); and numerous studies have adopted this social view of learning at work (e.g. Schulz 2005, Lee and Roth 2006, Lundin and Nuldén 2007). Erickson (1999) notes that the characteristics of the precepting session ‘fufill the conditions of Lave’s conception of apprenticeship as progressively more and more complete participation in a community of practice’ (p. 137). Before the novices become ‘fully fluent’ in the community of practice, they engage in what Lave and Wenger (1991) call ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. Learning the genres of the professions need not always take place in situations, like the precepting sessions discussed above, which have the explicit purpose of training, but may also occur in the course of performing regular workplace tasks. In a study of learning at work in police practice in Sweden, Lundin and Nuldén (2007) discuss a range of situations from the everyday practice of the police which provide opportunities for learning for new recruits. They focus specifically on ways in which ‘tools’ are used and talked about in the work of the police. According to Wenger (1998), tools are part of the ‘shared repertoire’ of a discourse community, along with routines, genres, symbols and other linguistic and non-linguistic elements. The tools used by the police include the ‘artefacts’ they carry on their person, such as gun, stick, radio and phone, as well as the police car. Opportunities for learning seem to arise specifically in talking about how the tools are deployed in policing work. However, the situations described do not involve formal training, but frequently some kind of informal debriefing after carrying out a job. In one instance, this involved discussing the way in which a police car was used in arriving at a suspicious scene. In their analysis, Lundin and Nuldén (2007) stress the social and interactive dimension of workplace learning: the opportunities to use the tools of the practice, and to reflect collectively on the experiences gained from doing this, shape the learning among the participants. (p. 236) Learning involves not only learning how to use tools and perform genres, but also what the values of the professional community are. For instance, the genre of the medical case presentation, which newly qualified doctors learn to perform in supervisory sessions (Erickson 1999), is not only a report, but also an opportunity for self-presentation of the physician. Erikson remarks that

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medical conditions which allow a clear diagnosis and treatment are valued because they give the doctor the opportunity for positive self-presentation. On the other hand, medical conditions with vague, puzzling symptoms, which do not allow such a diagnosis, are ‘aesthetically, intellectually, and morally unsatisfying for physicians’ (ibid., p. 113). In the precepting session analysed, the senior doctor models how to talk about the patient’s medical condition, which falls into the difficult-to-diagnose category. After the intern has presented the case and proposed a diagnosis, the preceptor says: Example 4.20 (86) P: Yeah it seems that it’s you know it’s a (87) funny enough story that (88) because it’s a crazy story it doesn’t fit (89) anything . . . (Erickson 1999, p. 119) By distancing himself from and denigrating the patient’s condition in this way (‘it’s a crazy story’), the senior doctor models the way in which such medical conditions, which are ‘medically uninteresting and unsatisfying’ (ibid., p. 135) are perceived and talked about in the profession. The values of a community are perhaps articulated most clearly when they are not appropriated by new recruits. An example of this can be seen in a meeting from the ABOT corpus between a sales manager and his boss, where the sales manager describes problems he is having with one of his new sales reps. Some extracts from this meeting are shown in example 4.21 below (see also Koester 2004, pp. 20–27): Example 4.21 Yeah this morning. I . . . took him to Amy’s office an’ talked to him. .hh That he has: . . . I says you’ve got . . . ↑ the work ethic, ↓ you got the ↑ personality,↓ and you got the:: . . . u:h . . . ↑ ability the– to do very well. And you: are supposed to have some knowledge that you’re coming with us. And that . . . since you been here. In monitoring you, have I– we’ve had several– conversations, and we’ve had a spat . . . back and forth, of things about . . . .hh what’s happening, and where are you are, an’ hh uh t° . . . ↓ then I says I– as your. . . ↑supervisor, I have to tell you, that your performance is not what it should be. [. . .] Yeah. I says so I know I understand you receive what I say. but you’ve not . . . applied what I say. An’ you’re assuming that you know, more than I do. An’ I says if that were true, you would be producing sales. An’ . . . so . . . I says now


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I want you to come in Monday, an’ tell me one way or another. Are you ready to really go after it, an’ make a change? There are echoes of previous procedural encounters between the sales manager and rep in this report: ‘I understand you receive what I say but you’ve not . . . applied what I say.’ As previous instruction seems to have failed, the sales manager apparently feels it is necessary to be explicit about what is expected of the rep in his job. We must remember, of course, that this is a reported conversation, and that the sales manager’s language may not have been quite as direct in the actual encounter with the rep. However, what comes out quite clearly in his report to his superior is what is expected of a ‘good’ sales rep. First of all, there is a list of positive characteristics needed for the job, which the sales rep is said to possess: ‘the work ethic’, ‘the personality’, ‘the ability to do well’. But, as becomes evident in the sales manager’s talk, simply possessing these characteristics is not enough; what ultimately counts and is valued in this community of practice is ‘performance’, which, as is spelled out later in the encounter, means ‘producing sales’.

4.7 Conclusion This chapter has explored, from a number of different angles, communication at work which has the aim of getting others to perform certain tasks. While most previous studies have focused on directives in isolation or in their immediate communicative context, I have argued in this chapter that directives should be examined in the wider communicative context of genre. The focus has been on procedural discourse, where the overall communicative goal is to instruct, or explain actions or procedures. Directives are frequent in this genre, but it is also characterized by other features, such as the discourse roles and the turntaking structure. Some of the key characteristics of this genre, identified through corpus methods as well as discourse analysis in a corpus of office conversations, were reviewed. To further explore the role of genre, directives and requests were compared in two different genre sets, procedural discourse/ requesting and decision-making, revealing striking differences in the form and interactive treatment of directives in the different genres. These results indicate that genre is a key factor that should be taken into account in interpreting directives, in addition to others, such as institutional context and speaker relationship, identified in previous studies. Much procedural discourse takes place in the context of training, and therefore the final section of this chapter has dealt specifically with interactions involving training. It seems that solidarity strategies are used especially frequently by trainers, as they are trying to build a positive relationship with the new colleague. One particular training encounter which was analysed in detail showed the extensive use of involvement strategies to heighten the engagement

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and receptiveness to learning on the part of the new recruit, as well as to foster a positive relationship. The chapter finished with a more general look at apprenticeship and workplace learning, and ways in which genres, tools and values of the professional community are conveyed to new members. The procedural encounters analysed and discussed in this chapter show that politeness and solidarity strategies are used extensively, indicating that building relationships between co-workers is a key concern, even when the focus is on accomplishing a workplace task. The following chapter will explore the topic of relationship-building at work in more detail, examining small talk and the use of humour in workplace interactions.

Part II

Issues and Applications in Workplace Discourse


Chapter 5

Relationships at Work: Relational Talk and Humour

5.1 Introduction The important role played by relational talk and interpersonal elements of language in workplace discourse, despite its overall focus on transactional goals, has already been highlighted throughout this book. This chapter focuses specifically on relational talk in the workplace, paying particular attention to small talk and the use of humour. The traditional dichotomy between transactional or task-oriented talk and relational talk (or ‘phatic communion’) has been challenged by a number of recent studies into the use of small talk in workplace and institutional settings (Holmes 2000a, McCarthy 2000, Ragan 2000, Koester 2006). While Malinowski (1923/1972) contrasts phatic communion ‘used in free, aimless, social intercourse’ (1972, p. 149) to more purposeful types of interaction, these studies have shown that relational talk is far too prevalent to be considered marginal in the workplace. Moreover, it is not possible neatly to separate talk that is purely instrumental from talk that has a relational or social purpose. Holmes identifies a continuum of task-orientation in interactions from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, with ‘core business talk’ and ‘phatic communion’ at opposite ends of the continuum, and ‘work-related talk’ and ‘social talk’ in between. In my own work investigating the ABOT corpus, I have proposed that relational talk can be found at various ‘levels’ of discourse from extended non-transactional conversations to shorter exchanges or sequences occurring during transactional talk: (see Koester 2004b and 2006): 1. non-transactional conversations: office gossip and small talk (see Chapter 2, pp. 24–25) 2. phatic communion: small talk at the beginning or end of transactional encounters 3. relational episodes: small talk or office gossip occurring during the performance of a transactional task 4. relational sequences and turns: non-obligatory task-related talk with a relational focus

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In some encounters at work, participants do not orient to any workplace concerns, and such interactions are referred to as ‘non-transactional conversations’. The term ‘phatic communion’ is used here to refer not to relational talk in general (as Malinowski does), but in a more restricted sense, following Laver (1975), to ritual exchanges and small talk at the beginning and end of encounters. But in addition to taking place at the ‘edges’ of an encounters (where it most typically occurs), relational talk can also occur as a ‘relational episode’, which interrupts the performance of a transactional task. Nontransactional conversations and relational episodes can involve either ‘office gossip’ or ‘small talk’. Office gossip is not task-oriented, but consists of talk about some aspect of the workplace, for example colleagues and events at work. Small talk addresses topics outside the workplace, such as the weekend and holidays, or family and friends. In this chapter, however, the term ‘small talk’ is mainly used in its broader meaning as a synonym for ‘relational talk’, in keeping with its general usage in much of the literature on relational talk. Relational sequences and turns are woven into task-oriented talk, and, as corpus analysis reveals (see Chapter 3), are used in ways specifically adapted to the workplace context. Even relational talk which may seem quite extraneous to the business at hand, may ultimately serve transactional goals, as found for example by Coupland (2000) and Ragan (2000) in two different health care contexts (geriatric and women’s health respectively). In interactions between health care providers and patients, small talk and humour were found to facilitate treatment and patient compliance, and therefore ultimately to serve a medical goal. Further support for seeing relational talk as central, rather than peripheral, to workplace interactions comes from outside discourse analytical research. In Wenger’s (1998) community of practice framework, relational aspects are considered to be an integral part of the practice. In describing the job of claims processors in a health insurance company, Wenger asserts: Their practice . . . makes the job habitable by creating an atmosphere in which the monotonous and meaningless aspects of the job are woven into the rituals, customs, stories, events, dramas, and rhythms of community life. (1998, p. 46) His ethnographic work in this workplace setting revealed the importance of the employees’ relationships with one another: they were aware of their interdependence in getting the job done efficiently and making it more meaningful and enjoyable (ibid., p. 47). Moreover, among the list of ‘indicators’ which provide evidence of the existence of a community of practice, Wenger (ibid., p. 125) highlights both workplace relationships and relational talk and humour: z ‘sustained mutual relationships – harmonious or conflictual’ z ‘local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter’

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Holmes and Marra (2002) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003, pp. 122–133) use a community of practice framework to investigate humour and workplace culture. Holmes and Marra (ibid.) list two more of Wenger’s indicators as particularly relevant for examining spoken interaction in general, and humour in particular: z ‘shared ways of engaging in doing things together’(Wenger 1998,125) z ‘certain styles recognized as displaying membership’ (ibid., 126)

By comparing humour across a number of dimensions in four different workplace settings from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, Holmes and Marra identify differences in workplace culture in the four communities of practice. Their study indicates that examining key components of discursive practice, such as humour, can reveal ways in which communities of practice can differ from one another and develop their own distinctive cultures. Comparing relational talk across different workplace settings can also give an indication of differences in workplace culture between communities of practice, as explored in this chapter by examining relational talk in the ABOT corpus. Far from being ‘purposeless’, then, relational talk performs important functions in the workplace, and the chapter begins by discussing and exemplifying some of the different ‘work’ that such talk performs. A comparative overview of relational talk in different office settings in the ABOT Corpus then provides an indication of some of the ways in which discursive practices and workplace culture can differ. The second part of the chapter looks more closely at humour in the workplace, reviewing studies of humour in a number of organizational settings. Holmes and Marra’s (2002) comparison of the way humour is used in four different workplaces is reviewed in some detail, and the chapter concludes with an analysis of the types and functions of workplace humour found in the ABOT Corpus.

5.2 ‘Work’ done through relational talk Most studies agree that small talk is used in workplace contexts to perform a range of types of face work (Coupland and Ylänne-McEwen 2000, Holmes 2000a, Holmes and Stubbe 2003). In my work on data from the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2004b and 2006), I distinguish between ‘solidarity’ and ‘politeness’ functions performed by the various types of relationally oriented talk listed above (see Chapter 4). Holmes and (2000a) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003) find that small talk is frequently used to ‘do collegiality’, but that it can also be used to ‘do power’. Thus, while managers may use small talk as a way of reducing the social distance between themselves and their subordinates, they can also exercise their power by deciding when and for how long small talk takes place.

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Relational talk also contributes to forging a sense of group identity and building social cohesion (Eggins and Slade 1997, Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin Stark 2007). This function of small talk is particularly foregrounded in multinational work groups or business interactions, where there is no pre-existing group allegiance, and a group identity must first be built, as illustrated in Poncini’s work (See Chapter 6). Eggins and Slade (1997) show that there is also a ‘darker’, coercive side of small talk, as it can be used to negotiate group alignments around difference as well as solidarity, including out-groups as well as in-groups. They analyse interactions of male factory supervisors in Australia during their lunch break, and show how, through small talk, group alignment is negotiated around cultural values, such as ethnicity and gender. The dominant members of the group are able to set the agenda for the values of the group, which include, in this instance, misogyny, machismo and a particular view of what it means to be Australian (ibid., pp. 116–168). Two specific functions of relational talk are discussed in more detail here: relationship-building and identity work.

5.2.1 Relationship-building Small talk of course contributes to relationship-building between co-workers, business partners and service providers and recipients, as already discussed in relation to service encounters in Chapter 2.2.3. In the ABOT Corpus, small talk was particularly frequent between colleagues who had developed a close relationship (Koester 2006), and the few encounters between complete strangers contained little relational talk. 1 Relationship-building in action can be seen particularly clearly in the occurrence of phatic communion – the ritual exchanges and small talk at the beginning and end of encounters. Far from being trivial, Laver (1975, p. 233.) asserts that phatic communion reveals ‘the cumulative consensus about a relationship reached as the result of repeated encounters between the two participants’ and that it ‘constitutes the essence of that relationship’ (see Koester 2006, pp. 57–58). This is illustrated nicely in some encounter-final phatic communion that occurred in the office of a printer between the office manager, Val, and a visiting platemaker, Gary, who does regular work for the company. Example 5.1 below shows the end of a discussion about a printing job and a fairly abrupt switch to relational talk occasioned by Val patting Gary’s stomach (he is standing near her chair): Example 5.1 (1) Val

(2) Gary (3)

⎣ Well from our point of view, we need to get it mo:ving, because . . . he wants delivery . . . by a certain da:y. an’ he’s not approved the artwork, so . . . Pa:r for the course. ↑ isn’t it. [Val pats Gary’s stomach]


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(4) Gary Leave my stomach alone! (5) Val (Heheheh) (6) Gary Took a lot of time, . . . cultivating that, (7) Val ⎣ to build that up, (8) Gary Longest pregnancy in history. I’ve got, (9) Ally [chuckles] [3] (10) Val Is it the beer, [5] (11) Gary No comment. (12) Val No comment. Okay. [2] (13) Gary On the grounds it might incriminate me. This good-natured teasing seems surprisingly intimate for a workplace relationship, particularly as it involves physical contact; but it seems clear that for the participants no boundaries are over-stepped. What this phatic communion seems to be doing is signalling that the relationship is so well-established that such intimacy is permitted. Phatic communion occurring ‘at the boundaries of interactions’ is the most typical kind of small talk at work (Holmes and Stubbe 2003, p. 90); however, it is not present in every encounter. Colleagues who work together closely can often dispense with opening and closing routines, especially if they work in the same physical space. According to Laver (1975), speakers do engage in phatic communion when the roles they will play in the encounter are not clearly defined in advance. Evidence from the ABOT Corpus suggests that what is also important is whether or not the speakers’ relational roles are well-established. In the few encounters between strangers (all service encounters), there are few phatic exchanges, with participants simply enacting their pre-established transactional roles of server and servee (see Chapter 2.2.3).2 Close colleagues, on the other hand, do not need to preface all encounters with small talk, as they already have an established relationship. However, when people do not work together on a regular basis, they need to spend more time on building their relationship when they do meet up; and it is in encounters between people in this group that phatic communion occurs most in the corpus. One striking example of this is a service encounter involving a meeting between a supplier and customer, where the small talk at the beginning and end of the meeting takes up 18 and 8 turns respectively. In contrast, phatic communion between co-workers frequently consists of quite short sequences, sometimes just a single adjacency pair.

5.2.2 Identity negotiation Relational talk can also be seen as a site for identity negotiation. In workplace interactions, speakers frequently make relevant other identities besides their

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institutional identities (Schenkein 1978, Greatbatch and Dingwall 1998, Benwell and Stokoe 2006), and both longer and shorter stretches of relational talk provide an opportunity for negotiating alternative identities. Gary, the platemaker, from example 5.1 above, makes such an alternative identity particularly clear when he introduces a joke by saying: Example 5.2 Anyway, . . . I’m not really a plate supplier, I’m a joke supplier. By contrasting his institutional identity (‘plate supplier’) with a jocular alternative identity of ‘joke supplier’, he simultaneously provides an account for introducing a longer small talk sequence in which jokes are exchanged, and legitimates a relationship with his interlocutors which goes well beyond that of a purely transactional one. Shorter relational sequences are frequently used during transactional talk to negotiate particular identities in relation to a task at hand. For example, in interactions where the institutional relationship is asymmetrical (e.g. managersubordinate), more symmetrical identities may be negotiated (see Koester 2006, pp. 155–157). This may be a useful way of dealing with a problematic situation, as in example 5.3 below (see Chapter 3, example 3.10 for a more detailed analysis of this encounter). Here Chris, the head of a small American advertising company, is having a meeting with his sales manager, Joe: Example 5.3 1. Chris Haven’t seen much in the way of sales the last half of the week. 2. Joe .hh Well, a lot of the media, the– the orders have been very difficult getting out. Stuff is– is jammed. 3. Chris Oh they didn’t go out? 4. Joe Yeah. Jane’s orders are clogged. And . . . trying to get out heheh 5. Chris ⎣Heheh ⎣clogged orders! 6. Joe Clogged orders! .hh they can’t get out o’ the system. 7. Chris ⎣Oh no! Chris begins by invoking his institutional identity as Joe’s boss, and therefore as someone who is in a position to criticize the performance of Joe’s sales team. However, Joe then slips into a joking frame by talking about ‘clogged orders’ in order to provide an account for the low level of sales, and Chris affiliates with him and joins in the joking. In doing this, he sets himself on a more equal footing with Joe, enabling him to back down from the ‘authoritarian’ identity just invoked, thus perhaps mitigating any face-threat implied in turn 1 with the direct reference to problems for which Joe is responsible.3 Relational sequences can also reinforce, rather than downplay, institutional roles, for example when


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a manager, Ben, checks whether the new employee he is training is coping (see Chapter 4, examples 4.11–4.19): Example 5.4: Ben

Alright, but you’re sort of– getting the . . . getting the drift of it yeah,

By expressing concern for the employee, Ben invokes an identity as a responsible manager who cares about his staff. Identity negotiation of course also takes place as part of transactional talk (see Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999). In fact, Tracy and Naughton (2000) suggest that both transactional and relational talk can be analysed in terms of ‘identity work’, and that this is a more fruitful endeavour than trying to distinguish between the two kinds of talk. Such an approach brings into focus the key group and professional identities that can be negotiated through seemingly marginal non-task chat or comments. For example, in analysing meetings of hospice workers, Tracy and Naughton (ibid.) found that third-party comments about patients, such as ‘she’s a dear soul’ (p. 77), are used to construct an identity of staff as caring and concerned professionals.

