3.3 Language and Occupation

• Occupational lexis, notably law and medicine, use specialized lexis influenced by other languages.
• Legal terms are influenced by French and Latin such as sub judice, subpoena, novation and waiver.
• Occupational lexis also include words where the meaning varies compared to everyday use, such as seizure, action and party which are all used in law lexis.
• Teachers' language use is known to vary drastically within the profession i.e. a student report is likely to differ heavily compared to their spoken language within a lesson or their language used in the staff room.
• Nelson (2000) compared a corpus of business language to the British National Corpus (BNC) to investigate whether a business lexis existed. He found there was a semantic field of business corpus, involving business people, companies, institutions, money etc.
• John Swales (2011) defined a discourse community as having members who:

  • Share a common set of goals
  • Communicate internally
  • Use specialist lexis and discourse
  • Posses a level of required knowledge and attributes to participate in the community
• Draw and Heritage (1993) - Found that members of a discourse community share inferential frameworks with each other such as ways of thinking, communicating and behaving.

  
  

  Infers that occupational language facilitates strong hierarchies of power within organisations.

  
  

  Discourse community members must keep language consistent and manage what they say e.g. employees being fired for what they say on social media.
• Inferential Frameworks - Knowledge built up over time and used in order to understand meanings that are implicit.
• Koester (2004) - Showed how important phatic talk is in the work place in order to get jobs done.

  He showed that workers need to establish relationships and have interactions that are not just work related.
• Phatic - Language that is devoid of content but that supports social relationships.
• Kim and Elder (2009) - Studied the communication difficulties experienced by Korean pilots and ATC operators when communicating with American colleagues.

  Miscommunication occurred when Americans didn't use agreed phrases and used abbreviating unnecessarily and using idiomatic expressions.
• Crystal - Use of jargon is part of an identity at work.
• Spolsky - Using jargon shows you are part of the discourse community.

  However, not knowing it may make one feel like they do not belong.
• Plain English Campaign - A group which campaigns against jargon and argue that language which is transparent should be used.
• Herbert and Straight - Compliments flow down the hierarchy from those in the highest position to the lowest.
• Hornyak - Workplace conversations are usually initiated by the person with the most power.
• Fairclough - Conversations at work are becoming more and more informal. Known as conversationalisation.
• Sinclair and Coulthard - Teaches use the IRF model in feedback:

  • Initiation - The teacher provokes an answer.
  • Response - The child responds.
  • Feedback - The teacher provides feedback.
• Holmes and Stubbe - When someone with power talks to someone with less power, the can decide to downplay or assert their authority.
• French and Raven - Five bases of power which a person may have:

  • Coercive - Power to force someone to do something. Refusal would result in some form of punishment.
  • Expert - Knowledge and information which marks them as someone with power.
  • Legitimate - Genuine power because of position.
  • Reward - The ability to reward a subordinate for complying.
  • Referent - A good rapport or a mutual respect with someone makes them want to comply.