English Language AS: Part 4 - Occupation and Power

As Level English Language Revision Document, AQA – Paper 2 Revision: Occupation and Power

Occupation and Power

Key terms • Swales •Drew and Heritage • Nelson • Fairclough •Sinclair and Coulthard

Key terms:

Jargon: use of a specific phrase or word in a particular situation to convey hidden meanings that are accepted and understood in that field.

Swales – discourse community:

In 1990 Swales invented the term ‘discourse communities’, relating to his idea that when a person becomes a member of a professional community(occupation) which has a set of values and shares specialist knowledge people acquire language features of the group. The community will use a specialist lexis as they work in the same field. The term discourse communities was made to emphasise the importance of language in their constitution.

Drew and Heritage:

Outline: Drew and Heritage researched how workplace talk differed from everyday conversation in the early 1990s. They took inspiration from Swales’ coinage of discourse communities. They investigated inferential frameworks which are implicit rules of language. They also suggested that hierarchies of power within organisations produced asymmetrical relationships.

Drew Heritage concluded that there were differences and described them as thus;

• Goal orientation: participants in the workplace usually focus conversations on specific tasks or goals.

• Turn taking rules: some situations in the workplace have implicit and explicit turn taking rules. Explicit turn taking may be in the form…