5.3 The role of relational talk within a community of practice In addition to examining the functions relational talk performs, it is also interesting to consider the role it plays within a community of practice. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, relational talk is seen by Wenger (1998) as an important aspect of a community of practice. This section compares relational talk across the different workplace settings which provided the data for the ABOT Corpus (see Chapter 2, pp. 24–25), drawing on transcribed data, interviews and ethnographic observation. The aim of this comparison is to ascertain whether differences in the nature and frequency of relational talk, as well as participants’ views about small talk, can provide any insights into the practices of the different workplace communities. The composition of the ABOT Corpus is described in more detail in Chapter 2, but here it is useful to review the various workplace settings from which the data were collected, in order to contextualize the discussion of the different communities of practice. The following workplaces in Britain and the North America were included in the study (see also Koester 2006, pp. 29–30): 1. Universities: z British: departmental office for undergraduate administration and teaching z American: graduate school office for postgraduate administration and

teaching

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2. Publishing: z British: editorial office for English Language Teaching (ELT) z American: editorial office for ELT

3. Private commercial sector: British: z Paper supplier: branch office selling (mainly on the telephone) to whole-

salers and printers z Printer: small printing company specialized in printing labels. Recordings

made in the office, which dealt with orders for printing jobs. American: Advertising: a small family business selling specialist advertising to businesses (mainly on the telephone) in the form of postcards. Recordings made mainly in the office of the president Food retailer: the back office of a co-operative selling organic food In comparing relational talk across these settings, I consider the various types of relational talk detailed above, from more extended office gossip and small talk to shorter relational episodes. In addition, I draw on interviews with at least one main participant in the interactions recorded in each setting. Two of the interview questions related to small talk: 1. How often do you engage in small talk? 2. What role do you think small talk has in your work? This is supplemented with my own participants observation based on one to several days spent in each of the workplace settings. While relational talk occurred in all the office settings, there were substantial differences in the amount and nature of the small talk and other relational talk that occurred. The differences observed in the data and from participant observation seem to correlate with what interviewees said about small talk. In some of the workplaces, participants engaged in quite extended small talk and office gossip, whereas in others there were few extended episodes, but frequent short relational sequences, for example in the form of banter and teasing. Overall, there was more extended relational talk in the university and publishing offices than in the workplaces in the private commercial sector (with the exception of the food cooperative). It is likely that this is linked to the nature of the work in commercial settings, where people are working to short-term targets, involving, for example, selling on the telephone, as in two of the settings. This is confirmed by comments made during the interviews, for example the office manager of the printing firm acknowledged the role that small talk plays in ‘creating bonds’, but said there wasn’t much time for it. In contrast, one of the two secretaries working in the British university office, in which the most extended relational talk was recorded, said that up to 100 per cent of


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all talk might be relational, when they were not busy (whereas at busy times it would only be 0–10 per cent). However, the lack of extended small talk did not mean that there was little relational talk. In the sales office of the British paper supplier (in which most recordings were made in the main open plan office where reps were selling over the phone) no extended small talk between reps was recorded, but there was very frequent banter and teasing, which seemed to form an integral part of the workplace culture. In fact, a number of the workplaces seem to have incorporated such humorous banter into their workplace practice. This cut right across workplace sectors, as, in addition to the paper supplier, the American editorial office, the British university office and the food retailer all exhibited such a teasing, jocular culture to a greater or lesser extent. This is nicely illustrated in the following exchange from the British university office, where one of the secretaries, Liz, interrupts a conversation Susan is having with a colleague, Fiona, to announce that she is going to take some money to the finance office. This leads her colleague, Susan, to tease her about getting mugged because she is carrying so much cash on her, and Liz to joke about making off to the airport with the money: Example 5.5 (1) Liz (2) Susan (3) Liz (4) Susan (5) Fiona (6) Susan (7) Liz

Excuse me please . . . I ha– I’m going to Finance. Right. If I’m /going today/ Do you want a big envelope to put all that in. /???/ ⎣ So you don’t get mugged on the way up Am I going to get mugged on the way to Finance? Will anybody mess– ⎣Won’t if you do that. But you might do if you– don’t. Nobody’ll mess with me.

(8) Susan (9) Liz […] (10) Liz I’m going to Finance the time is now . . . ten . . . twenty::: (11) Susan six (12) Liz six seven eightish (13) Susan If you are not back by . . . ten . . . forty = (14) Liz = I’m at the airport. ‘Cause that’s where I’ll be. [Fiona and Susan laugh] (15) Susan You won’t get very far on that. It’s Stoke on Trent again, (16) Liz [leaving office] Isn’t that /another/ country? (17) Susan Right. I’ll come with you then hehe! (18) Liz ⎣ Hehehe!

In offices where there were interactions with customer or visitors, as well as with colleagues, it is interesting to compare the amount of small talk that

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occurred with each type of interlocutor. The only extended small talk or office gossip in both British companies (the paper supplier and the printer) occurred with visitors to the office. This was also the case for the American university office, in contrast to the British one, where small talk was frequent between close colleagues as well as with students, academic staff or other visitors coming into the office. This may have been due to the very close relationship the two secretaries, Liz and Susan, sharing the departmental office in the United Kingdom university seemed to have developed. However, the overall greater amount of relational talk with visitors and customers compared to that between colleagues in many of the settings confirms the importance of phatic communion for relationshipbuilding when the relationship is not so well-established, as discussed above. That this was also recognized by the participants themselves was apparent in some of the interviews. The main speaker recorded in the American university office had the job of ‘staff assistant’, and was the first point of contact for anyone coming into the office with an enquiry. He remarked that students who came in were often worried about something, and that small talk was important to help put them at ease. Both the branch manager and his deputy, the office manager, of the paper supplier commented in their interviews on the importance of small talk with customers, saying that it was important for ‘relationship-building’ and to ‘get to know customers’. They both seemed to see relational talk as an essential part of their workplace practice, and the branch manager elaborated on this in some detail in relation to a phone call he had just had with a customer on the phone: Example 5.6 I mean that was [name], I mean I’ve known the guy twenty years, I know he’s just come back off holiday, I know he’s been to Scotland, you know; and I’ll rib him, I mean I probably would have done . . . more with him today– than I did today, but normally I just ‘Hey what you doing up in Scotland, it’s cold up there!’ Uhm . . . But I mean I know about him, I know his– his kids and, I mean that’s the sort of relationship we– and quite often I can phone him up and go ‘We are dead quiet down here’, uhm . . . ‘Do your old mate a favour, any orders that you’d normally give to, you know, Fred Bloggs and Joe Soap, sling them my way this week cause we’re . . .’ And you get that close to your customers . . . The interviews showed that relational talk is seen as integral to the speakers’ workplace practice to varying degrees: Some saw it as an important component of their work practice, for example the managers of the paper supplier, as shown above. Others considered it more as ancillary to the main business of work, saying, for example, that it made work more enjoyable or ‘humanized’ it. Again, there did seem to be a link between the frequency of relational talk and


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how important it was considered to be. In the British university office, in which there was a great deal of relational talk, one of the secretaries remarked in her interview that not only was small talk important to get to know the people she worked with, but that something might ‘come up’ during small talk which was relevant for a workplace task, such as finding the solution to a problem. In the back office of the food co-operative, where people worked in a cramped open plan office, there was a great deal of office gossip and small talk between co-workers from desk to desk, often across partitions. The two people who were interviewed (the finance manager and the bookkeeper) both accorded considerable importance to relational talk. The bookkeeper said that it was one reason people stayed a long time: ‘you can make friends and have a good time’; and the finance manager felt that it helped people function in a tightly cramped space. The combined evidence from the recorded data, the interviews and participant observation point to a clear link between the frequency and nature of relational talk and workplace culture. Individual relationships of course also play a role, and relational talk seems to occur particularly frequently between colleagues who have developed a close working relationship, such as the departmental secretaries. A particularly striking example of this occured in the American editorial office, between an editor, Paula, and her assistant, Rob. These two kept up a constant banter, typically involving good-natured teasing and mock confrontation, even when fully engaged in a workplace task, as illustrated in example 5.7, where they argue about who should deal with the payment of a research fee for a book:4 Example 5.7 (1) Rob (2) Paula (3) Rob (4) Paula (5) Rob (6) Paula (7) Paula (8) Rob [. . .] (9) Paula (10) Rob (11) Paula (12) Rob (13) Paula (14) Rob

Why don’t you do it. Honey . . . It’s your book. [1] Hehehe It’s . . . your project. [Name of book] is my project? One eight hundred. . . alive and well I’m living in . . . dream land. ⎣Hehhehe Oh, just do it.= =I’ll give you the name and number. You deal with it. Pa:y it and be done with it. ⎣I have to call her I guess anyway and tell her– but I mean you call her and tell her we’re paying it. ⎣↑No you.= =I’ll call and tell her we’re paying it. Um . . . [laughing] Professionalism at work. No ↑you you you.

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Their joint practice is distinct from that of their colleagues, but it seems to flourish as a result of a general fostering of relational talk and humour in this community of practice. That this was the case is corroborated by a comment made by another editor during her interview: she remarked that the editorin-chief took time to make small talk with the people who worked for her.

5.4 Humour As the discussion so far has shown, much relational talk in the workplace involves the use of humour. Humour clearly plays a role in workplace interaction and has been examined in a number of studies both within organizational studies (Collinson 1988, Ackroyd and Thompson 1999, Taylor and Bain 2003) and sociolinguistics/pragmatics (Holmes 2000b and 2006, Holmes and Marra 2002, Pullin Stark 2007 and 2009). This section reviews some key finding from studies of workplace humour, focusing in particular on the functions it performs in workplace contexts and what it can reveal about workplace culture. Interactive humour in social and workplace settings can include a wide range of linguistic and discursive activities, including personal anecdotes, jointly produced narratives, word-play and punning, teasing, joking about an absent other and self-denigration (Norrick 1993 and 2003, Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997, Ackroyd and Thompson 1999, Norrick and Chiaro 2009). What counts as humorous is obviously dependent on contextual factors, such as setting, participants and culture (Norrick 1993), but a key characteristic is that humorous contributions are intended to be amusing or perceived as amusing by at least one of the participants (Holmes 2000b).5 Holmes (ibid.) points out that the role of the analyst in interpreting an utterance as humorous is also important, and that laughter may be an important clue to humour, although it is not essential, and may have other functions as well. Looking at humour as collaboratively constructed, Holmes and Marra 2002 (and Holmes 2006) distinguish between two different types and styles of humour: 1. Type of humour: supportive versus contestive 2. Style of humour: collaboratively constructed humour versus competitive (or minimally collaborative) humour The distinction between supportive and contestive humour is based on the pragmatic orientation of its content: supportive humour agrees with or elaborates on previous contributions, whereas contestive humour disagrees with or challenges earlier propositions (Holmes and Marra 2002, pp. 1687–1688). The style of the humour refers to the way humour is discursively constructed, thus collaboratively constructed humour displays tightly integrated contributions (e.g. using echoing and utterance completion); competitive humour is characterized by loosely linked one-off quips (ibid, pp. 1688–1690).


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Humour has also been found to perform a range of functions, which overlap to a great extent with those of relational talk in general: solidarity and relationship-building (Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997, Hay 2000, Holmes 2000b), identity functions (Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997, Hay 2000) and power (Hay 2000, Holmes 2000b). The role of humour in gender construction in both social and workplace settings has also been the topic of research (Hay 2000, Kotthoff 2000, Holmes et al. 2001, Holmes 2006, Schnurr and Holmes 2009), and some differences in the way humour is used by men and women have been identified. Looking beyond the immediate discourse at the broader social context, Eggins and Slade (1997, p. 159) assert that humour and teasing are used too convey the norms and values of the group. Turning specifically to humour in the workplace, there seems to be a general consensus that humour may be broadly supportive or broadly contestive (e.g. Holmes 2000b, Holmes and Marra 2002, Pullin Stark 2009). Within organizational studies, the consensual role of humour has been emphasized, often being viewed as a ‘safety valve’ – as a way for employees to ‘let off steam’ – and as a tool for reinforcing corporate culture (Rodrigues and Collinson 1995, p. 739). Similarly, humour in health-care contexts has been also found to have a positive effect in interactions between health-care professionals and their patients as well as among medical staff (Ragan 2000, Åstedt-Kurki and Isola 2001). Humour can facilitate difficult or unpleasant medical procedures or examinations, for example by helping patients to relax, thus contributing to the achievement of medical goals (Ragan 2000). Rodrigues and Collinson (1995) challenge this view of organizational humour as primarily promoting harmony, arguing that workplace humour can also be oppositional and function as a tool for employee resistance. In a similar vein, Taylor and Bain (2003) examine subversive humour in call centres, showing how humour was used instrumentally in one call centre as a deliberate strategy to undermine management authority and campaign for unionization. Holmes (2000b) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003) found that humour is used both to ‘do collegiality’ and to ‘do power’, and as a subversive strategy ‘to mask risky negative messages’ (Holmes and Stubbe 2003, p. 117) which challenge authority. Here the focus is on the role of humour within a workplace community of practice. I first review Holmes and Marra’s (2002) study on humour and workplace culture in different types of organizations in the Wellington Language in the Workplace Corpus; and then examine the types and functions of humour found in the ABOT Corpus.

5.5 Humour and workplace culture Holmes and Marra (2002) use a communities of practice framework to explore differences in workplace culture in four organizations from the Language in

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the Workplace Database. The data consist of at least two larger meetings from four contrasting workplaces: z a factory (FAC) z a private commercial organization (PRI) z an organization from the voluntary ‘semi-public’ sector (SPU) z a government department (GOV)

Holmes and Marra (ibid.) compared the amount of humour occurring in each of the meetings, as well as the type and style of humour (see section 5.4 above). Instances of humour were most frequent in the factory and least frequent in the semi-public organization as shown below in Figure 5.1:

MOST

Least

FAC, PRI, GOV, SPU Figure 5.1 Amount of humour by workplace (Source: adapted from Holmes and Marra 2002, p. 1694)

The results for humour type (supportive versus contestive) showed that supportive humour was more frequent in all the settings except the PRI organization, where more contestive than supportive humour was used. The most supportive humour occurred in the SPU organization, where supportive humour was three times as frequent as contestive humour. Two aspects of humorous contributions were examined when comparing style of humour: (1) whether it consisted of single quips or comments or extended sequences and (2) whether it was more collaborative or competitive. In the white-collar settings (PRI, GOV and SPU), extended sequences were more frequent than in the factory. This was largely due to the structure of the FAC meetings, where the manager was the main speaker, and any contributions from the floor were limited. Collaborative humour was more frequent than competitive humour in all the settings, but competitive humour occurred more frequently in PRI and FAC organizations than in the other two. A difference can be observed, therefore, between the private and public or semi-public organizations, where there is considerably less competitive humour. Holmes and Marra (2002) conclude that the combined effect of the patterns identified for the use of humour provide insights into the workplace culture of each community of practice. Moreover the findings from the comparative analysis of humour correlate with other aspects of workplace practice identified, for example, through ethnographic observation. The way in which each team ‘does humour’ is indicative of how the participants construct their collegial relations within each of the workplaces. The factory team, for example,


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was a very cohesive group, which was mirrored in its use mostly supportive humour. In contrast, in the commercial team (PRI), members worked more independently from one another, which seemed to correlate with their more contestive use of humour. Holmes and Marra speculate that the contestive nature and competitive style of humour in PRI may well be a reflection of the more individualistic values of this organization, in contrast to the public (GOV) and semi-public (SPU) organizations, where humour was predominantly supportive and collaborative. The SPU meetings contained the fewest instances of humour of the four data sets, which was probably due to the fact that this team, which consisted of regional managers, did not meet very frequently, and therefore the participants did not know each other as well as in the other teams. However, these meetings contained three times as many supportively and collaboratively constructed sequences as competitive and contestive ones, which reflected the overall harmonious nature of the interactions, and clearly contributed to cementing relationships.

5.6 Humour in the ABOT Corpus Holmes and Marra’s (2002) study illustrates the kind of insight that can be gained into workplace communities of practice by comparing humour across different organizational settings. In this section, we continue exploring the use of humour across different workplaces by examining the different types and functions of humour found in the ABOT corpus. The focus is on the functions that humour performs as part of workplace practices, and findings from a comparative analysis of humour according to variety (British and American), gender and speaker relationship (manager or subordinate) is also reviewed. The analysis comprises all instances of humour identified in transactional as well as relational encounters, but particular attention is paid to the role of humour in transactional talk. As the discussion above of relational talk in the ABOT corpus has shown, much relational talk involves the use of humour, but humour also occurs during transactional talk. I examined 60 instances of humour in the corpus: 30 from British and 30 from American data, which includes the majority of all instances I was able to identify in the fully transcribed corpus. These instances of humour were from 38 conversations involving 27 different speakers, and included the following types of humour: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

situational humour teasing self-deprecation word play and punning amusing narratives or funny anecdotes joke-telling

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Situational humour ‘is a play frame created by the participants, with a backdrop of in-group knowledge’ (Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997, p. 277). It is thus different from telling an amusing narrative or a joke, which are quite conventionalized forms of verbal performance. Teasing and self-deprecating (or selfdenigrating) humour are both forms of situational humour. However, whereas teasing and self-deprecating (or self-denigrating) humour require the ‘butt’ of the joke to be present, other types of situational humour do not. Teasing is humour directed at other participants, whereas self-deprecating humour directed at the speaker. Besides teasing and self-denigrating humour, Boxer and Cortés-Conde (1997) identify a third type of situational humour: joking about absent others. This involves not only joking about people who are not present, but any joking that does not make any of the participants the subject of the play frame. This form of humour is often used to bond with other participants as part of an in-group, over against a joked-about out-group; and Boxer and Cortés-Conde therefore include word play and punning in this category. I have retained the label ‘situational humour’ for this type of joking, and identify word play and punning as a separate category. Situational humour is thus the most general category, involving quips or comments arising out of the situation; whereas teasing, self-deprecation and word play and punning are all more specific sub-types of situational humour. These types of humour all performed a variety of functions, which can be grouped into the following five categories: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

identity: building a positive identity defending: defending own positive face solidarity: showing convergence mitigating : negative politeness criticizing: showing divergence

According to Boxer and Cortés-Conde (1997, p. 282) ‘identity display’ and ‘relational identity display’ are the two most important functions of humour. Identity display involves the performance or ‘display’ of individual identities, whereas relational identity display involves the negotiation of identity in relation to others. In my categorization, the identity function (category 1) is restricted to humour which presents a positive self-image, and this is frequently performed through funny one-liners, jokes or humorous anecdotes. While ‘defending’ also involves identity negotiation (see ibid., pp. 284–286), it is considered as a separate function here, as it was extremely frequent (the second-most frequent after solidarity). This function is most typically performed through self-deprecation. Categories 3 to 5 all involve relational identity display, that is they involve some kind of relational ‘work’ vis à vis other participants. Solidarity is often shown through agreement, appreciative laughter, but also through teasing, as this is a way of displaying the closeness of a relationship. Humour can also have a negative politeness function as a device for mitigating an


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imposition, such as a request or a question. Finally, ‘criticizing’ is the functional label used for humour which shows divergence by exercising power, contesting power or simply disagreeing. This category includes all instances which, based on the situation, could be covert criticism: sometimes it is obvious that criticism is intended, but other instances could simply involve good-natured teasing. Teasing can involve ‘bonding’ or ‘biting’, as Boxer and Cortés-Condé (ibid.) point out. There is thus a fine line between humour that is aggressive and humour that mitigates or projects solidarity, and it is not always possible to disambiguate these two functions. Moreover, humour may be multi-functional, and a humorous comment can perform more than one of the above functions simultaneously. ‘Mitigation’ can also be considered to be a more general function of humour, for example criticisms are frequently couched in humour in order to mitigate their force. Here, ‘mitigating’ refers to a more restricted function, and only includes instances of humour used for negative politeness, for instance in mitigating the imposition of a sales visit to a customer (see example 5.17). The different types and functions of humour in the corpus are illustrated with some selected examples below.

5.6.1 Situational humour In example 5.8, the secretaries of two different departments in a UK university discuss how to resolve a mix-up with the phone bills of their respective departments. In the context of this discussion, one of them quips: Example 5.8 Jane: Now which ones the less, ‘cause we’ll have the lesser one [chuckles] This is an example of a funny ‘one-liner’ (the humour is not taken up, or even acknowledged, by Jane’s counterpart), and it seems to perform an identity function of self-presentation, whereby Jane projects a positive identity of herself as a person with a sense of humour.

5.6.2 Teasing and self-deprecation In some sense all humour is situational, but more specific categories (as listed above) are also found. A common adjacency pair found in the corpus is teasing – self-deprecation (or vice versa), for example in another interaction between the two secretaries, Liz and Susan, already encountered in example 5.5 above: Example 5.9 (1) Liz (2) Susan

Is that your stomach again. Ha! . . . (Hehe) .hh I’m gonna go chirp . . . chirp cheep cheep cheep in a minute.

