Occupation and Language Theories

Goffman - 1967

• Phatic speech can satisfy positive face needs
• It makes participants feel appreciated and acknowledged

Howard Giles - 1973

• Speakers may make their language resemble that of their audience to improve communication (convergence)
• They may use language to distance/distinguish themselves from others (divergence)
• Teachers may need to converge with students, to help them to understand
• Doctors may use jargon, then explain it using more understandable language, converging to their patient's schema

Drew and Heritage - 1992

• Goal orientation - participants tend to focus on specific tasks or goals
• Turn-taking rules and restrictions - some environments have specific turn-taking rules, like courtrooms. Others have unwritten restrictions, like doctors asking all the questions in doctor-patient consultations
• Allowable contributions - they may be some restricitons on what participants can say
• Professional lexis - this may be jargon, argot, subject-specific lexis, or restricted lexis
• Structure - interactions may be structured in specific ways
• Asymmetry - one speaker may have more power and/or special knowledge than another

Drew and Heritage - 1993

• Members of a discourse community share inferential frameworks
• These consist of implicit ways of thinking, communicating, and behaving
• There are strong heirarchies of power within organisations, with many asymmetrical relationships marked by language use

Koester - 2004

• Workers need to establish interpersonal relations/have interactions that are not solely about work-related procedures
• Phatic talk is a major part of this
• Power and solidarity are important dimensions in workplace communication

AlanSiegel - 2010

• Gave a TEDTalk
• The amount and nature of legal paperwork needs to be reduced and simplified - aka put into 'plain English'
• Financial jargon ('over limit', 'minimum monthly payment') is often used to obscure true meanings, in order to make more money
• Restricted lexis in this context is confusing, make things harder for consumers, and is unfair

John Swales - 2011

• Members of discourse communities:
  • Share a set of common goals
  • Communicate internally (using and 'owning' certain genres of communication)
  • Use specialist lexis and discourse
  • Posess a certain leel of knowledge and skill, in order to be considered eligible to participate in the community

William Labov

• Overt prestige - speaking in a way that is generally recognised as being used by the 'culturally dominant group' (e.g. RP)
• Covert prestige - shows membership of an 'exclusive community' (e.g. MLE)
• The culturally dominant group will often see speech with covert prestige as inferior
• Using covert prestige can help an individual to fit in with a local community and gain their respect

Survey 1

• 50% of respondents regularly heard jargon in their workplace
• 19% in smaller organisations
• 65% in larger ones

Survey 2

• 68% of people dislike or fear jargon

Survey 3

• From Ireland
• The 30-40 age group use jargon most
• 68% think it is used to impress, more than to communicate information
• 62% think it is used to hide a lack of knowledge
• 26% think it is used to intimidate
• 64% think it makes communication more difficult
• 41% admit to having used it to impress someone at work