Occupation

• Occupational group - a discourse community whose common interest is their occupation.
• Discourse community - a group of people who share a common interest + have specific ways of communicating.
• Occupational language - occupation-specific language used within an occupational group.
• Jargon - specialist terminology used within a profession that’s not apart of an individual’s usual lexicon.
• John Swales 2011:

  • Researched discourse communities + defined them as having members who:
  • share a set of common goals
  • communicate internally
  • use specialist lexis + discourse
  • possess a required level of knowledge
• Almut Koester 2004:

  • said that phatic talk is important in the workplace for getting jobs done.
  • phatic talk - communication functions to create + maintain social relationships.
  • suggests being sociable within an occupational group is key to create a positive + productive working environment.
• Michael Nelson:

  • carried out research while at Manchester Uni into the possibility of the existence of specific business lexis.
  • His research concluded that there was a significant lack of negative business lexis - instead a lot of language used in the ‘business’ occupational group were neutral, with the main goal of being informative.
• Drew + Heritage 1992:

  • came up with the theory of institutional talk, which refers to 6 characteristics that appear in speech in the workplace or within an occupational group:
  • goal orientation
  • turn-taking rules
  • allowable contributions
  • professional lexis
  • structure
  • asymmetry
• Herbert + Straight 1989:

  • found a link between compliments’ + authority:
  • People of higher authority were more likely to give compliments to those of lower authority than the other way around.
  • in workplace settings, this means that compliments are used as a form of praise from someone higher to someone of a lower rank.
• Hornyak 1994

  • studied the link between language + occupation and found that the shift from work talk to social or personal talk followed a pattern - initiated by highest ranking person in the room e.g long-term employee.