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Here Liz teases Susan about her grumbling stomach, which considering the close nature of their relationship, is most likely to be a sign of solidarity, and Susan responds with self-deprecating humour, as a way of defending her positive face. Teasing in this example is a good-natured bonding device, but teasing can also have the opposite function (divergence) and show a critical stance. In example 5.10, Paul, the office manager of the British paper supplier reprimands a sales rep for getting the amount of an order wrong, but uses humour in doing so: Example 5.10 Paul: Yeah. Your ten and a half thousand sheet order for um . . . /Phoenix./ It was two and a half thousand sheet. [. . .] Sam: No? He said ten– ten an’ half. That’s what he said to me. Paul: An’– I– I’ll find you some cotton buds soon, all right, Paul’s joking comment, that he will get some cotton buds for his sales rep so he can clean his ears, is clearly meant as a criticism of the rep, indicating that he did not hear the order correctly (ten and a half instead of two and a half thousand) and made a mistake. As Holmes (2000b) notes, humour is a way of ‘doing power’ less explicitly, and therefore of performing ‘off-record’ evaluations or criticisms.

5.6.3 Word play There were fewer examples of word play than of the other forms of humour (only joke-telling occurred less frequently). Word play involved not just puns (there were in fact no examples of these), but any kind of humour based on lexical, stylistic or phonological choice. In example 5.11 from the American advertising firm, the humour revolves around the pronunciation of the word ‘book’: Example 5.11 Chris: Okay I don’t have my/bu:k/ with me. Amy: Go get your /bu:k/.[2] And I’ll find mine Chris and Amy are in trying to arrange a time for a meeting, and ‘book’ here refers to their diaries. In order to understand why speakers are pronouncing ‘book’ in this way, and why this is funny, some knowledge of local accents is necessary. The company is located in the state of Minnesota, and one of the


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distinctive features of this accent is the way the sound /ų/ is pronounced. So humour here involves making fun of the local accent. Chris seems to initiate the phonological word play here as a defensive strategy for not having his diary with him in a situation (they are in a meeting) where he would normally be expected to have brought it along. By echoing his pronunciation, Amy affiliates with him and thus shows solidarity. An example of word play involving lexical choice was seen in example 5.3 above (which is from the same American company), where the speakers joke and laugh about describing an order as ‘clogged’.

5.6.4 Comparative findings The frequencies of both type and function of humour were very similar in the American and British data. Situational humour and teasing were the most frequent types in both varieties, and solidarity was by far the most frequent function, which is consistent with Holmes and Marra’s (2002) finding that supportive humour was more frequent overall across the different workplaces examined than contestive humour. There were no instances of humour with a mitigating function in the American sub-corpus, but there were also not many in the British data; therefore, this is not a significant difference (no statistical comparisons were made due to the small number of instances). This is not to say that there are no differences in the humour of the two varieties. What people find funny and the way humour is done may differ, but humour performs similar functions in both varieties, in particular in relation to the workplace tasks carried out. The differences are greater when comparing type and function of humour according to gender, although, again the numbers are relatively small, making generalization difficult. But the results do correlate to a large extent with the findings of other studies of humour and gender. There were 34 instances of women and 26 of men initiating humour in single-sex as well as mixed gender groups.6 Figure 5.2 shows the types of humour used by women and men respectively as a percentage of the total uses of humour by each gender. Women used situational humour most frequently, whereas men used teasing the most. Almost 40 per cent of all instances of humour initiated by men involved teasing, whereas women used teasing in just over 25 per cent of instances, which was still the second most frequent type of humour initiated by women. Self-deprecation and narrative were used much more frequently by women than men. Similarly, Boxer and Cortés-Conde (1997) found that men used more teasing than women, whereas women used more self-denigration. Women used humour to enact solidarity functions much more frequently than any other function, whereas men used humour for solidarity and criticizing equally frequently. The relationship between the participants (whether the humour was between a manager and a subordinate or between peers) and the ‘direction’ of humour,

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Type of humour by gender women

men

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Situational

Teasing

SelfNarrative deprecation

Word play Joke-telling

Figure 5.2 Types of humour by gender in the ABOT Corpus

that is who initiated it, was also examined quantitatively. Managers and subordinates initiated humour about equally, subordinates even slightly more, which may be due to the fact that self-deprecating humour (the second most frequent type) was used more by subordinates (see example 5.13). It is also important to remember that in many instances of humour, particularly if they occur during small talk, the institutional relationship may not be relevant, regardless of whether or not it is asymmetrical. Interestingly, subordinates used humour to perform a ‘criticizing’ function as frequently as managers. This highlights the ‘subversive’ role humour can play (see Holmes 2000b, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Taylor and Bain 2003), as shown in the following extract which occurs later in the meeting between Chris and his sales manager Joe (shown in Example 5.3): Example 5.12 (1) Chris No actually the problem is, that we tried to send out to many of them at once. (That’s all) (2) Joe ⎣↑ Oh! So it’s your fault! (3) Chris /Oh no/ ↑No no no no! (4) Joe ⎣Heheheheheheh (5) Chris It wasn’t my idea, (6) Joe ⎣Wait till I– wait till I tell ‘em! Heheheheheh (7) Chris ⎣Heheheheheheh


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Here Joe ‘gets his own back’ for being criticized for the low level of sales in his department, by jokingly accusing Chris of being responsible for the problem and threatening to tell his sales team (‘wait till I tell ‘em!’).

5.6.5 Humour in transactional talk Although humour occurs most frequently in relational talk, it is also prevalent in task-oriented talk where it often serves a particular purpose in relation to the task at hand. As the above examples show, humour is a very useful device for performing certain actions which would otherwise be face-threatening, such as criticizing (example 5.12) and defending oneself against criticism (example 5.14). Self-deprecation is also often used as a defensive strategy in situations where speakers may feel they are not living up to the expectations of their job, as shown in example 5.13, which involves Ann training a new employee, Meg (see also example 5.11 above): Example 5.13 Meg: Ann:

Yeah. an’ I immediately forgot everything you told me about– ⎣ That’s okay.

Humour also occurs in problematic or difficult situations to defuse tension or awkwardness. An interesting example of this occurs in the American advertising company during a meeting where two senior managers, Amy and Chris, discuss how to solve some problems with the accounts, for which Amy is responsible. An interruption by Amy’s assistant, Becky, occasions a relational episode in which Amy comments on a seemingly unrelated non-workplace issue: the fact that Becky has been experiencing problems trying to buy a house: Example 5.14 (1) Amy Will you close on your freakin’ house? I think that’s → (2) Chris ⎣ Heheh (3) Amy → hangin’ over all of our heads. (4) Becky Maybe that’s it. Heheheheh (5) Amy ⎣ Heheheheh Here Amy humorously implies that Becky’s problems with the purchase of her new house is somehow responsible for the current problems they are experiencing at work; thereby relativizing these problems and temporarily detracting attention from her own predicament (see also Koester 2006, pp. 142–144). Such attempts to defuse difficult situations through the use of humour are, however, not always successful, as example 5.15 from the British printing

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company shows. In this example, Sid, the owner, and his office manager, Val, have been talking about how to resolve a dispute with a customer, with the discussion having become increasingly heated, as Sid rejects each of Val’s suggestions of how to deal with the problem. At this point in the discussion, Val attempts to lighten the tone with a humorous comment, which however falls flat, as Sid becomes even angrier, and the conflict escalates as a result: Example 5.15 (1) Val (2) Sid (3) Val (4) Sid (5) Val (6) Sid (7) Val: (8) Sid (9) Val (10) Sid (11) Val (12) Sid (13) Val (14) Val

Mmm . . . She’s only– she– she-you’re probably both the same star sign Sid, = = ↑ How can– how can I jump into– What? I said you’re both probably the same star sign. Oh God help us. You– you’re not Taurus, are you? ⎣ Why– w– well why do you put me– No. (Oh) Why do you put me– ↑Why is it every time we have a conflict → ⎣ ↑ No but– → here, that I’m partly responsible for it. ⎣ ↑ No because you’re both standing your ground! I’m an innocent party in this, totally– I’ve done what I was asked to do. ⎣ ↑ No– I’m just saying that you’re both– you’re both standing your ground. So where do you go. other to– other than to arbitration!

Here Val teases Sid that his dispute with the customer is due to their being the same star sign. In addition to being an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, this constitutes an indirect criticism of her boss for being so inflexible. Sid, however, does not join in the humorous frame, but challenges her, forcing Val into voicing her criticism directly: (11) Val

⎣ ↑ No because you’re both standing your ground!

Holmes and Marra’s (2002) study indicates that humour is used most frequently between colleagues who work together closely (see section 5.5 above), but humour can also contribute to building a relationship which is not yet wellestablished, for example with new customers or between people who do not work together on a regular basis. Boxer and Cortès-Condé (1997) note that humour for social bonding often takes place between interlocutors of medial social distance, in contrast to high-risk teasing, which typically occurs between intimates. A meeting between the office manager of a British paper seller and one of his suppliers, who do not have regular contact, provides a good example of how the nature of the humour develops in the course of the interaction, thus showing relationship-building in action. First, solidarity is established through banter in the initial small talk, as Angus, the supplier visiting the company,


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jokes about the difficulty he had finding the branch, as the building is ‘very anonymous’ (it is in an old farm building in a rural area): Example 5.16 (1) Angus: (2) Paul: (3) Angus: (4) Paul: (5) Angus:

You’re very anonymous aren’t you. Uh I like to be. yeah. Heheheh You been here before? Yea:h. Luckily, ⎣Paul: Yeah⎦ You wouldn’t know though would you.

Humour occurs again when Angus explains the purpose of his visit: Example 5.17 (60) Angus:

(61) Paul:

An’ I was saying well how can I: you know, get more business out of um: [name of company], ‘cause it’s been growing, it’s been doing very well ⎣Paul: Mm.⎦ So he said well first thing is to get off your back side an’ go round an’ see the– see the branches, so I’m doing a grand tour of the: [name of company] branches The worl– that’ll keep you busy for a week or two

Here Angus uses self-deprecating humour as a way of mitigating the imposition of his visit: z ‘get off your back side’ (referring to himself) z ‘I’m doing a grand tour’

and Paul reciprocates with good-natured teasing, thus showing solidarity: z ‘that’ll keep you busy for a week or two’

Thus the function of humour in the early part of the meeting is clearly one of establishing solidarity. However, later in the conversation, the humour has a more biting edge when Paul mentions a competitor, whom Angus then refers to as ‘an enemy’: Example 5.18 (102) Angus: Ah. Yes. Well we see them as an enemy as well (103) Paul: ⎣ Yes yes I thought you might yeah (104) Angus: Yes heheheh ↑ Thank you. Anything else you wanted to mention. (105) Paul: No no no no. ↑ I mean we– you– we– you know we’re not proud [. . .]

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This teasing (describing a competitor as ‘an enemy’) is somewhat more risky than that used at the beginning of the meeting, as it could imply criticism of Paul doing business with a competitor. It is more typical of the type of ribbing that takes place between close colleagues. The fact that Angus attempts this kind of teasing, and that Paul teases him back, seems to indicate that both speakers are trying to build a closer relationship. The way in which the type and function of humour change in the course of one meeting provides a tangible example of relationship-building as it occurs.

5.7 Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that relational talk in general, and humour in particular, are integral, rather than peripheral, to workplace discourse. Both forms of talk are used by speakers to ‘do’ important work in relationshipbuilding, identity negotiation, carrying out politeness functions and exerting or resisting power. Humour was shown to be particularly useful strategy in carrying out potentially face-threatening or risky discursive actions. While the studies reviewed here show that the most important function of humour is bonding and building or consolidating relationships, it can also perform important work in difficult or sensitive areas of workplace interactions, including defusing tension, performing indirect evaluation or criticism and subverting authority. It was suggested that, according to Wenger’s work, relational aspects of interaction are central to a workplace community of practice. This is borne out through a comparative analysis of relational talk across the workplaces from which the ABOT Corpus was drawn, and of humour in four organizations from the Language in the Workplace database (Holmes and Marra 2002). The exploration of types and functions of humour found in the ABOT Corpus further enriches the picture of the role of humour in the workplace. The analysis shows that relational talk and humour are part of the practice of all the workplace communities examined, but differences in the frequency and nature of these forms of talk, as well as participants’ views of these, also revealed differences in workplace culture. Such a comparative analysis across different workplace environments lends further support to seeing small talk and humour as key components of workplace practice, as already attested by many studies of individual workplaces. By examining relational talk and humour across a range of workplace settings, it is possible to gain a comprehensive and differentiated picture of the role played by relational forms of talk in workplace discourse. This chapter has explored the link between relational talk, including humour, and workplace culture. But relational talk is also an important site for invoking and reinforcing other forms of culture, including regional and national culture (as


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found, for instance in the word play involving regional accent in example 5.11). What happens, however, when the participants do not share the same culture or mother tongue? This is one of the topics explored in Chapter 6, which looks at workplace and business encounters across cultures, where people from different cultural backgrounds and different countries interact using English as a second language or ‘lingua franca’.

Chapter 6

Communicating across Cultures: English as an International Language of Work

6.1 Introduction This chapter examines a variety of ways in which English has been used to communicate across cultures in professional and workplace settings. The research carried out in this area can broadly be divided into two main areas: (1) communication in English to do business internationally, where only some or none of the participants have English as their mother tongue, and (2) communication in an institutional or workplace setting within an English-speaking country, where at least one of the participants is originally from another country, or member of an ethnic minority. Numerous studies have examined cross-cultural or intercultural business interactions (particularly meetings and negotiations), and have revealed cultural differences in certain interactive practices (Yamada 1990, Garcez 1993, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1995 and 1997b, Marriott 1995, Bilbow 1997, Spencer-Oatey 2000a). More recently, the growth of English as the most widely used international language has prompted an interest in the way in which language is used in lingua franca communication. Research in this area has taken quite a different approach from most studies in intercultural communication, in that the focus tends to be not on differences, but on how successful communication is achieved. Studies of interactions in which none of the speakers use English as their mother tongue have consistently found such interactions to be smooth and orderly, with few misunderstandings or repair (Firth 1996, Seidlhofer 2004, Rogerson-Revell 2008). In contrast to this picture of largely harmonious and successful interactions in lingua franca settings, studies of inter-ethnic communication in Englishspeaking countries have found that ethnic minorities and immigrants have frequently been disadvantaged in institutional encounters with ‘gate-keepers’, such as job interviewers, due to misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of cultural specific discursive practices and expectations (Roberts et al. 1992, Roberts and Sarangi 1999, Roberts and Campbell 2006). The aim of this chapter is to examine these two very different types of communication across cultures. Particular attention is devoted to research on

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English as a lingua franca (or ELF), as this is a relatively new area of enquiry, which is currently producing some very interesting results. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the differences in these two areas of research, and to try to explain why the findings here contrast so starkly.

6.2 English as a lingua franca Firth (1996, p. 240) defines English as a lingua franca as: a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication. To describe business interactions in lingua franca situations, the term Business English as a Lingua Franca (or BELF) was coined by Louhiala-Salminen et al. (2005). Firth’s and other’s (House 1999, Seidlhofer 2004) definition of ELF does not cover interactions in which speakers of English as a mother tongue as well as foreign language users are involved. As a substantial number of studies in international business communication deal with such events, RogersonRevell (2007, 2008) prefers the term ‘English for International Business’ (EIB), drawing on the broader terms ‘English as an International Language’ and ‘International English’. While this chapter also deals with international communicative events in which mother tongue or ‘native’ speakers1 of English are also involved, it is worth devoting some time to a discussion of ELF, as this term brings with it a major reorientation of the perspective taken on the use of English by ‘non-native’ speakers. A starting point for this reorientation can be seen in Firth and Wagner’s seminal article (1997), calling for a ‘reconceptualization of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research’ (p. 285), and criticizing the prevalent view in SLA of the learner as a deficient communicator, as measured against an idealized native speaker. They argue that research on communication strategies (e.g. Faerch and Kaspar 1983) take an overly mentalistic perspective on learner language, in which deviations from native speaker norms are explained in terms of lack of competence. A more sociolinguistic, emic perspective, taking into account the way in which learners jointly construct meaningful interaction with their interlocutors, might arrive at quite different interpretations. Firth and Wagner show how an interlanguage ‘error’, from a Communication Strategies perspective, can in fact be seen as an example of successful communication where meaning is ‘conjointly negotiated and implicitly agreed upon in the talk’ (p. 290). Indeed, non-native speakers of English regularly communicate successfully in situations in which they are not conceptualized as ‘learners’, namely in workplace and business situations. Using conversation analysis (CA) methods, Firth (1996) shows that lingua franca business interactions seems to

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operate on the assumption that the jointly constructed talk is ‘normal’, for example in that grammatical infelicities and opaque formulations are not oriented to. This reorientation towards long-established conceptions of ‘nativeness’ and ‘non-nativeness’ can be seen most clearly in the discussion in the past 15 years calling into question the ‘ownership’ of English by mother tongue speakers (Widdowson 1994), and a concomitant positive reappraisal of non-native teachers over against native speaker teachers, who were previously unquestioningly upheld as models (Rampton 1990, Medgyes 1994, Braine 1999). Until recently, this reorientation was not accompanied by any systematic investigation of the linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of lingua franca interactions (Seidlhofer 2001), but in the past years, the establishment of two electronically stored ELF corpora, the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), based at the University of Vienna, and The Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA), based at the University of Helsinki, have begun to yield corpus-based studies into the nature of naturally occurring ELF encounters. Seidlhofer (2004) summarizes empirical research carried out on ELF in three main areas: phonology, pragmatics and lexico-grammar. For ELF phonology, Jenkins (2000) has identified a ‘lingua franca core’ of features of pronunciation and prosody that are (and are not) essential for mutual comprehension among ELF speakers. Pragmatic studies of ELF interactions have also identified a number of recurring features, although the findings here are less conclusive, and sometimes contradictory (Seidlhofer 2004). The consensus-oriented and co-operative nature (or at least appearance) of naturally occurring lingua franca interactions identified by Firth (1996) is highlighted in a number of studies (House 1999, Rogerson-Revell 2008). What Firth (1996) refers to as the ‘let it pass’ principle obtains, that is mutual understanding is assumed, unless otherwise demonstrated, and there is little evidence of repair. Another typical pragmatic feature of ELF interactions seems to be the frequent use of accommodation strategies, such as repetition, paraphrase and code-switching (Cogo and Dewey 2006, Cogo 2009, Kaur 2009). Preliminary findings from lexico-grammatical studies (Seidlhofer 2004, Cogo and Dewey 2006) have identified the systematic use of certain features which would be considered errors from an English native speaker point of view, such as: z dropping the third person –s z invariant question tags z shift in the use of articles z shift in prepositional patterns

Findings from such studies into linguistic and pragmatic patterns and regularities found in ELF interactions raise the question of whether ELF, with its many users widely dispersed geographically, and without a stable speech community, is amenable to the same kind of systematic description as other


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varieties of English. Entering into this discussion in any detail is beyond the scope of this chapter, except to note that there is some disagreement among researchers in ELF in this regard. Seidlhofer’s (2001) call for a systematic empirical investigation of the characteristics of ELF seems to imply that such a description is possible. Firth (2009, p. 162), on the other hand, contends that codification of ELF is not possible, as ‘at the heart of ELF encounters . . . is what appears to be an inherent diversity – of language proficiency, linguistic form, and of sociocultural and pragmatic knowledge’, and that ELF is therefore ‘ineluctably emergent’ and cannot be characterized outside specific interactions. Similarly, Berns (2008, p. 331) sees English as an International Language (or EIL – a term she prefers to ELF) not as a code, but as ‘a tool of communication in international settings’, arguing that this is more compatible with a notion of ‘world Englishes’, which emphasizes the multiplicity and variability of the different varieties of English2. Whether or not further empirical research will result in a description of ELF as a variety in its own right, what is of interest to us here is that there is now a growing body of corpus-based and discourseanalytical research on naturally occurring ELF interactions which can contribute to our understanding of interactions in lingua franca and intercultural settings, particularly in the business and workplace domain.

6.3 English as an international language in business As English is frequently used as an international language or lingua franca in international business communication, it is not surprising that a number of recent studies have focused on this topic (Pitzl 2005, Planken 2005, LouhialaSalminen et al. 2005, Rogerson-Revell 2007 and 2008). But as this is still a relatively new area of enquiry, conclusions from these studies must be seen as preliminary. However, studies of cross-cultural and intercultural communication in business have quite a long history (Graham 1983, Garcez 1993, BargielaChiappini and Harris 1995 and 1997a, Marriott 1995 and 1997, Bilbow 1997 and 2002, Yamada 1997, Rogerson-Revell 1999, Spencer-Oatey 2000a); and, even if they do not focus specifically on English as a lingua franca, they are relevant to the discussion here.

6.3.1 Intercultural communication Of particular relevance here are intercultural studies examining contact situations between participants with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and in which English is used as the common language; in contrast to crosscultural studies, which compare interactions within two cultures or speech communities. The main thrust of the majority of such studies has been to identify differences and potential communication problems between members of

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different cultures coming into contact. Some have examined interactions between people from different national cultures (Garcez 1993, Marriott 1995, Miller 2000, Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2000); for example Marriott (1995) found that in Australian-Japanese negotiations, the Japanese and the Australian participant constructed quite different understandings of the same event based on their different cultural backgrounds and experiences. Spencer-Oatey and Xing (2000) describe a visit of a Chinese delegation to the United Kingdom which went badly, due to mutual lack of awareness of cultural conventions, particularly as regards issues of ‘face’. Other studies have examined differences between cultural groups, for example Bilbow (1997 and 2002) found differences in the performance of certain speech acts between Westerners and Chinese in an international corporation in Hong Kong. He explains some of these differences in terms of underlying Western cultural and Confucianist values (Bilbow 1997). RogersonRevell (1999) goes beyond differences between specific cultural groups, and identifies different interactive strategies in intercultural business meetings, which result from a combination of social, cultural and individual differences, and which can influence the dynamic of the meetings in various ways. If the same interactive strategies were shared by a number of participants in a meeting, this resulted in a certain type of interactive style dominating ‘to the advantage of the “in-group” users and the detriment of other “non-users”‘ (ibid., pp. 63). Rogerson-Revell’s study highlights an important aspect of intercultural encounters, which is also key for the analysis of ELF interactions, namely that cultural identities and practices are not just brought to an encounter, but are also dynamically negotiated in the course of the interaction. While the studies cited above do, on the whole, take a differentiated approach to the notion of culture, they have nevertheless come under criticism for overemphasizing national culture and cultural differences, and therefore focussing attention on miscommunication, rather than on what contributes to successful intercultural communication (Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin Stark 2007). Poncini (2002) sets out her research agenda as follows: . . . rather than focusing on miscommunication, the focus will be on what seems to work at the meetings. This could shed light on the features of interactants’ language use that may contribute to overcoming or diminishing the difficulties often associated with intercultural communication. This in turn could allow a greater understanding of the characteristics of successful business communication in multicultural settings . . . (p. 350) Such a reorientation which focuses on ‘what seems to work’ is very much at the heart of recent studies of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF). As Seidlhofer (2001) points out, ELF users primarily have a pragmatic orientation towards English: ‘They are not primarily concerned with emulating the way


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native speakers use their mother tongue . . . Instead, the central concerns for this domain are efficiency, relevance and economy’ (p. 141). Such a view is echoed by researchers in BELF, who remark that the choice of English for international communication is very much a pragmatic one (Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005, Charles 2008) and that English is seen as ‘one tool in a business toolkit’ (Charles 2008).

6.3.2 Characteristics of business English as a lingua franca (BELF) Beyond a general pragmatic orientation towards the use of English in lingua franca contexts, can any other features be identified that are common to lingua franca business interactions? Studies carried out to date have yielded some recurring themes. One common feature of ELF interactions in social as well as business encounters seems to be the use of speech accommodation (Connor 1999). The key strategy used in ELF encounters is ‘convergence’, which according to accommodation theory, involves adapting to an interlocutor’s behaviour in terms of speech, gesture or posture (Giles et al. 1991). In lingua franca interactions, this may involve converging in terms of pronunciation, repeating one’s interlocutor’s words, code-switching and simplifying one’s English (Haegeman 2002, Cogo and Dewey 2006, Cogo 2009, Pitzl 2005). An interesting phenomenon here is that interlocutors ‘accommodating down’ may well use non-standard pronunciation or grammar, even if they are perfectly capable of producing the standard form as well. This means that forms which would be judged as errors in a learning context, are in fact employed strategically to aid communication. Connor (1999) illustrates this phenomenon in the correspondence of a Finnish broker in the fish importing/exporting business. Although he had a high level of proficiency in English, he simplified his language when dealing with less proficient business partners, for example an Estonian supplier, as illustrated in Figure 6.1, which shows a message giving instructions for delivery. In this fax, the Finnish broker uses short, simple sentences and, notably, an example of non-standard grammar in the avoidance of the passive voice in ‘It will send to Helsinki’, instead of ‘It will be sent to Helsinki.’ In contrast, in a fax to a Japanese buyer (Figure 6.2), who clearly has a higher level of proficiency in English, the language is more sophisticated, and the passive voice is used correctly. Connor shows that the broker not only accommodates to his business correspondents in terms of language level, but also in terms of his relationship with them and their cultural background. The fax to the Japanese buyer is more polite than the instructions to the Estonian supplier. One reason for this is that, in his role as seller, the Finnish broker takes on a more deferential tone, but also, as he explained in an interview, he felt that the Japanese were very polite,

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and therefore he accommodated to the perceived culture of his business partner. An example of ‘downward accommodation’ in a spoken lingua franca business encounter can be seen in example 6.1, which is an extract from a business

Figure 6.1 Message sent to an Estonian supplier (Source: Connor, 1999, p. 123)

Figure 6.2 Message sent to a Japanese buyer (Source: Connor, 1999, p. 126)


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meeting involving Germans and Dutch participants (Pitzl 2005): Exampe 6.1 S2(m)=Dutch; S3(m)=German (Germany) (1) S2: this is more or less the well (.) the level of rates which (2) is at the moment (1) even (if) (3) S3: are you serving some some more destinations (4) e:r in the middle east? (5) S2: again? (6) S3: do you have some more destinations in the middle east? or (7) it’s purely dubai? (8) S2: YES. I PROMISE(D) you actually i’ve sorry (Pitzl 2005, p. 66, VOICE. 2009)3 Here S2 asks S3 to repeat his question (line 5), which results in S3 simplifying his language in the reformulation. Instead of ‘serving’ (line 3), he uses the general purpose verb ‘have’ (line 4), and he switches from present continuous to present simple aspect. The use of semantically flexible verbs, such as ‘do’, ‘have’, ‘make’, has been noted as one of the emerging lexico-grammatical tendencies of ELF (Seidlhofer 2004). Haegeman (2002) observed the systematic use of such downward accommodation, which she calls ‘foreigner talk’, in a corpus of ELF business telephone calls between more proficient Dutch speakers and less proficient business partners from other countries. The ‘foreigner talk’ used by the more proficient speakers included article and pronoun deletion, amplification, explanation of lexical items and substitution of a lexical item by a simpler one. Accommodation has been highlighted as a specific feature of ELF communication, but of course it is not restricted to interactions between lingua franca speakers only. There is some evidence that native speakers of English engaged in international business interactions also use convergence strategies, although some strategies, such as code-switching may not be available to them if they are monolingual. In a survey conducted by Rogerson-Revell (2007) with a European business organization, respondents who were native speakers of English claimed to modify their speech in international meetings with their counterparts from the continent by avoiding jargon, idioms and metaphor and by using paraphrase. Preliminary data analysis of the meetings seemed to corroborate these claims, as there was some evidence that native speakers did indeed accommodate in this way (RogersonRevell 2008). Another typical characteristic mentioned in most studies of ELF and BELF interactions is what Firth (1996) coined the ‘let it pass’ procedure. Firth found that in telephone conversations of Danish cheese sellers with international

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clients, interlocutors would regularly ‘let pass’ items that could potentially cause misunderstanding, and that mutual understanding was assumed, unless otherwise demonstrated. Firth argues that this procedure is part and parcel of a joint effort in lingua franca encounters of ‘making it normal’, which means that the foreign language status of the participants’ English is rarely alluded to, other repair is avoided and linguistic anomalies are ignored. Rogerson-Revell (2008) found similar characteristics in meetings of a European actuarial organisation, in which native speakers of English were also participants. An exploratory discursive analysis of the meetings showed that they ‘appear generally meaningful, orderly and harmonious’ (p. 349), despite the fact that, in a survey carried out previously by Rogerson-Revell (2007) on behalf of the organization, some of the non-native speaker participants had reported a number of difficulties in communicating in these meetings, such as expressing an opinion or interrupting appropriately. Rogerson-Revell speculates that one reason for this discrepancy could be the formality of the meeting, which ensured an overall smooth, orderly structure, but did not allow much opportunity for spontaneous, self-selected turns. Rogerson-Revell’s studies show that triangulation of questionnaire and discourse analytical methods can be useful in uncovering possible discrepancies between ‘appearance’ and ‘perception’. These findings should also remind us to exercise caution in interpreting ELF data, in allowing the possibility that an ‘appearance of normality’ may in fact hide problems at a deeper level (House 1999, 2002). In a simulated meeting of international students, House (1999) observes that while there was little repair, participants did not efficiently manage turn-taking, and did not seem to be interactionally aligned to one another. She concludes that these ELF speakers lacked ‘pragmatic fluency’ in English. Not all studies of ELF and BELF confirm the lack of repair strategies in lingua franca interactions. Cogo and Dewey (2006) explicitly challenge the view that ELF encounters are typified by a tendency to ‘let it pass’, and show that negotiation of meaning is frequent in the data they analysed, which, however, consists of social rather than business encounters. Pitzl (2005) shows how non-understandings are signalled, negotiated and resolved in lingua franca business meetings. However, her findings concur with those of Firth (1996) and Rogerson-Revell (2008) in that participants in the meeting show a ‘high degree of cooperation’ (Pitzl 2005). In keeping with this, Pitzl notes that repair of non-understandings is mostly done in a non-interruptive way, using minimal queries, rather than explicit metalinguistic procedures. Example 6.1 above shows such a minimal repair strategy, where non-understanding is signalled with ‘again?’ (line 5), which is explicit, but does not narrow down the trouble source in the previous utterance. Although Firth (1996) and Rogerson-Revell (2008) found that participants in their data rarely orient to communication difficulties or make explicit their lingua franca status, occasionally this does occur, and such cases may be dealt with through code-switching or humour. For instance, example 6.3 below shows a lingua franca speaker code-switching in requesting help (from a compatriot) with the translation of a Spanish idiom; and in example 6.4 below, two lingua franca


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speakers laugh about a marked (‘non-native’) usage. Another strategy noted by Firth (1996) that participants in lingua franca interactions use as part of ‘making it normal’ is the production of frequent upshots or formulations of the interlocutor’s utterances which may be perceived as marked or opaque. This seems to concur with Kaur’s (2009) findings in (non-business) lingua franca interactions that misunderstandings were pre-empted by participants through paraphrase and repetition, which can also be seen as accommodation strategies. As the studies discussed above show, findings regarding the occurrence or non-occurrence of repair in lingua franca interactions are somewhat contradictory, although there is general consensus that the lingua franca status of participants, including limited linguistic proficiency and non-standard usages, is not a barrier to generally smooth and successful communication in business contexts. Of course, findings regarding the occurrence of repair and negotiation of meaning strategies are very sensitive to the type of data investigated, and variables, such as genre, formality and the linguistic proficiency of the participants, will have an impact on the findings. More research involving a variety of contexts and participants is therefore needed.

6.4 Relational language in lingua franca workplace and business interactions In the discussion so far of how mutual understanding is negotiated in lingua franca encounters, the focus has been on transactional concerns, that is on mutual intelligibility. But is ELF or BELF also used to perform relational functions, such as those found in the workplace interactions explored in previous chapters? Example 6.2 provides an illustration of some of the features of lingua franca interactions discussed so far as well as of some of the relational features of language to be addressed in this section. Example 6.2 Ryan: managing director, Taiwanese Ella: sales administrator, Turkish Daniel: product manager, British (1) Ryan: (2) Ella: (3) Ryan:

Ella, don’t worry. Our price is near price, isn’t it? Let me know you know. The next week, you just give it a . . . see there’s a . . . try it as a . . . (4) Ella: I’ll try it, although I hate to try it. (5) Ryan: Try it as a tool, (Ella: Yeah) right? (6) Daniel: Eventually the US won’t use it if it wasn’t . . . any benefit. (7) Ella: But how many sales people in the US? (8) Ryan: But don’t worry. You know, if he gives you extra work, you let me know. (9) Ella: I see.

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(10) Ryan:

OK? Not extra work. If it’s not helping you, eventually this is not gonna to be helping you know the sales department. Not . . . (11) Daniel: Helps the customer. (12) Ryan: Ya, help the customer. Not . . . (Ella: But I’ll try it.) not have one extra tool, then it’s damage you know your sales department. If . . . that’s ok, we’ll take it off you know. You know what I mean. But I I I think you know you are a hard worker, you should be . . . your justification will be right and tell me actually. (Hsueh 2007, pp. 51–52) This interaction is from a small multicultural business based in the United Kingdom, which employs British as well as non-British staff (the majority of whom are from Taiwan or Mainland China). While this is a somewhat different setting from the BELF examples discussed above, as all the participants live in the United Kingdom and work together as colleagues, the extract displays some of the features of ELF discussed in section 6.2. The language produced by the participants, especially Ryan, displays a number of marked, grammatically anomalous utterances, such as the use of a negative (‘not’) without a verb, and the use of a non-finite, instead of finite verb: (10) Ryan: . . . Not extra work (12) Ryan: . . . not have one extra tool He also ‘drops’ the third person –s in turn 12 (‘help the customer’), which has been identified as one of the typical features of ELF (Seidlhofer 2004). Interestingly, the only native speaker in this interaction, Daniel, also uses non-standard grammar in one instance: the mismatch of ‘won’t’ and ‘wasn’t’ in: (6) Daniel: Eventually the US won’t use it if it wasn’t . . . any benefit. Ellipsis also occurs on a number of occasions, and, again, not only in utterances produced by non-native speakers, e.g.: (7) Ella: But how many sales people [are there] in the US? (11) Daniel: [It] Helps the customer. This extract serves as a useful reminder that non-standard grammar is also frequent in the informal speech of native speakers, although the nature of the ‘errors’ may be different. In any event, none of these grammatical anomalies are oriented to by the speakers, nor do they trigger any misunderstanding or repair, therefore we can see the ‘let it pass’ procedure in operation here. As far as the clear transmission of information is concerned, the interaction is uneventful; however, there is evidence of much interactional work happening


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on the relational level. In this encounter, Ryan and Daniel try to persuade Ella to adopt a new customer service procedure, which creates more work for her (Hsueh, 2007). Hsueh (ibid., p. 51) remarks how Ryan uses a combination of positive and negative politeness strategies in showing he cares about Ella’s workload and trying to minimize the amount of work involved. For example, he reassures her in turns 1 and 8 (‘don’t worry’), and praises her in turn 12 (‘you are a hard worker’). In this encounter, participants clearly orient to relational goals, as well as transactional ones (see Chapter 5). This is an important observation, as the existence of precisely such relational goals in lingua franca encounters has been questioned in some of the ELF literature.

6.4.1 Language for communication or language for identification? Hüllen’s (1992) distinction between ‘language for communication’ (‘Kommunikationssprache’) and ‘language for identification’ (‘Identifikationssprache’) is one that is frequently invoked in discussions of ELF. According to Hüllen, English used for international trade, politics and science is a ‘language for communication’ – it is an instrument for accomplishing transactional goals, and not for expressing the full range of communicative functions, including emotional and relational ones. House (2001) formulates this view as follows: English as a lingua franca is nothing more than a useful tool: it is a ‘language for communication’, a medium that is given substance with the different national, regional, local and individual cultural identities its speakers bring to it. English itself does not carry such identities, it is not a ‘language for identification’. It would seem logical to conclude that in international business in particular, where English is used for pragmatic reasons (Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005), and is seen as ‘one tool in a business toolkit’ (Charles 2008), English should be largely limited to being a language for communication and not for identification. But is this borne out in examining actual lingua franca business interactions? Example 6.2 above clearly shows second language speakers using English for relational as well as transactional purposes. But one could argue that this is because the participants are close colleagues, and therefore need to maintain good working relations, whereas in international lingua franca situations, longterm relationships may not always exist. For example, House (1999) found ‘a palpable lack of mutual orientation’ (p. 82) in ELF interactions between international students, in which participants ‘engage in non-aligned “parallel talk”’ (p. 80), and do not really listen to each other. However, a number of recent discourse studies of international lingua franca interactions have found ELF being used to perform a wider range of functions

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than only transactional ones. For example, Cogo and Dewey (2006) and Kordon (2006) have observed the use of interactive strategies which contribute to supportive co-operative discourse, such as latching and overlap, turn-completion and back-channelling in ELF social and service encounters. In addition to simply ensuring smooth interaction, such strategies, in particular strong agreement tokens (such as of course, exactly) can also have an affective, function (Schneider 1988, McCarthy and Carter 2000, McCarthy 2003), and Kordon (2006) argues that the use of agreement tokens in an Austrian-Vietnamese mini-corpus provides evidence of rapport-building. Turning to ELF used in a business environment, some recent studies of international business meetings (Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin Stark 2007 and 2009, Victoria 2006) investigated linguistic and interactive strategies that contribute to a sense of group identity and social cohesion in these multinational groups. Poncini analysed meetings of an Italian company with its international distributors and shows how personal pronouns (such as we), technical terms and evaluative language are used to create a sense of group identity and build a positive relationship between the company and its distributors. Pullin Stark examines a range of devices used for building solidarity and rapport, including interactional talk, stance markers, pronouns and humour, in meetings of an international company based in Switzerland. Victoria (2007) shows that politeness strategies used by chairpersons in ELF meetings address relational concerns of negotiating power and building solidarity in a multinational company. Two studies of simulated business negotiations by lingua franca speakers (Dow, 1999 and Planken, 2005) also yield some interesting results in this regard. Both studies compared expert and ‘aspiring’ student negotiators, and found that the experts made far greater use of relational strategies, such as ‘safe talk’, ritual interchanges and politeness strategies in the negotiations. This suggests that experience of the relevant business genres may have a greater influence on the use of relational strategies than whether speakers are using English as a lingua franca or a native language. These studies, as well as Spencer-Oatey’s (2000b) and Spencer-Oatey’s and Xing’s (1998) work on ‘rapport management’ in intercultural business encounters all provide evidence that English is indeed used in BELF to express relational as well as transactional functions. This is not really surprising, given that a number of recent studies have highlighted the importance of relationship-building in workplace and business encounters (Charles 1996, Holmes 2000a and 2000b, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Koester 2006, Handford 2007 and forthcoming). Given the range of devices performing relational functions identified in business and workplace talk, including politeness and solidarity strategies, humour and small talk, it would actually be more surprising if such devices were found to be completely lacking in lingua franca business encounters. In fact, Planken (2005, p. 399) suggests that ‘creating and maintaining rapport’ are ‘particularly important in situations where a lingua franca is used’, drawing on Aston’s (1993) idea of a ‘benevolence principle’ in non-native speaker discourse. Aston argues that the ‘positive


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rapport’ built through ‘interactional speech’ may facilitate transactional speech by ‘rendering operative a “benevolence principle”, whereby eventual understanding failures are more likely to be interpreted as errors rather than offenses’ (ibid., p. 229). Beyond simply defusing any possible misunderstanding, building rapport may also be particularly important in intercultural situations as interactants cannot assume a shared culture or shared values on which they can draw. The question of the role of culture is an interesting one, which we shall return to in a moment. If, as recent research seems to suggest, language is used for relational as well as transactional purposes in lingua franca interactions, an interesting question is whether the linguistic and interactional devices used are the same as in native speaker discourse. Preliminary findings seem to suggest that the strategies are similar, but that their realization may be somewhat different. In her study of Austrian-Vietnamese social and service encounters Kordon (2006) found that a fairly restricted set of strong agreement tokens, such as of course or sure, were used, and that deviations from native speakers norms were not oriented to; that is participants ‘let it pass’. Kordon notes that ‘as long as speakers do use the tokens, positive interpersonal relationships are maintained and the interaction is communicatively successful’ (ibid., p. 75). Looking specifically at business encounters, Handford (forthcoming) compared the use of phrasal ‘clusters’ or ‘chunks’ in the CANBEC Corpus as a whole, which consists mainly of British speakers of English (see Chapter 3, Section 3.3.3), with a sub-corpus of CANBEC consisting of international meetings with at least one participant who was a lingua franca speaker of English. The most frequent 20 three-word clusters in the corpus as a whole all have pragmatic, interpersonal meanings (e.g. ‘you know the’), and 13 of these were the same in the international meetings. Furthermore, while seven of the actual clusters used most frequently in the international meetings were different from those used in the corpus as a whole, they all fulfilled some kind of interpersonal function. For example, hedges, such as ‘a bit of’ and ‘I mean I’ were most frequent in the corpus overall, whereas in the international meetings summarizers + hedges, for example ‘so I think’, featured among the most frequent chunks. Linguistic devices such as hedges, intensifiers, vague language, idioms and metaphors have all been found to perform important relational functions in social as well as workplace and business situations (Koester 2000, 2006 and 2007a), for example the use of hedging and vague language in health-care contexts (Prince et al. 1982, Adolphs et al. 2007). But it is precisely some of these devices, in particular idioms and vague language, which are often claimed to be absent from lingua franca discourse (Seidlhofer 2004, Charles 2008). According to Seidlhofer (2001 and 2004) ‘unilateral idiomaticity’, the use (by one of the speakers) of idioms which are unfamiliar to other participants, can contribute to misunderstandings and communication problems in lingua franca situations. Rogerson-Revell’s (2007 and 2008) finding that native speaker participants in international meetings avoided the use of idioms and metaphor

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indicates an awareness among these participants that the use of such linguistic devices might cause problems of understanding. Furthermore, in her analysis of the meetings (with native speakers as well as lingua franca participants) Rogerson-Revell (2008) found very little ‘highly contextualised’ language, ‘i.e. language which depends on references to shared knowledge’ (p. 355), such as ellipsis, jargon and vague language, in addition to idioms and metaphor. At the same time, there is some emerging evidence that devices such as vague language, idioms and metaphor are not completely absent from lingua franca communication, and can in fact be the object of some fascinating cross-cultural negotiation. Also, it should be borne in mind that the meetings analysed by Rogerson-Revell (2007 and 2008) were very formal, which may have contributed to the limited use of contextualized language; and even here some idioms did occur. Two corpus-based studies confirm the use of vague language in ELF across a range of spoken genres. In a comparison of vague items across four genres (academic, business, conversation and public discourse) in the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), Cheng (2007) found that Hong Kong speakers and native English speakers used vague language (VL) tokens with equal frequency, and she concludes that ‘discourse type, rather than speaker group, seems to be the major determinant of both the forms of VL employed by the speakers and the frequencies with which these forms occur’ (p. 178). Mestä-Ketelä (2008) compared the use of vague markers by ELF speakers and native English speakers in doctoral defence discussions in the ELFA Corpus, and found that the ELF speakers actually used vague language more, and that it was used for relational as well as information-oriented functions. Pitzl (2009) examined the use of idioms and metaphor among ELF users in the VOICE Corpus, and found that metaphorical idioms were indeed used, but often ‘wrongly’, for example ‘we should not wake up any dogs’ (a variation on the idioms ‘let sleeping dogs lie’). One of the properties of idioms is that they are fixed and invariant, at least to some degree, but Pitzl’s study seems to indicate that in ELF settings, this ‘rule’ does not apply; that is speakers are able to exploit the metaphoric potential of an idiom.4 While the use of idioms was different, the functions they performed were similar to the relational functions that have been ascribed to idioms in native speaker interactions: indirectness, emphasizing and humour. However, Pitzl (ibid., p. 302) notes that in contrast to their use in interactions between native speakers, idioms are not used as ‘territorial markers of group membership’ in lingua franca interactions. Another way in which the use of idioms can be different in lingua franca compared with monolingual encounters, is that idioms from a speaker’s L1 are sometimes translated or explained. Although they do not focus on idioms specifically in analysing informal ELF encounters, Cogo and Dewey (2006) give an example of the translation into English of an idiom (fleur bleue) by a French participant, giving rise to extended negotiation of meaning which seems to


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contribute to building solidarity in this multicultural group. To my knowledge, no systematic studies of idioms in ELF workplace or business encounters have been carried out, but the data discussed in several studies provides some evidence that idioms do occur and also perform relational functions in such settings. Rogerson-Revell (2008) shows an example from her international meetings of a Spanish participant trying to translate a Spanish metaphorical idiom (patata caliente = hot potato) into English (p. 354)5: Example 6.3 Angel (Spanish) ..I ‘don’t know ‘how is in English/.. ‘maybe.. ‘Ramon/.. (Insurance meeting) Ramon/.. pa’tata caliente/ .how is it/.. pa’tata caliente/ ..[laughs]. ‘well..may’be ‘hot poto.. …??is i’gual. i’gual.. in ??...... The use of this particular idiom (patata caliente), which Angel is keen to try to translate, seems to serve an expressive (and therefore relational) function, rather than conveying any precise informational content. A more creative use of metaphor, where a speaker creates a novel coinage, is discussed by Firth (1996) in an example of a business call between a Danish export manager and his Hungarian client: Example 6.4 [. . .] (14) H (15) L

how are sales going in Budapest= =o:h I think now its-it’s a little bit ↑middle h(H). hh. middle power hu(h) hu(h)h [h(h)u(h) [(h)o:k(h)a(h)y::↓ it’s not-it’s not so ↑ni::ce

(16) H (17) L (18) H [. . .] (From Firth 1996, p. 254)6

Here, H coins the metaphorical expression ‘middle power’ (turn 15), perhaps a translation from a mother tongue idiom, to describe how sales are going, and L shows he has understood what H means by glossing the expression in turn 18 (‘it’s not so nice’). Firth notes that both participants laugh at this expression, thereby displaying their orientation to this marked usage, and at the same time framing it as ‘non-fatal’. The laughter may also signal appreciation of H’s creative coinage, and the mutual orientation of the speakers to this expression seems to contribute to a sense of convergence and solidarity between them. The use of idioms and metaphor in lingua franca encounters is particularly interesting, as such items usually invoke cultural membership in interactions

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between monolinguals (Moon 1992, 1998, Boers 2003). Pitzl (2009) concludes that idioms are not markers of territoriality when used by lingua franca speakers, but does this mean they are completely stripped of their cultural content? As lingua franca encounters are intercultural, the role of culture is complex. According to Meierkord, lingua franca communication is ‘both a linguistic masala and a language “stripped bare” of its cultural roots’ (2002, p. 128), and is essentially characterized by hybridity. Pölzl (2003, p. 5) also sees ELF as ‘native culture free’, but not as a cultureless vacuum; rather: ELF users have the freedom to either create their own temporary culture, to partly ‘export’ their individual primary culture into ELF or to reinvent their cultural identities by blending into other linguacultural groups. The use of idiom and metaphor in ELF can be associated with these kinds of orientation towards culture. Example 6.3, the attempt to translate a Spanish idiom, can be seen as an example of ‘exporting’ the speaker’s own culture; whereas example 6.4 involves the creation of a kind of ‘temporary culture’ in which both speakers participate. Culture itself can be ‘used’ in lingua franca encounters to build solidarity. Aston (1993) proposes that as non-native speakers are not able to draw on their shared culture to negotiate solidarity, they ‘need to turn from their identities as representative members of their cultures of origin to focus on their identities as individuals, and to their relationships as individuals to those cultures’ (p. 237). Aston suggest that one way in which non-native speakers can build solidarity is by taking a critical attitude towards their own culture, and thus bonding as fellow cultural ‘outlaws’. Planken (2005) observed this phenomenon in simulated lingua franca negotiations, in which ‘interculturalness’ occurred as a rapport-building strategy among the professional negotiators: It would seem that by pointing out and acknowledging cultural differences, participants try to create a temporary in-group of (fellow) non-natives, whose common ground is the fact that they differ culturally. (p. 397) Is ELF then a language for identification as well as for communication? The answer depends partly on how one defines these two terms: whether ‘identification’ refers to primary culture only, or also to other forms of identity around which discourse participants can build solidarity (see Pölzl 2003, p. 5). What seems apparent, even from the limited research to date, is that participants in lingua franca workplace and business encounters use English not only as a restricted utilitarian tool, but also to fulfil a range of relational functions, such as building solidarity and common ground. Further research is needed to explore the linguistic devices used in such interactions, and the extent to which they are similar or different from the devices employed by mother tongue speakers of English.


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6.5 English in the multi-ethnic workplace So far we have been looking at international forms of communication across cultures occurring mainly outside English speaking countries. Another site for intercultural communication in English is workplaces in English-speaking countries which employ foreign nationals or people from minority ethnic communities. As we shall see, findings from studies on intercultural or ‘inter-ethnic’ communication in such contexts contrast quite sharply with those from international business encounters discussed above. While the study of English as a lingua franca is a fairly new field, studies of communication in the multi-ethnic workplace have quite a long history (Gumperz 1982, Gumperz and Roberts 1991, Roberts et al. 1992). These studies have focused on two types of research sites: (1) workplaces with a high percentage of employees from ethnic minorities and (2) ‘gate-keeping’ encounters, for example in job centres and benefits offices, where ethnic minorities are also over-represented. As Roberts et al. (1992) point out, migrants and people from ethnic minorities have typically taken up unskilled and low-paid jobs in factories and the service industry, which are also subject to fluctuations in demand. Due to the precariousness of these positions, and with the rise of mass unemployment in the 1ate 1970s and early 1980s resulting from the decline in the manufacturing industries, people from these groups had to turn to employment and welfare services. Here, they came into contact with society’s ‘gatekeepers’ who ‘control access to scarce resources in a modern urban world’ (Roberts et al. 1992, p. 15). Data collected from both types of research site as part of a project to provide ‘industrial language training’ (Roberts et al. 1992) revealed that ethnic minority workers and applicants were systematically disadvantaged. Erikson and Schultz’s (1982) found that in the gate-keeping encounter, ‘those individuals whose communication style and social background is most similar to those of the interviewer’ (ibid., p. 193) were most likely to be successful, whereas those with different linguistic behaviours and socio-cultural backgrounds were judged less favourably (Roberts 2009). However, this was not usually the result of overt discrimination, but due to much more subtle ways in which the interactions themselves developed, and how the participants interpreted each other’s utterances. Because the participants had different assumptions about the goals of the interaction and what was expected, ‘listeners were constantly drawing inferences which were quite at odds with the speaker’s intent’ (Roberts et al. 1992, p. 53). This, in turn, led to negative cultural stereotypes being reinforced, and ‘the disadvantaged position of ethnic-minority workers was constantly reproduced and reinforced’ (ibid, p. 54). Work in Interactional Sociolinguistics has studied such inter-ethnic encounters extensively, and the ways in which ‘contextualization cues’ in the discourse are interpreted differently based on differing cultural expectations or ‘frames’ (Gumperz 1982 and 1999, Gumperz and Roberts 1991, Tannen 1993).

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While employment and migration patterns have changed since these early studies, a recent study carried out in the United Kingdom for the Department for Work and Pensions (Roberts and Campbell 2005 and 2006) on job interviews involving immigrant ethnic minority candidates shows that the findings are still valid. The study found that first generation (born abroad) candidates did less well in the interviews, although, again, there was no overt discrimination. The problems such candidates had were not usually due to any lack of fluency in English, but to the failure to meet ‘hidden demands’ placed on candidates to talk in ‘institutionally credible ways’ and according to ‘implicit cultural expectations’ (Roberts and Campbell 2006, p. 1). Analysis of the job interviews showed that these place a very high demand on candidates in terms of the interactive skills required. Successful candidates are able to ‘align’ themselves to the expectations of interviewers in terms of three types of discourse: 1. institutional discourses: dealing analytically with the qualities that the candidate is expected to bring to the job, 2. occupational discourses: describing previous work experience, 3. personal discourses: a more informal mode, allowing the interviewers to judge the candidate’s ‘personality and values’ (ibid., p. 56). In order to make a good impression, candidates need to achieve the right balance between these three types of discourse, and be able to identify the kind of a response, in terms of discourse type, required for a given question. When the expectations are not met, misalignments occur, and cumulative misalignments can lead to a negative dynamic in the interview, which reflects badly on the candidate. Misalignments can relate to one of the three discourse types outlined above, or to the topic or to aspects of the organization of talk, such as expected stages of the interview. Roberts and Campbell (ibid.) found that interviews with born-abroad candidates had more misunderstandings and misalignments. Example 6.5 shows a discourse misalignment in an interview with an Ethiopian born-abroad candidate, who was unsuccessful: Example 6.5 I = Interviewer C = Candidate (1) I: Okay what would you then say the advantages are (.) by (2) working as a team (3) C: er:m the advantage wherev- wherever you go are the e(4) if you apply other jobs you won’t find it difficult (.) (5) you already integrate (6) (nine seconds of talk deleted)


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(7) C: then wh- wherever you go in say (.) in (xxxxxx) job (8) (.) or in a community job (.) and you won’t get hard you (9) won’t be a-feel ashamed or if y-you (won’t feel) a shy (10) person (.) you get more powerful a:nd (1) (11) I: yeah (.) what more would you say (12) C: e:r (1) you would be open minded you don’t have [to (13) I: okay yeah] (14) C: be worried (4) (Roberts and Campbell, 2006, p. 49)7 The candidate responds to the interviewer’s question about the advantages of working in a team using personal discourse: he talks about the personal benefits to himself. This question, however, requires a response using institutional discourse: the candidate is expected to show that he understands how teamwork benefits the organization, for example by improving efficiency. Another study by Roberts and Sarangi (1999) shows that even skilled professionals from minority cultural backgrounds can be disadvantaged in gate-keeping encounters. In oral exams for the Royal College of General Practitioners, candidates trained overseas performed less well than those who had been trained in the United Kingdom. As in the job interviews discussed above, candidates had to manipulate a hybrid type of discourse, using the correct combination of professional, institutional and personal modes of talk in order to be successful. More generally, the conditions of employment of many migrants can create barriers to acquiring the discourses of the dominant cultural group. Roberts (forthcoming) remarks that migrants face the challenge of ‘double socialization’: first into the discourses of the workplace, like all newcomers to a community of practice, and also into the linguistic and cultural practices of the host country. Even if formal job training is received, this does not prepare born-abroad workers and employees for the informal socialization which occurs through interaction in the workplace (Duff, Wong and Early 2000, Li 2002). Moreover, opportunities for such socialization may be limited through the nature of the workplace environment. Many migrants enter low-paid, manual jobs, in which talk is not central to carrying out the work, and frequently they are organized into ethnic work units in which a minority language is spoken (Roberts et al. 1992, Goldstein 1997, Gunnarsson 2009). Opportunities for socialization into English and into more powerful discourses are therefore limited (Roberts et al. 2008).

6.6 Discussion and conclusion If we compare the lingua franca and the inter-ethnic encounters discussed in this chapter, we find a striking contrast between the apparently unproblematic,

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smooth nature of ELF discourse and problems encountered in inter-ethnic workplace and institutional encounters, where job-seekers born abroad are systematically less successful at getting jobs. How can we explain this discrepancy in these two types of communication across cultures which have in common the fact that at least one speaker is using English as a second language? The most obvious source of difficulty in such circumstances would be the language itself, but in neither of these situations does linguistic proficiency as such (or lack thereof) seem to pose a problem. These two types of encounter differ fundamentally in a number of ways, and the differences observed can probably be explained through a combination of factors. As much of the research on communication involving ethnic minorities and immigrants has focused on gate-keeping encounters, such as job interviews, the characteristics of this particular genre are likely to be a major factor. Job interviews are particularly challenging speech situations, requiring participants to handle a range of discourse modes, and there is less opportunity for repair than in other types of talk (Button 1992, Roberts and Campbell 2006). Second, such encounters often involve people who are socially disadvantaged due to low levels of skill and education, and therefore have little power. In many of the interactions studied, in particular gate-keeping encounters, there is a marked asymmetry in power and in the ability to control the discourse. In contrast, international lingua franca encounters often take place between equals, whether they are buyers and sellers, colleagues in a multinational company or professionals in the same field. The cultural context is also quite distinct in these two types of encounter. While immigrants or minorities are expected to conform to the host culture, lingua franca encounters, as we have seen, often take place in a kind of cultureneutral zone, where cultural norms are to some extent suspended. In interethnic encounters, members of the majority culture may not even be aware that interactional problems could be a result of cultural differences, and the practical aim of much of the research carried out has been to help raise such awareness (Roberts et al. 1992, Roberts and Sarangi 1999, Roberts and Campbell 2006). While cultural differences can also cause problems in international business encounters (Marriott 1995, Rogerson-Revell 1999, SpencerOatey and Xing 2000), a number of studies show at least some awareness among participants in ELF encounters of the need to accommodate to interlocutors with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In addition, we need to consider other levels of culture besides national culture. Many international ELF encounters are between people who, although they have different first languages and nationalities, nevertheless have much in common in terms of education, profession and social background, as for example in the case of international professional organizations. In their work on intercultural communication, Scollon and Scollon (2001, p. 4) argue that


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(national) cultural differences between people in professional communication tend to be less significant than differences between the groups or ‘discourse systems’ they participate in. According to Scollon and Scollon (ibid., pp. 106–134 and 183–184), discourse systems are systems of communication consisting of a number of elements: ideology, socialization (ways of becoming a member), forms of discourse (including genre) and face systems. Two discourse systems discussed by Scollon and Scollon which are particularly relevant for workplace communication are corporate and professional discourse systems. These are similar to the notions of discourse community and communities of practice discussed in Chapter 1. As previous chapters have shown, the practices shared by workplace and professional communities, and the genres they use, play a key role in shaping the expectations and interpretations of the participants in professional and workplace encounters. Business professionals with different mother tongues and national cultures interacting in a lingua franca situation may actually share the same corporate and professional discourse systems, thereby greatly reducing the potential for misunderstanding. On the other hand, there is often a much wider gap in terms of the discourse systems (as example 6.5 above demonstrates) used by participants in many gate-keeping encounters, such as job interviews, even if they all live in the same country. Finally, the research perspective taken in all the studies discussed also has some influence on the findings. Much of the research involving ethnic minorities and immigrants has the aim of investigating and trying to help remedy real inequalities: the fact that members of these groups were systematically disadvantaged in the workplace. The purpose of the research was to uncover the causes of these problems, and therefore the focus was very much on problematic, rather than successful communication. The analysis of job interviews, for example, also discussed successful strategies, but this was not the main concern of the research. On the other hand, research in ELF began with a reaction to and reorientation away from a ‘deficit view’ of the non-native speaker to a positive view of the lingua franca speaker as someone who uses English flexibly to accomplish his or her own communicative purposes. This has brought with it a move away from focusing on cultural differences, and on the communication problems they can cause, to looking at what contributes to successful communication between cultures. In terms of further research, there is much work to be done. The field of lingua franca research is still in the early stages, particularly as regards workplace and business encounters. Another site for research which has hardly been looked at is located somewhere ‘in-between’ the inter-ethnic and lingua franca encounters examined here. With an increasingly flexible workforce on a global scale, many foreign nationals come to work in English speaking countries for shorter or longer periods of time. Many of these immigrants are highly educated and take on relatively well-paid positions, but they nevertheless

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face the challenge of adapting to the host culture and to new discourse communities in the places of work that they enter. Do such encounters resemble ELF interactions in being largely cooperative and smooth, or is there also misalignment, as found in the inter-ethnic studies? There is much scope for research into this kind of intercultural workplace, and into the many diverse situations in which English is used as an international language and lingua franca for business and work.

Chapter 7

Applying Research: Teaching Workplace Discourse

7.1 Introduction This chapter explores the practical relevance of research on workplace and business discourse, and examines its possible applications, focusing in particular on the teaching of English for occupational, professional and business purposes. Doing this also provides an opportunity to review many of the key features of workplace discourse discussed in the various chapters of this book. The chapter begins with a brief overview of different types of application from research-based consultancy to training and teaching. It then goes on to show, with illustrative examples, how insights from research can be used for teaching and materials development.

7.2 Research-based consultancy Research in workplace and business discourse frequently has a strong pragmatic focus, and some practical workplace problem may often be what motivates the research in the first place. For example, the study carried out by Roberts and Campbell (2005 and 2006) for the UK Department of Work and Pensions had the aim of investigating and remedying discrimination of immigrant ethnic minority candidates. The Wellington Language in the Workplace project has as its objectives ‘to identify characteristics of effective communication in New Zealand workplaces, to identify causes of miscommunication, and to disseminate the results of the analysis for the benefit of workplace practitioners’ (Holmes and Stubbe, 2003, p. 12). Thus research in workplace discourse is often seen as a collaborative enterprise between the organization or group which is the subject of the study and the researcher(s), with a view to benefiting the subjects of the study (Sarangi and Roberts 1999). A number of studies in workplace and business discourse have as their stated aim to provide such research-based consultancy. Bargiela.Chiappini et al. (2007, pp. 110–131) provide an excellent overview of research-based consultancy work. They profile five examples from around

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the world, a number of which investigated the use of English (and other languages) in international contexts. For example, Charles and MarschanPiekkari’s (2002) survey-based study of middle management at the Finish multinational company Kone Elevators examined the impact of the company’s language policy. English had been adopted as the company language, and the study showed that employees who were proficient in English (or other important languages within the organization) had more power than those who did not. Another example of research-based consultancy in the area of English as an international language is Rogerson-Revell’s (2007 and 2008) study of meetings of a European actuarial organization discussed in Chapter 6, which was initiated by the organization.

7.3 Training and teaching 7.3.1 English for specific purposes A more focussed kind of application of research involves designing a training course for specific professional or occupational groups based on research (e.g. Shi et al. 2001, Boscher and Smalkoski 2002, Eggly 2002). For example, Shi et al.’s (2001) course for medical students was designed on the basis of videotapes of the students’ performance in ward teaching. Such an approach is at the heart of English for specific purposes (ESP), or languages for specific purposes (LSP), which is predicated on the notion that the specific professional and occupational needs of the learners should be the starting point for a training course (Hutchinson and Waters 1987, Dudley-Evans and St. John 1998). Courses may be designed for specific group of learners, as in the case of in-company training, or for learners in, or aspiring to join, a particular profession, occupation or academic discipline, as in the case of classes at a training college or university. English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is one very prominent branch of ESP which has seen widespread development at universities with the aim of improving the skills of students, in particular international students, in academic writing (Dudley-Evans 1995, Hyland 2000, Hewings 2001). In this area, there is a very strong link between research and practice, with research, particularly in the area of genre analysis, having informed the development of teaching material (e.g. Swales and Feak 1994, Johns 1997, Jordan 1997). Universitybased teaching has also had a more professional orientation, for example with courses aimed at business or engineering students. For example Miller (2001) reports on a course for engineering students at a Hong Kong university, and Connor and her colleagues developed a course for international business writing (Connor et al. 1997, Upton and Connor 2001) which involved students in writing résumés and letters of application (see Chapter 3, p. 64). Belcher (2004) provides a useful overview of trends in teaching ESP, which includes discussions of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) and English for Academic

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Purposes. An interesting summary of research in ESP can be found in Hewings’ (2002) ‘history of ESP’, seen through changes and developments in the journal English for Specific Purposes in the last two decades.

7.3.2 Insights from business and workplace discourse research Research in business and workplace discourse, whether or not it involves consultancy, provides relevant insights into the nature of language and communication at work which can be drawn on in devising courses, syllabi and materials. Research in this area overlaps in many ways with LSP/ESP, for example many of the methodologies, that is needs analysis, genre analysis and (more recently) corpus analysis, are shared by both disciplines. However, as Bargiela-Chiappini et al. (2007, p. 5) note, research in business discourse has been less motivated by immediate pedagogical concerns. Zhang (2007) finds that while ESP has focused on learners’ needs and how to best meet these, ‘it does not have much to offer concerning English in use in business’ (p. 402). He therefore concludes that research in business discourse, which has concentrated on studying actual business interactions, can usefully complement ESP, and he therefore calls for an integrated approach. Despite the more loose connection between research and teaching practice in business and workplace discourse research, many research projects do have a pedagogical question or concern as their starting point (e.g. Williams 1988, Dow 1999, Cheng and Warren 2006). A number of studies have pointed out discrepancies between teaching material and actual business practice, and/or conclude with recommendations for teaching the language or communication skills area researched. An early study comparing course books and business/workplace practice is Williams’ (1988) study of the language used in real meetings compared with how the language of meetings is taught in textbooks. The study focused specifically on the linguistic ‘functions’ (i.e. speech acts) taught for meetings in textbooks. The differences found were striking: ten of the seventeen functions taught did not occur in the recorded meetings, and of the 135 exponents mentioned in the textbooks, only seven were used in the meetings. Moreover, the functions used in the meetings were not necessarily realized explicitly, but were often inferred from presuppositions and context. Two more recent studies (discussed in Chapter 3.4.1) compared agreeing and disagreeing and ‘opine markers’ in the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE-bus) with the way these speech acts are dealt with in English language textbooks in Hong Kong (Cheng and Warren 2005 and 2006). Both studies found considerable discrepancies between the realization of these speech acts in actual business/workplace interaction, as attested by the corpus, and their treatment in textbooks. In line with Williams’ findings for the language of meetings, Cheng and Warren 2005 found that the strategies used

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for agreeing and disagreeing tended to be more indirect than those taught in textbooks (see also Pearson 1986 and Koester 2002). The findings from Cheng and Warren’s (2006) study of opine markers (e.g. ‘I think . . .’, ‘I like . . .’) also chimes with Williams’ pioneering study: only four of the ‘top ten’ forms of opine markers identified in the corpus occurred in the textbooks, and, of the ‘top 5’, only one was described in the textbooks. Cheng and Warren (2006, p. 55) conclude that ‘greater attention needs to be given to real world language use when exemplifying speech acts.’ A number of studies dealing with specific business communication skills, such as taking part in meetings and negotiating, include recommendations for teaching based on insights from real meetings and negotiations. For example, Charles and Charles (1999) conclude their study of bargaining in sales negotiations with suggestions for teaching ‘tactical summaries’ – subtle strategies used by negotiators to advance their own positions in the negotiation. Dow (1999) compared simulated negotiations between business specialists and non-specialists, and concludes with a list of recommendations for teaching based on his analysis of successful strategies used by the experts, but not by the non-experts. For example, he suggests that non-experts need help with moving in and out of business talk in openings and closings, and with politeness strategies, such as the use of hedges and downgraders. A study which makes some recommendations for teaching inter cultural skills is Rogerson-Revell’s (1999) analysis of different interactive styles and strategies used in meetings of an in international corporation in Hong Kong. She concludes that intercultural skills can be developed both through awareness-raising activities, involving discussion of cultural differences, and through skills development which focuses on the use of appropriate styles and strategies.

7.3.3 English as an international language Another gap between current research and teaching practice, which has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years, is the continued reliance in most teaching materials on native speaker models of English, despite the fact that English is now widely used as a lingua franca in business interactions. The long-held assumption that native speakers should be upheld as a model for language teaching has come under much criticism over the last decade (Rampton 1990, Cook 1999, Seidlhofer 1999). It is certainly the case that much international business is conducted in English between lingua franca speakers. However, the much quoted figure that 80 per cent of exchanges in English do not involve a native speaker (Beneke 1991) is an estimate, and not based on firm evidence. It also depends on which part of the business world one looks at. In a survey involving more than 1,000 German users of English, respondents said they communicated with native speakers about equally frequently as with non-native speakers (McMaster 2008). Therefore, at least according to this survey, the 80 per cent figure does not apply to Germany.

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Handford (forthcoming) argues that the distinction between native speakers and non-native speakers may not actually be a particularly useful one in deciding what to teach on a course in English for business or occupational purposes. He proposes instead the notion of ‘expert user’, and suggests that a corpus of business interactions can be seen as a collection of ‘expert performances’, irrespective of the native language of the participants. There is mounting evidence that a distinction between experts and non-experts is in fact much more salient than that between native and non-native speakers in terms of language performance in professional and business situations. Both Dow’s (1999) and Planken’s (2005) studies comparing expert and ‘aspiring’ negotiators (see Chapter 6, p. 134) suggest that experience of the relevant professional genres is a more significant factor influencing performance of these genres than whether speakers are using English as a lingua franca or a native language. Evidence for this is also emerging from corpus studies of business and workplace discourse (see Chapters 3 and 6), such as Cheng and Warren (2006) and Cheng (2007), who compared Hong Kong speakers of English with native speakers. Cheng (2007) found that Hong Kong speakers and native English speakers used vague language tokens with equal frequency, and she concludes that ‘discourse type, rather than speaker group, seems to be the major determinant of both the forms . . . and frequencies with which these forms occur’ (p. 178). Similarly, Cheng and Warren (2006) found that the top ten opine markers used by both groups of speakers were largely the same, although the rank order was different.

7.4 Using insights from research for teaching and teacher training1 The above discussion has highlighted a contradiction in the relationship between research and teaching practice in workplace and professional discourse. On the one hand, there is a strong link between research and teaching practice in this area to the extent that many studies aim to have some kind of pedagogical or practical application, and that research has had an impact on teaching in some areas; for example, research in genre analysis has influenced the teaching of ESP, and in particular EAP. As discussed above, research in workplace and business discourse provides important insights for teaching English for professional, occupational or business purposes. Many studies of workplace and business discourse include useful suggestions for how teaching can be improved in a range of workplace practices and skills, such as taking part in meetings and negotiations, or intercultural communication. Nevertheless, the gap between real-life workplace/business discourse and what is actually taught in classrooms and published in textbooks, first highlighted by Williams as far back as 1988, has persisted to the present day, as attested by more recent studies (e.g. Cheng and Warren 2005 and 2006, Chan 2009). A survey carried out by Nickerson (2005) on teaching materials for English for

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Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) found that few of the books surveyed made reference to research into the field, and Bargiela-Chiappini et al.’s (2007, pp. 132–147) more recent survey shows that the situation has not improved greatly since then. This gap seems to be less pronounced as concerns the teaching of written discourse. Genre analysis has had a key influence on the teaching of written discourse, particularly in the tertiary sector in the area of academic writing (see e.g. Swales and Feak 1994, Johns 2002,). The teaching of spoken workplace discourse has not benefited to the same extent from research input, perhaps due to the difficulty for language teachers of obtaining access to authentic spoken material, in contrast to authentic written material, which is more readily available. Hewings (2002) points to this relative neglect of research on speaking in ESP, in showing that the vast majority of studies in the history of the journal English for Specific Purposes have been concerned with the written language. The focus in the remainder of this chapter is therefore on the relevance of the research dealt with in this book for the teaching of the spoken language for business and occupational purposes. This relative neglect of authentic spoken material, also means that business English course books tend to have a bias towards language about business, and do not always teach the language actually needed for doing business (Nelson 2000b). In spoken business and workplace interactions, the focus is not so much on talking about business, but on collaboratively negotiating tasks, which means, for example that words referring to business topics are not actually that frequent in spoken business interactions (see Chapter 3.3.1). I would suggest that one of the most important contributions that research can make to teaching and teacher training is to develop an awareness in learners and teachers of the key characteristics of workplace discourse as described particularly in Chapters 1–3. These characteristics are summarized below: 1. Workplace interactions are different from everyday interactions in terms of their goal orientation, as well as other characteristics, such as asymmetry, which influence the language and discourse structure in a number of ways. 2. There are important differences between the vocabulary and phraseology used in workplace and business situations compared to social or intimate situations, as demonstrated by the different relative frequencies of certain lexical items and ‘chunks’ in business compared to non-business corpora. 3. Because of its goal orientation, workplace discourse is structured, and participants engage in a range of genres to accomplish workplace tasks. 4. Problem-solving is a key activity in the workplace, and a large proportion of workplace discourse involves talking about problems, discussing solutions and making evaluations. 5. People working together pay attention to relational as well as transactional concerns, which results in the occurrence of various kinds of relational talk and the use of interpersonal devices, such as hedges, vague language and idioms.

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While not wanting to deny the usefulness of teaching more specific features of workplace discourse, such as the mastery of particular genres, a focus on developing an awareness of these more general features of workplace discourse is in keeping with a holistic, socially situated approach to learning which also pays attention to interpersonal and social aspects of communication, and not only to functional/transactional ones (Lave and Wenger 1991, Adam and Artemeva 2002). It thus avoids the ‘cookie cutter’ approach to teaching (Freedman and Adam, 2000, cited in Belcher 2004, p. 169), a criticism which some genre analysts in the social constructionist (‘New Rhetoric’) school have levelled at genre teaching that takes an overly formulaic, rule-based approach (see Belcher 2004). Such awareness-raising is also consistent with a critical approach to teaching (Pennycook 1997), as learners and teachers are encouraged to develop a broader understanding of the nature of workplace discourse and the factors that shape the language. The next section makes some suggestions for dealing with each of these aspects of workplace discourse. Both learners and teachers can benefit from awareness-raising activities of this nature (though they may need to be slightly different for each target group), but for the sake of simplicity, the following discussion refers to learners only as addressees.

7.4.1 How is workplace discourse different from everyday language? As we saw in Chapter 3, recent corpus research on business corpora has given us insights into the most frequently occurring words, collocations and pragmatically specialized ‘chunks’ (i.e. fixed phrases), and these findings can be drawn on in devising teaching activities. As a starting point, even something as basic as a list of frequent or key words derived from research on business corpora is useful for raising awareness of the special characteristics of workplace discourse (point 2 of the list above). For example, learners could be given a list of words and asked to decide which ones they think are typical for workplace conversations and everyday conversations (see Activity 1 in the Appendix). This could lead to a discussion of what the key differences are between workplace language and everyday language (e.g. formality, topic etc.). A similar activity could be devised for frequent collocations or chunks found in business compared with everyday corpora (see Chapter 3.3.3). While vocabulary exercises like this are useful, perhaps the greatest contribution research has to make to materials development is in discovering the discourse characteristics of business and workplace language. Teaching materials may frequently focus too much on language at the lexical and grammatical level, and not enough on discourse, that is the structure and characteristics of longer texts and spoken exchanges. In a previous publication (Koester 2002), I argue for a discourse approach to teaching, and suggest that there are two ways in which naturally occurring conversations can be drawn on to develop materials for teaching.

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On the one hand, recordings or transcripts of actual encounters can be used as part of the material, or alternatively, insights gained from the analysis of naturally occurring encounters can inform the development of pedagogical tasks. A discourse-based activity, which aims to raise awareness of the special characteristics of workplace discourse (point 1 of the above list) and uses transcripts of actual encounters is described below. Learners are shown two brief extracts from a casual conversation and workplace conversation respectively; as illustrated in examples 7.1 and 7.2 below: Example 7.1: Conversation Extract (Talking about the running of the bulls in Pamplona): (1) Gina That’s not your thing. No, seems it’s kind of wild. Hehehe (2) Kate Hehehe (3) Ann Dangerous. Hehe (4) Gina Dangerous exactly. Hehehe (5) Kate ⎣Well– (6) Gina I had a feeling(7) Kate ⎣Some of those guy get killed every year. (© Cambridge University Press) Example 7.2: Meeting Extract (1) Amy (2) Chris (3) Amy

So let’s also schedule a meeting for that as well. And we should do that this week. This week! Uh, Okay. Let’s schedule the DP meeting right now.

Learners could then be given questions or prompts for discussion which direct them to reflect on the specific characteristics of workplace (or institutional) discourse as put forward by Drew and Heritage (1992): (1) goal orientation, (2) special and particular constraints and (3) special inferential frameworks (see Chapter 1), for example: Example 7.3 Look at the two extracts and think about how the following things are different: z the topic of the conversation z the goals of the speakers z how and when speakers take turns z who ‘controls’ the conversation z the language

The activity would aim to highlight the following differences between the two extracts, and by extension between everyday conversation and

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workplace talk in general: z The meeting extract in example 7.2 is clearly focused on a workplace task

and a transactional goal (to arrange a meeting), whereas in the conversation extract in example 7.1, there is no such focus, but rather the speakers’ mutual interest in the topic which is the driving force. z The meeting extract has a more orderly structure, with one person speaking at a time, whereas the conversation extract seems “messy” with laughter, overlaps and interruptions. z Example 7.2 shows that workplace talk is often asymmetrical, with one speaker (here Amy) having more control, whereas the everyday conversation (example 7.1) shows participants playing a more equal role, with speakers contributing freely. z The meeting extract contains some words which have a high frequency in a business context (e.g. ‘meeting’, ‘schedule’).2

7.4.2 Developing competence in workplace discourse: discourse structure, problem-solving and evaluation Discourse structure Recordings or transcripts of actual business encounters can also be used for activities aimed at raising learners’ awareness of other characteristics of business discourse, including discourse structure and the role of problem-solving and evaluation (points 3 and 4 of the above list). Depending on the level of the learners, naturally occurring recordings or transcripts can pose quite a challenge, but as the examples above show, the excerpts need not be very long, and can be carefully selected for ease of comprehension. Transcripts could also be simplified and adapted, or even rerecorded with actors to ensure a good recording quality (see Carter and McCarthy 1997). Altering transcripts in this way of course means they are no longer entirely ‘authentic’, but such adapted transcripts will nevertheless be much more realistic and representative of real life discourse than entirely scripted dialogues. A direct result of the goal orientation of task-oriented workplace interactions is that they tend to be more structured than everyday conversations or off-task talk. This is particularly visible in the opening and closing phases of an encounter, and therefore it can be useful to focus learners’ attention on these particular phases of workplace encounters. People often start off business interactions by stating what it is they want to talk about (see Koester 2006, pp. 27–28), for example: Example 7.4 z I have a quick question for you. z Uh . . . just wanted to tell you about my . . . conversation with Tony. z I got a suggestion . . . by the way with this.

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Learners could be shown such examples of advance topic summaries produced by speakers at the beginning of a workplace encounter, and asked to guess what the conversation will be about. Speakers also often summarize what has been discussed or agreed at the end of the encounter, particularly in the case of a meeting, for example: Example 7.5 Amy

So those are my to do’s for tomorrow, it’ll be the left side, and . . . miscellaneous credits.

[2] Chris Works for me. ↓ Thanks. Work in conversation analysis (CA) on the structure of opening and closing sequences can usefully be applied to raising learners’ awareness of the characteristics of these phases of encounters (see Koester 2009). Furthermore, as relational talk, or phatic communion, often occurs at the ‘edges’ of workplace encounters (see Chapter 5), focusing on the opening and closing phases of encounters also provides an opportunity to sensitize learners to the importance of relationship building in the workplace. Activity 2 in Appendix II. shows a classroom activity which uses an entire (simplified) naturally occurring workplace encounter from a university office. This is designed to raise learners’ awareness of how transactional workplace conversations are structured as well as to show how relational ‘work’ is woven into transactional talk, particularly in the opening and closing phases. Activity 3 (Appendix II) is a follow-up activity which guides learners in creating their own interactive task-orientated dialogue exhibiting a number of characteristics of workplace encounters: initial phatic communion, conversation-initial and final topic summaries and positive evaluation. This activity aims to develop learners’ ability not only to master the structural characteristics of business talk resulting from its goal orientation, but also the relational dimension (point 5 in the list above). After having introduced learners to the general structural characteristics of workplace discourse, the characteristics of specific genres can be dealt with, depending on the particular needs of the group. Here research in genre analysis (see Chapter 2) can be drawn on to teach the structures and other features of particular genres, such as negotiations and meetings.

Problem-solving and evaluation As discussed throughout this book, a great deal of spoken business communication involves problem-solving of some kind (see Chapters 2 and 3). In the ABOT Corpus, over a quarter of all conversations involved decision-making aimed at solving a work-related issue; thus the most frequently occurring genre was decision-making (Koester 2006). As discussed in Chapter 3, decision-making

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conversations are often structured according to a problem-solution pattern (Hoey 1983, 1994). Another characteristic of decision-making conversations is that modal verbs, especially verbs expressing obligation and necessity (‘have to’, ‘need to’, ‘should’) and idioms are highly frequent, and are used to express judgements and evaluations of the problems and courses of action discussed. Extracts from naturally occurring dialogues can again be used to introduce learners to these features of decision-making encounters in workplace discourse. For example, an extract from a meeting which follows a problem-solution pattern (e.g. example 3.10 in Chapter 3) could be used together with reflection and discussion questions which guide learners in discovering the elements of the pattern. However, a fairly long extract may be needed to show a complete problem-solution pattern, and moreover, the stages are not always clearly separate in spoken discourse.3 Therefore it may be more fruitful to introduce learners to general features of problem-solving discourse, including words and expressions to talk about problems and solutions, modal verbs and other evaluative devices. Activity 4 in Appendix II uses an extract (slightly adapted from the original) from a meeting between two editors, Beth and Carol, discussed in Chapter 3 (example 3.8). The questions in the first activity aim to raise learners awareness of these features of problem-solving discourse; and in the second activity, learners become more actively engaged by selecting modal verbs to complete the gaps in the transcript of the next part of the meeting. This extract could also be used to introduce learners to the idiom ‘sit down and think/talk about’ (used twice in this meeting) which is a frequently-used lexical signal for problem-solving. Idioms tend to be taught as quaint, colourful expressions, whereas they are actually used to express important evaluative and interpersonal meanings (McCarthy 1998, pp. 129–149, Koester 2000). Material which draws on research findings might also involve creating simulated, but realistic dialogues or exchanges, which are based on real examples. This is one way of addressing the problem of how to exemplify discourse patterns, such as problem-solution patterns, which may be spread over a lot of ‘text’ in real interactions.

7.4.3 Developing interpersonal skills The important role played by various forms of relational talk has been emphasized throughout this book. This is not reflected adequately in most teaching material, where ‘small talk’ or ‘socializing’ tends to be dealt with separately from work-related language and skills. A recent survey of German users of English (McMaster 2008) showed that conducting small talk is often perceived by learners as being difficult, which is a further argument for giving it a more prominent place on a course syllabus. As we saw in Chapter 5, relational talk is often woven into task-oriented talk, in the form of ‘relational sequences’ – brief comments or quips that are relevant to the task in some way, but not essential,

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in addition to occurring as ‘phatic communion’ at the beginning and end of an encounter. Even in talk that is fully focused on getting a job done, people interacting at work show their attention to relational concerns through the use of interpersonal language, such as hedges, vague language or modal verbs and idioms. In fact, these interpersonal devices were all more frequent in transactional talk than in small talk in the ABOT Corpus. Handford’s (2007 and forthcoming) corpus research on CANBEC shows that many of the most frequent chunks or ‘clusters’ have interpersonal functions, and he finds that ‘hedging and indirect language makes up a considerable amount of CANBEC’ (forthcoming). As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, the prevalence of interpersonal language reflects the increased use of politeness and solidarity strategies in workplace discourse, which result from the institutional and discursive asymmetries linked to particular workplace practices or genres. Given this weight of evidence demonstrating the importance of interpersonal language in the workplace, developing interpersonal skills should clearly be given a prominent place on a syllabus for teaching English for occupational and business purposes. The question, then, is what exactly should this ‘interpersonal syllabus’ contain? Corpus evidence is now available of what some of the most frequent interpersonal devices in workplace interactions are, and Handford’s pioneering work on frequent chunks in CANBEC provides a useful basis for compiling such a syllabus. Taking into account the range of interpersonal devices found in workplace interactions, I would suggest that there are four broad areas of interpersonal meaning which are relevant for workplace discourse: 1. 2. 3. 4.

expressing stance hedging and politeness referring to shared knowledge showing solidarity

The most frequent linguistic devices used to express these meanings are listed below together with illustrative examples from the ABOT Corpus (key language is underlined): 1. Expressing stance: evaluating, making judgements, giving opinions: language used: modal verbs,4 conditionals, idioms, evaluative adjectives z Be nice if there was some place where you could print it out and the date

would show up every time. z Win some you lose some. We coulda made seven hundred quid out of it,

couldn’t we. z I think it looks better without, but I’d rather it was on. z This is the one where the least little error will come back to haunt you.

In view of the evaluative nature of much workplace discourse, expressing stance is a key interpersonal skill and can be used for both transactional and

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relational purposes. Stance markers in the first example include an evaluative adjective (nice), a conditional structure (if there was), modals (would and could), which are used to evaluate an aspect of a task the speakers are engaged in. This example shows that conditionals are often used not just to hypothesize or talk about possibilities (which is how they are often taught), but also to evaluate a situation and express opinions and preferences. These items perform an interpersonal function as they express the speaker’s subjective views and opinions, rather than ideational (informational) content (Halliday 1978). 2. Hedging and expressing politeness language used: modal verbs and adverbs, vague language, past tense z Uh just wanted to come and chat to you a little bit about the company. z I mean :hh actually, I think if you just wanna send them to a friend or

something, you could order them through the gratis order form. z An’ it’s an’ it’s kind of a– you know you don’t have to like write down the

minute that you– got the request and the minute that you got– it done, an’ you just say well that took me about four hours to deliver it. z I mean if you could sort of bring me up da:te. The first example is from a customer-supplier meeting (see Chapter 2, example 2.6), and shows the supplier moving to the business phase of the meeting after the initial small talk. Instead of saying ‘let’s get down to business’ (a phrase often found in course book dialogues), he performs this move in a very indirect manner, using two adverbial hedges (just + a little bit), past tense (wanted) and an informal lexical item (chat). This transitional move seems to require a high degree of interpersonal skill, as ‘getting down to business’ is a potentially face-threatening act: the supplier, who is trying to get more business, could be perceived as imposing himself on the customer. By using these politeness strategies, the supplier tries to ensure a smooth transition that will not threaten the solidarity that has just been established through the initial phatic phase. All the other examples involves directives or requests, which often require the use of politeness strategies, as discussed in Chapter 4. 3. Showing and building shared knowledge: language used: Interactive expressions (you know, of course), vague language (stuff, sort of, things like that) z Because she’s missing the servers and things like that z Especially this stuff. This– you know . . . this job [. . .] z There’s a fair amount of sort of . . . standard stuff at Belvedere, we can

take it from there. z So we take all the funny sizes . . . an’ all the– you know the– odd: . . . bits

an’ pieces an’ things

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Referring to shared knowledge is one way in which speakers show that they have a relationship with one another. The vague language and interactive expressions used in these examples seem to be implying to the addressee ‘you and I both know what we are talking about’, and thus signals a certain degree of familiarity and informality between the speakers. Using vague language also allows speakers to refer to shared information efficiently, and therefore it occurs more frequently in unidirectional genres, such as procedural discourse and briefing, where the focus is on facts and information (see Koester 2007a) 4. Showing empathy and solidarity: expressing agreement, positive evaluation language used: evaluative adjectives and idioms, emotive verbs (like, love), positive feedback signals (Great!), colloquialisms and idioms, humour (i) You know what Debbie, that’s a very good idea. (ii) Angus Oh you know I’ve got things like buff ninety-five gram, and um . . . uh velum a hundred an’ four gram, an’ green, an’ grey, and . . . Paul Yeah that sort o’ thing, yeah. Angus Right! Well you’re my man. (iii) Amy So even if I see you at the marketing task force, and don’t have my things you won’t . . . have to embarrass me. Chris ⎣Forgive you anyway yes. The above examples show the use of a range of devices that express solidarity and empathy: positive evaluation and agreement (example i), the use of a colloquial expressions and idioms (example ii) and the use of humour (example iii). Further solidarity strategies in the first example are the use of an interactive expression (‘you know what’) and the addressee’s name. While politeness strategies have received some attention in teaching material, the same is not true of solidarity strategies, which have largely been neglected. Identifying the key linguistic devices used in each of these four areas in this way is a first step to syllabus and materials design. On the one hand, teaching such interpersonal strategies may seem challenging, as they involve indirect and subtle uses of language which could be complex for learners to master. On the other hand, they are frequently expressed through conventionalized phrases and expressions, such as ‘I just wanted to’ which can be easily learnt. Many of the linguistic devices used in the above examples are among the most frequent chunks identified by Handford in CANBEC (2007 and forthcoming), for example: ‘you know’, ‘I think’, ‘I mean’, ‘sort of’, ‘if you’, ‘and things like that’.

7.4.4 Teaching international English One possible objection to teaching some of the linguistic devices used in the above examples might be that they are produced by native speakers of English,

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and are therefore not appropriate for learners who will be working in international contexts. As we saw in Chapter 6, there is some evidence that vague language and idioms may be used less in international contexts where not all participants are native speakers (Rogerson-Revell 2008); and Seidlhofer (2001 and 2004) claims that ‘unilateral idiomaticity’ on the part of native speakers can cause communication problems. However, as discussed earlier in this chapter (and in Chapter 6), a number of recent studies have shown that interpersonal devices, including vague language and idioms are used in lingua franca contexts (e.g. Cheng 2007, Pitzl 2009). The actual tokens or phrases used by lingua franca speakers may be different from those used by native speakers (Kordon 2006), but nevertheless Handford (forthcoming) found that many of the most frequent chunks used in international meetings and those with only native speakers participants were the same in CANBEC. There is certainly a case for teaching those idioms and expressions which, in the words of Prodromou (2003, p. 47), ‘travel lightly from culture to culture’, that is are most widely used, and not restricted to particular varieties of English. This does not mean, however, that learners should not be made aware of idioms they may not use. Corpus data need not be treated as a source of ‘models’ of English usage, but can be approached critically, with learners being encouraged to explore differences in usage between native speaker and lingua franca varieties.5 Moreover, the increasing availability of lingua franca corpora (e.g. VOICE and ELFA) and of research into lingua franca interactions means that these can be drawn on as well in deciding what to include in a course syllabus. Based on research on (Business) English as a lingua franca to date (see Chapter 6), it seems that learners who will be using English in international situations would benefit from awareness-raising and training in strategic communication skills, such as accommodation strategies (Haegemann 2002, Cogo 2009), paraphrasing and repetition (Kaur 2009) and providing ‘upshots’ and ‘formulations’ (i.e. summaries) of the interlocutor’s utterances (Firth 1996).

7.5 Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to show the contribution that research in workplace discourse can make to teaching, and to put forward some concrete suggestions for teaching and materials development based on research insights. I have outlined what I consider to be some of the most important elements to be included in teaching spoken workplace discourse, which has also provided the opportunity to review some of the main features of workplace discourse discussed in this book. There are, of course, other areas to include in a teaching syllabus which have not been dealt with here, such as specific workplace genres, and the skills and sub-skills needed in their performance. Written, as well as spoken communication needs to be given attention, as do the various forms of computer-mediated interaction and intercultural communication.

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I have focused here on activities which aim at raising learners’ (and teachers’) awareness of the distinguishing features of workplace discourse as revealed by corpus research, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. In particular, I have been concerned with showing how interpersonal skills, which have largely been neglected in teaching materials, can systematically be included in a syllabus of English for occupational, professional and business purposes. I hope that the suggestions and illustrative examples in this chapter, and the research discussed in this book, will provide inspiration for teachers, trainers, educators or materials and course developers who strive to base their professional practice on realistic, research-informed models of workplace discourse.

Appendix I: Adhesive Labels

Ben: Branch Manager Sam: Sales Rep (1) Sam [shouts to Ben in adjoining office] ↑Ben. where could I get a hundred an’ seventeen label layout, on a sheet. A4. [1½ minutes of the conversation not recorded.] (2) Sam See it’s got nineteen done. ⎣Ben: Tha- (yeah)⎦ nineteen millimetres done, but it’s only a forty-sheet layout, a– . . . /as certain./ (3) Ben And how many did he say? Does he want /??/? (4) Sam ⎣a hundred an’ seventeen. [3] Sam He was saying something about kiss-cutting. (Um) [2] (So) (5) Ben (Ah ???) [2: Ben is probably looking something on in price list] (6) Sam ‘Cause if we can get hold of ‘em I mean hehe said he can get ‘em from Merchant’s Paper . . . So I don’t- know if they actually . . . stock them themselves or they’re getting hold of ‘em somehow, but theyhe said he doesn’t like them, so he doesn’t wanna go through them, [2] (7) Ben (Alright) What does happen, if . . . ↑If you look at . . . uhm . . . [4] Somebody comes on to you an’ says . . . we want some twenty millimetre . . . circular labels. right? (8) Sam Mm [2.5] (9) Ben An’ he might have already done the job before, . . . So what they do:, is they- if they’ve done the job before:, they . . . print onto theseonto these labels, ⎣Sam: Yeah⎦ wi- with a printing plate yeah? (10) Sam Yeah, (11) Ben So on the printing plate, . . . [4 sec: draws a diagram] [whistles] (Let’s say . . .) Let’s say that’s a printing plate. (12) Sam Yeah, (13) Ben So . . . what they do, is /they then say/ right okay, right, . . . [3: Ben still drawing] Here’s our- here’s our sheet, of labels ⎣Sam: Yeah,⎦ an’– they’re twenty millimetre circular labels. [8: Ben drawing and making some noises] You got the- got the drift. ↑ There– That’s- that’s your sheet o’ labels right, ↓ where the circular /holes/ are,

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(14) Sam ⎣Mm [2] (15) Ben /So . . . / we say ↑ hm! Done the job before, you wanna print ‘em again, . . . We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . . ↓ Alright? (16) Sam (Yeah) (17) Ben So here’s his printing plate, an’ on his printing plate, he’s gotlet’s say they’re- let’s say they’re um: labels for peanuts. (18) Sam Yeah, (19) Ben [drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks] so on each one o’ those, . . . they’re just white labels, and in the middle o’ that you might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a couple o’ legs and a couple o’ arms ↓ an’ /?/ an’ put peanuts under it right? Alright? (20) Sam ⎣Yeah . . . [chuckles] (21) Ben So all you’ve got on here, . . . is loads o’ little peanuts, with arms an’legs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going round an’ round a cylinder, . . . that’s /flat/ wrapped round a cylinder like that right, . . . an’ here comes all the labels yeah?. . . So here comes these labels, . . . an’ all those little . . . peanuts, land, right in the middle of all those . . . labels, right? (22) Sam Yeah, (23) Ben Bonzai! Alright so we come along, an’ we go ↑yeah! . . . We do labels, with twenty- milli- twenty millimetre labels, An’ here’s ours, . . . [6 sec: drawing] (Alright there’s all that) Alright. We ain’t got them anymore, so here’s his blanket, /this is/ his printing plate, ⎣Sam: Yeah⎦ an’ here comes our labels. [whistles and draws] Oh fuck! Where are all those little peanuts gonna go, they’re gonna go nowhere near his fucking labels, (24) Sam Mhm, (25) Ben So, . . . the thing is, he’s got two options. He can either use, exactly the same . . . labels . . . again, which means to say that he hasn’t got to change that plate, . . . ↓ which means all he does is go an’ get the old plate out that he used before, ⎣Sam: Mm⎦ an’ stick- stick . . . / the plate o’ labels on/. ⎣Sam: Mm⎦ ↑Or, . . . he says well I don’t wanna use those people anymore, . . . plates a bit knackered anyway. So I have to:, get another plate made up, that m- matches that format that /lay down of/ labels. (26) Sam Right . . . Okay, (27) Ben Uh:m . . . Now all these labels have already been pre-cut out, haven’t they. [Encounter continues for approximately 5 more minutes]

Appendix II: Sample Activities

Activity 1: Frequent business words1 Below are twenty words: ten are typical in business, and ten are unusual in business compared to everyday English. Which ones do you think are typical in business, and which ones are more usual in everyday English? Why? We, I, business, oh, problem, house, need, shit, issue, cool, if, terrible, customer, hate, sales, was, contract, lovely, hmm, no.

Answer key Business keywords: We, business, problem, need, issue, if, customer, sales, contract, hmm, Negative business keywords (more usual in everyday English): I, oh, house, shit, if, customer, sales, contract, no

Activity 2: Beginning and ending a conversation2 Getting information can sometimes be more complicated than simply asking a question. It is also important to know how to begin and end a conversation. Look at the following real conversation which took place in a university office in North America. Karen, a student, goes into the office to ask Don, who works there, a question about her ID (her student identity card). Karen and Don know each other. What happens in the conversation before Karen asks the question she wants answered? How do the speakers end the conversation? (1) Karen Hello. (2) Don Hiya (3) Karen How are you?

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(4) Don I’m all right. (5) Karen Good. I have a quick question for you. I hope it’s a quick question. Tell me why on my ID this year it says it expires on June thirtieth as opposed to September thirtieth. (6) Don It always said June thirtieth as far as I know. (7) Karen The last . . . I just checked the last two I had; the last two years, it said September thirtieth. (8) Don Maybe- are you scheduled to graduate this June? (9) [Karen shakes head] (10) Don I don’t know. Talk to Helga. (11) Karen Okay, thank you. (12) Don You can go right in. (13) Karen Okay. [Karen goes into back office to talk to Helga and comes back out about 1 minute later] (14) Karen Thank you, Don (15) Don So it was a quick question and answer, huh? (16) Karen Quick question, quick answer. (17) Don All right! (18) Karen Thanks. (19) Don Yeah.

Activity 3: Planning a conversation where you need to get something done Make an arrangement, ask for information, ask for a favour Before you begin, plan your conversation: 1. Greet your partner and ask how they are 2. Tell your partner what you want to talk to them about. You could begin with: I just wanted to . . . I’d like to . . . 3. Now ask your questions, make the arrangements, etc. 4. Now show your partner you have finished, for example you can say: I think that’s everything. I think that’s my last question. I just wanted to check that. 5. End on a positive note, for example: That’s great!

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Thanks for all your help. That’s very helpful. I’m glad I asked you about that. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.

Activity 4: Problem solving The two extracts below are from a meeting in a publishing company between a senior editor (Carol) and her assistant editor (Beth), where they talk about how they can improve a procedure. 1. Look at the first extract from the conversation and answer the questions: (a) What words or expressions show that there is a problem? (b) What words or expressions show that the speakers are trying to find a solution? (c) What verbs do the speakers use to show they think certain actions are necessary? (1) Beth (2) Carol (3) Beth (4) Carol (5) Beth (6) Carol (7) Beth (8) Carol Beth (9) Beth

I’ll update this. I don’t need to keep this as it is now ⎣You need to update this too. Right. However, . . . it’s- it’s complex. ⎣You know I’m wondering whether we should have new columns We have to- we have to sit down and think about how we can → ⎣Yeah. I’d like to sit down and . . . turn it into a something that could be updated every– ⎣Mm. ⎣Yeah. ‘Cause I could tell that before you left for the UK, an’ . . . when we kept- I kept doing it, and then we kept saying no that’s not right. I was getting very confused.

2. Now look at how the meeting continues, and complete the gaps with following modals: have to, need to, should, could (1) Carol Yeah. I mean you (a)________ have this cut off date, and say anything before is on this side. (2) Beth I know. I know. and then it’s confusing. (3) Carol ⎣and but when it’s the running thing then the cut off date doesn’t work anymore. So, anyway. (4) Beth Right. We’ll (b) ________ go through it.

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⎣I just wanted to say that . . . uh- um . . . you (c) _______ keep a record of all the reprints, (6) Beth Right, (7) Carol and we (d)________ be able to use this in some way, But it may (e)_______ be modified, So if you (f )______ take a look at it and see. (8) Beth ⎣Yeah. (9) Carol Think about it and we’ll sit down and talk about it. (10) Beth ⎣Yeah. I think it’sBeth Okay. (From the Cambridge International Corpus, © Cambridge University Press) (5) [Carol

Answer key 1. (a) Words and expression for problems: complex, no that’s not right, very confused (b) Words and expression for solutions: I’m wondering whether we should . . . I’d like to sit down and . . . (c) speakers use modal verbs: need to, should, have to 2. (a) have to, (b) have to, (c) should (d) should (e) need to (f) could (Note: The answers show the original version of the text, but alternatives are possible for some gaps.)

Notes

Notes on Data and Transcription 1

The notion of ‘key’ is based on Brazil (1985)

Chapter 1 1

See Drew and Heritage (1992, pp. 21–65) and Koester (2006, pp. 3–6) for a more detailed discussion of these features.

Chapter 2 1

2

3

4

5

Müller (2006b, p. 147), however, distinguishes the reason for the interaction (‘Anlass’) from goals (‘Ziele’), which are seen as interactively constituted in the encounter. The Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC) is 1-millionword corpus of spoken workplace interactions consisting mainly of meetings. See also King and Sereno (1984) on the effect of relationship history on communication, Norrick (1993) on customary joking relationships and Koester (2004b and 2006) on relational talk in workplace encounters. See also Jefferson and Lee (1992) on the tension between the goals of ‘troublestelling’ and those of a service encounter. By ‘tools’, Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) mean more than just the material objects used in the course of enacting a genre, but also the specialist knowledge that genre users draw on, for example knowing how to use a microscope or knowledge of statistics.

Chapter 3 1

In a ‘corpus-driven’ approach, the theories developed derive from the corpus data, which means ‘recurrent patterns and frequency distributions are expected to form the basic evidence for linguistic categories’ (Tognini-Bonelli 2001, p. 84). This can be contrasted to a ‘corpus-based’ approach, where a corpus is drawn on to ‘test or exemplify theories’ which were not themselves derived from the corpus (ibid., p. 65)

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Notes

However, some lexical items, such as ‘crane’, ‘lifts’ and ‘vehicle’, which have a high frequency within the sectors of industry represented in the corpus, also come out as ‘key’. As the sub-corpus is only about a quarter of the size of CANBEC (262,000 as opposed to 1 million), frequencies were normalized to a million words in order to allow comparison. Transcription codes used in HKCSE: * marks the beginning of an overlapping utterance in the first speaker’s turn ** marks the beginning of an overlapping utterance in the second speaker’s turn (.) indicates a short pause

5 6

See Chapter 4 for a fuller discussion of politeness. According to Brown and Levinson (1978/87), certain discourse acts threaten the ‘face’ of the addressee, and are therefore often mitigated by speakers through the use of politeness strategies. For a fuller discussion, see Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 1

2

3

‘must’ does occur in other genres, but is very infrequent across the corpus as a whole. Findings from other corpora confirm that ‘must’ is very infrequent in business and workplace talk. It is negatively key in CANBEC, which means it is significantly less frequent than in social and intimate talk (Handford 2007). Original turn numbers are retained in these extracts, examples 4.9–4.10, to reflect where in the interaction the extract occurs. Handford’s study also found a convergence between genre and speaker relationship: manager-subordinate meetings in CANBEC tend to have a procedural focus, while peer meetings tend to involve more decision-making. While this tendency can also be observed in the ABOT Corpus, I would nevertheless argue that genre is a separate factor (from speaker relationship) that influences linguistic choices. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that different performances of the same genre display similar linguistic characteristics, regardless of speaker relationship.

Chapter 5 1

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3

See also King and Sereno (1984) on the effect of relationship history on communication, Norrick (1993) on customary joking relationships and Koester (2004b and 2006) on relational talk in workplace encounters. For most of the recordings made for the ABOT Corpus, the researcher, rather than the participants controlled the tape recorder, therefore any phatic communion that occurred was usually recorded. Its absence cannot usually be explained by participants simply not switching on the recording equipment because they did not think it was important. See Koester (2006) (chapter 7) for a further discussion of identity negotiation in manager-subordinate encounters.

Notes 4 5

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See Norrick (1993, pp. 43–81) on customary joking relationships between colleagues. But note that definitions of humour in the literature abound and do not always converge, for example humour may be defined more from the speaker’s or from the other participants’ point of view (see Holmes 2000b for an overview). This does not necessarily mean that women used humour more than men did, as the corpus was not balanced for gender (there were slightly more women than men), or for the amount of talk produced by each. See also Holmes et al. (2001) for a comparison of humour used by men and women.

Chapter 6 1

2

3

The terms ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ have recently come under attack, as they tend to imply a mindset whereby the ‘non-native speaker’ is viewed as deficient compared with an idealized ‘native speaker’, this negative view being reinforced by the negative particle ‘non’ (Firth and Wagner 1997, Seidlhofer 2001). While fully acknowledging this, I nevertheless occasionally use these terms in this chapter where making such a distinction is relevant to the discussion. The notion of ‘world Englishes’, developed by Kachru (see e.g. Kachru 1985, Kachru and Nelson 1996), recognizes the existence of different varieties of English conceptualized according to three concentric circles: the ‘Inner Circle’, consisting of the countries where English is the first or dominant language (e.g. Britain, the United States of Ameria), the ‘Outer Circle’ (often former British colonies), where English has some kind of official function (e.g. India, Kenya) and the ‘Expanding Circle’, in which English is typically used in lingua franca settings for specific purposes. Special transcription conventions used by Pitzl (2005): (.) brief pause up to a half second () uncertain transcription UPPER CASE prominent word or syllable Numbered tags, e.g. , mark overlaps between speakers

4

5

Of course, creative play with idioms is part and parcel of native speaker speech as well, but such creativity assumes knowledge of the standard form. However, when non-native speakers are creative with idioms, this may not be accepted by native speakers, but viewed as faulty usage (Prodromou 2003). ELF interactions, where no native speakers are present, provide more scope for idiomatic creativity, as native speaker norms do not necessarily apply. Special transcription conventions used by Rogerson-Revell (2008): ‘ bold / ?? . ..

prominent syllable focus or tonic syllable tone unit final rise uncertain transcription brief pause other pauses: two to five ellipsis marks indicate approximate length of pause

Notes

170 6

Special transcription conventions used by Firth (1996): underlining UPPER CASE [] (h)

7

emphatic stress word enunciated louder than surrounding speech Overlapping utterances audible aspirations within words

Special transcription conventions used by Roberts and Campbell (2006): (.) (xxx) []

untimed brief pause uncertain transcription overlapping utterances

Chapter 7 1

2

3

4

5

Many of the ideas and activities presented in this section were originally presented at the TESOL Symposium ‘Teaching English for Specific Purposes: Meeting our Learners’ Needs’, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, 12 July 2007, and published in Koester (2007b). The activities or questions might need to be adapted, depending on whether they are used with teachers or learners, and depending on the level of the learners. See, for example, Koester (2004a), pp. 2–7, which shows a similar (but more demanding) activity aimed at English Language Studies students. See also Koester (2004a, pp. 62–66), which shows an activity using a longer text that follows a complete problem solution pattern. The examples here show modal uses of ‘think’ and ‘know’. See Halliday (1985/1994, p. 354) for a discussion of how to distinguish between lexical and modal uses of theses verbs. See Handford forthcoming (chapter 9) for an example of a corpus-based activity which takes a critical approach.

Appendix II 1 2

I am grateful to Mike Handford for this activity. This activity was first published in Koester, A. (2009), ‘Conversation Analysis in the language classroom’, in S. Hunston and D. Oakey (eds), Introducing Applied Linguistics: Key Concepts and Skills. London: Routledge, p. 45.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote words that appear in figures and/or tables.

ABOT Corpus 13, 14, 24–5, 28, 70 see also Corpus of American and British Office Talk humour in 111, 113 functions of 112, 113 by gender 116 situational 113 teasing and self-deprecation 113 transactional talk 117 interpersonal markers in the ABOT corpus 62 accommodation strategies 124 accommodation theory 127 downward accommodation 128 Adolphs, S. 61 apprenticeship 90, 91 Askehave, I. 24 Aston, G. 134, 138 asymmetry 15, 32, 68, 82, 84, 142, 150 Bakhtin, M. M. 22 Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 5, 10, 150 BAWE 46 see also British Academic Written English Corpus Bazerman, C. 18 BEC 46, 67 see also Business English Corpus Belcher, D. 146 BELF 123 see also Business English as Lingua Franca Berkenkotter, C. 18, 37 Berns, M. 125 Bhatia’s four-space model 11 institutional role 12 Biber, D. 53 Bilbow, G. T. 71, 126 BNC 45 see also British National Corpus Boxer, D. 112, 115 British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE) 46 see also BAWE

British National Corpus (BNC) 45 see also BNC Business Discourse 10 business discourse 5–7, 13, 45, 46–8, 50–1, 54, 64, 145, 147, 149, 153 Business English Corpus (BEC) 46, 67 see also BEC keywords in 50 CA 9, 10, 45, 123 see also Conversation Analysis Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC) 6, 47, 167 see also CANBEC keywords in 49 Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus Discourse in English (CANCODE) 20 see also CANCODE Cameron, D. 16 Campbell, S. 145 CANBEC 6, 47, 167 see also Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus CANCODE 20 see also Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus Discourse in English Candlin, C. 6 CDA 10, 11 see also Critical Discourse Analysis Charles, M. 13, 146, 148 Cheepen, C. 30 Cheng, W. 12, 30, 45, 60, 147 Christie, F. 18 chunks 53–5 Cicourel, A. 12 code-switching 124, 127, 130–1 Cogo, A. 130, 134 collocation 45, 51–3, 57, 60, 66–8, 75, 151

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communities of practice 7–9, 17, 69, 91, 99, 103, 109, 111, 143 characteristics of 8 and discourse communities 7–9 role of relational talk within 103 concordancing 51, 59, 66 Connor, U. 46, 127 convergence 127 conversation analysis (CA) 9, 10, 45, 123 see also CA Cook-Gumperz, J. 6, 42 corpus analysis 68 corpus and genre 61 Corpus of American and British Office Talk (ABOT) 13, 14, 25, 28, 70 see also ABOT Corpus Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) 124, 136 see also ELFA Corpus Corpus of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) 46 see also EIA Corpus Cortés-Conde, F. 112, 115 Coupland, J. 30, 98 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 10, 11 see also CDA decision-making 76 developing interpersonal skills 155–8 evaluative adjectives 156 expressing stance 156 hedging 157 shared knowledge 157 solidarity 158 Devitt, A. 12, 36 directives 38, 48, 58, 70–9, 80–5, 93 density of directives and requests 79 politeness theory 73 and requests 77 in transactional and collaborative talk 76 discourse communities 7–9 characteristics of 8 discourse structure 61, 63, 64, 150, 153 Dow, E. 148, 149 Drew, P. 4, 52 EAP 63, 146 see also English for Academic Purposes Eggins, S. 100 EIA Corpus 46 see also Corpus of Environmental Impact Assessment EIB 123 see also English for International Business

EIL 123, 125, 148 see also English as an International Language ELF 122, 123, 124 see also English as lingua franca ELFA Corpus 124, 136 see also Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in Academic Setting e-mail 33 embedded 35 features of 35 as a hybrid genre 35 origin of 34 English as an International Language 123, 125, 148 see also EIL expert performances 149 expert user 149 native speakers 149, 159, 169 ‘world Englishes’ 125, 169 English as lingua franca (ELF)122, 123, 124 see also ELF Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF) 123 see also BELF intercultural communication 125 language for communication (Kommunikationssprache) 133 language for identification (Identifikationssprache) 133 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) 63, 146–7, 149 see also EAP English for International Business (EIB) 123 see also EIB English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) 146 English for Specific Purposes (ESP) 63, 146, 147 see also ESP English in the multi-ethnic workplace 139 challenge of ‘double socialization’ 141 contextualization cues 139 gate-keeping encounters 139, 142 job interviews 140 EOP 146 see also English for Occupational Purposes Erickson, F. 14, 91 Ervin-Tripp, S. M. 70 ESP 63, 146, 147 see also English for Specific Purposes ethnography 9, 43 evaluation 4, 22, 24, 25, 64, 65, 88, 114, 120, 150, 153, 154, 155, 158 face 66, 73, 81, 112, 126 face-threatening act 66, 72–3, 75, 80, 83–4, 102, 117, 120, 157

Index Fairclough, N. 16 Farr, F. 61 Firth, A. 30, 123, 129 Flowerdew, J. 46, 66 four-space model 11 front regions and back regions 13–16 front stage and back stage 13, 14, 16, 30 Gee, J. P. 10, 16 genre analysis 18–19 genre chains 37 genre colonies 20 genre hierarchies 37 genre networks 37 genre sets 37 Gimenez, J. C. 34 goal orientation 4, 5, 12, 15, 27, 67, 150, 152–4 Goffman, E. 10 Goodwin 14, 36 Greatbatch, D. 12 Haegeman, P. 129 Halliday, 18 Hallidayan approach 18 Handford, M. 7, 45, 80, 156 Harris, S. 26, 71 Hasan, R. 19, 30 hedges 21, 61–2, 62, 68, 74, 76–7, 79, 81, 84, 135, 148, 150, 156–7 Heritage, J. 4, 52 Hewings, M. 147, 150 HKCSE 6, 47 see also Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English HKCSE-bus 54, 60 job interviews and presentations 55 Holmes, J. 10, 70, 97, 99, 108, 110 Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE) 6, 47 see also HKCSE House, J. 130, 133 Huckin, T. N. 18, 37 Hüllen, W. 133 humour 99, 108 collaborative versus competitive 108 instances of 110 supportive versus contestive 108 and workplace culture 109 Hutchby, I. 10 Hyland, K. 46, 63 Iacobucci, C. 30 IBLC 46, 64 identity negotiation 101–3, 112, 120, 168n.3

189

idioms and metaphors 138 Iedema, R. 16 Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC) 46, 64 institutional discourse 5–7, 16, 52, 67–8, 140–1, 152 characteristics of 67 institutional identity 102 interaction order and institutional order 10 interactional sociolinguistics 9, 139 intercultural communication 125 interpersonal markers 61–3, 74, 76 intertextuality 37, 41, 43 role of 43 Jenkins, J. 124 Jensen, 35 Kaur, J. 131 keywords 48–67, 151 Koester, A. 7, 41, 74, 97 Kordon, K. 134, 135 Kuiper, K. 30 Labov, W. 85 Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) 146, 147 see also LSP language-in-action 36, 38–40 Lave, J. 7 ‘let it pass’ principle 124, 129–30 Levinson, S. C. 22, 71 Louhiala-Salminen, L. 35, 123 LSP 146, 147 see also Language for Specific Purposes Lundin, J. 91 Malinowski, B. 97 Marra, M. 99, 108, 110 Marriott, H. 126 Martin, J. R. 18, 66 McCarthy, M. 7, 20, 45, 97 Medway, P. 39, 43 meetings 25 structure of 28–9 Meierkord, C. 138 Messerman, L. 6, 42 Mestä-Ketelä, M. 136 MICASE 46, 54 Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English (MICASE) 46, 54 Miller, C. R. 18 Miller, Lindsey 146

190 Mitchell, T. F. 30 move and discourse-structure 63–6 Müller, A. P. 22 Mullholand, 34 Nelson, M. 12, 45, 51 Nickerson, C. 13, 34, 35, 149 O’Keeffe, A. 48, 53 Orlikowski, W. 12 Paltridge, B. 19 phatic communion 32, 97–8, 100–1, 106, 154, 156, 168n.2 see also relational talk Pitzl, M.-L. 130 Planken, B. 134, 149 Pölzl, U. 138 Poncini, G. 26, 100, 134 pragmatics features 57–60 problem-solution patterns 66, 155 problem-solving 26–7, 51, 64, 65, 67, 150, 153–5 procedural discourse 17, 24–5, 25, 38, 42, 70–1, 74–9, 79, 80–5, 88–90, 93–4, 158 corpus-informed study of 74 frequency of deontic modals in 74 sub-genres of 70 advice-giving as a hybrid genre 70 Prodromou, L. 159 professional discourse 5–7, 10, 39, 66, 143, 149 Pufahl Bax, I. 70, 71 Pullin Stark, P. 134 Ragan, S. L. 12, 97, 98 relational language 131 relational talk 97–8 see also phatic communion work done through 99 relationship-building 5, 62, 94, 100, 106, 109, 118, 120, 134 reporting 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 65, 88 Roberts, C. 6, 139 Rodrigues, S. B. 109 Rogerson-Revell, P. 123, 126, 129, 130 Sarangi, S. 6 SBE 48 see also Spoken Business English Scheeres, H. 16 Scollon, R. 142

Index Scollon, S. W. 142 Scott, M. 48 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) 123 see also SLA Seidlhofer, B. 124, 125 semantic prosody 51–2 service encounters 13, 14, 21, 24, 29–33, 44, 47, 57, 71, 100, 101, 134, 135 Shi, L. 146 Simpson, R. 53 SLA 123 see also Second Language Aquisition Slade, D. 100 small talk 15, 25, 31–3, 94, 97, 97–9, 100–8, 116, 118, 120, 134, 155–7 Smart, G. 43 socio-cognitive space 12 solidarity 84, 85 Spencer-Oatey, H. 126, 134 Spoken Business English (SBE) 48 see also SBE Stubbe, M. 10, 70, 99 Swales, J. M. 7, 24, 37 Talk at Work 4 Tannen, D. 85, 89 Taylor, P. 30, 109 teaching and teacher training 149–50 cookie cutter approach 151 teaching international English 158 Tracy, K. 15, 103 Tribble, C. 63 Upton, T. 46 Ure, J. 36 vague language (VL) 21, 58, 60, 61, 62, 62, 68, 74, 76–7, 84, 135, 136, 149, 150, 156–9 see also VL Ventola, E. 30 Victoria, M. 134 Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English 124 see also VOICE Vine, B. 70 VL 21, 58, 60, 61, 62, 62, 68, 74, 76–7, 84, 135, 136, 149, 150, 156–9 see also Vague Language VOICE 124 see also Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English Wagner, J. 123 Warren, M. 60, 147

Index Weigel, M. M. 71 Weigel, R. M. 71 Wellington Language in the Workplace project (LWP) 13, 27, 73, 145 Wenger, E. 7, 91 West, C. 71 Williams, M. 147 Willing, K. 26 workplace discourse approaches to analysing 9 genre analysis 9 definition of 3 versus everyday language 151 features of 4, 150 and institutional talk 5 lexico-grammar of 47 frequent words 47 and genre 61

workplace genre 18 collaborative 25 communicative genres in industrial organizations 24 non-transactional 25 within organizations 36 action-based 38 text-based 37 tools 37, 91, 167n.5 unidirectional 24 world Englishes 125, 169n.2 written discourse 11 Yates, J. 12 Ylänne-McEwen, V. T. 30, 33 Zhang, Z. 147 Zimmerman, D. 14

191

Workplace Discourse (Continuum Discourse)

Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis (Continuum Discourse)

Discourse of Blogs and Wikis (Continuum Discourse)

Metadiscourse (Continuum Discourse)

Discourse

The Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis (Continuum Companions)

Gender and Discourse (Sage Studies in Discourse)

Discourse Studies (Sage Benchmarks Discourse Studies)

Reason Discourse

Professional Discourse

Discourse Processing

Discourse Processing

Investigating Classroom Discourse (Domains of Discourse)

Confusing Discourse

Discourse, Figure

Discourse Strategies

Investigating Media Discourse (Domains of Discourse)

Discourse, Figure

Gendered Discourse in Professional Workplace (Palgrave Studies in Professional and Organizational Discourse)

School Discourse: Learning to write across the years of schooling (Continuum Discourse)

UNDERSTANDING TURKEY’S SECURITY DISCOURSE

Working with spoken discourse

Multiple Goals In Discourse

Descartes, Rene - Reason Discourse

Discourse on Metaphysics

Polyculturalism and Discourse

Discourse On Method

Brown - Adam Smiths discourse

Discourse: A Critical Introduction

Political Discourse Analysis

Discourse and Power

Workplace Discourse (Continuum Discourse)

Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis (Continuum Discourse)

Discourse of Blogs and Wikis (Continuum Discourse)

Metadiscourse (Continuum Discourse)

Discourse

The Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis (Continuum Companions)

Gender and Discourse (Sage Studies in Discourse)

Discourse Studies (Sage Benchmarks Discourse Studies)

Reason Discourse

Professional Discourse

Discourse Processing

Discourse Processing

Investigating Classroom Discourse (Domains of Discourse)

Confusing Discourse

Discourse, Figure

Discourse Strategies

Investigating Media Discourse (Domains of Discourse)

Discourse, Figure

Gendered Discourse in Professional Workplace (Palgrave Studies in Professional and Organizational Discourse)

School Discourse: Learning to write across the years of schooling (Continuum Discourse)

UNDERSTANDING TURKEY’S SECURITY DISCOURSE

Working with spoken discourse

Multiple Goals In Discourse

Descartes, Rene - Reason Discourse

Discourse on Metaphysics

Polyculturalism and Discourse

Discourse On Method

Brown - Adam Smiths discourse

Discourse: A Critical Introduction

Political Discourse Analysis

Discourse and Power

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