Occupation

• Staff language

  • Second person perspective
  • Imperative “let’s”
  • Brand names and other related proper nouns
  • Present tense
  • Specialised, technical terms
  • Politeness markers
  • Discourse markers
• Customer language

  • First person perspective
  • Past tense
  • Interrogative such as “what” and “why“
  • Informal lexis
  • Short responses
• Who looked at different features of staff and customer language?

  Eric Friginal (2009)
• Instrumental power


  Explicit power, often imposed by a higher authority
• Influential power


  Persuasive power rather than imposing
• Teacher language


  IRE or IRF
• IRE/IRF

  1. initiation (question)
  2. response
  3. evaluation/feedback
• Who proposed IRE/IRF?


  John Sinclair and Malcom Coulthard (1975)
• Who proposed the idea of Business English?

  Michael Nelson
• How did Michael Nelson research Business English?

  Compared a corpus of business language with one if more general language
• Business English


  Semantic field of business. Terms to do with business people, companies, institution, money, business events, places of business, time, modes of communication and lexis concerned with technology
• Political power


  Distinct registers extended through speeches and debates. Society accepts the power
• Personal power


  Unequal encounters where one party has dominance over another
• Social power


  Some groups in society have lower status and others have power. The divide is linked to wealth, ethnicity, and gender
• Face


  The respect that someone has for themselves
• Positive face


  An individual’s need to be valued, liked, and appreciated
• Negative face


  An individual’s need to not feel imposed upon or have their freedom of action threatened
• Face threatening acts


  Things we say that make others feel uncomfortable and less respected
• Who proposed Face Theory?

  Erving Goffman
• According to Brown and Levinson, what are the 5 options concerned with politeness?

  • Bald On-Record
  • Positive Politeness
  • Negative Politeness
  • Off-Record
  • Say nothing
• Bald On-Record


  Making no attempt to save the face of another person
• Positive politeness


  Recognising that the listener has a desire to be respected and treated in a friendly way
• Negative politeness


  Recognising that someone wants to be respected but also that you might be imposing on them
• Off-record


  Being indirect through implication rather than directly stating what you want
• Who proposed the idea of ‘doing power’?

  Holmes and Stubbe
• Doing power


  Using power is a role carried put by superiors within their occupational role. However, politeness strategies are also used to build team spirit. Less powerful participants have to adopt a superior register when talking to superiors. Small talk is controlled by superiors
• Who proposed the idea of phatic talk?

  Koester (2004)
• Phatic talk


  Language without context which supports social relationships. Important part of work as it promotes the value of solidarity and communication within the workplace
• Grice’s Maxims

  • Quality
  • Quantity
  • Relevance
  • Manner
• Maxim of quality


  Telling the truth (or what you believe to be true)
• Maxim of quantity


  Being as informative as required, no more and no less
• Maxim of relevance


  Being relevant to the topic
• Maxim of manner

  Avoid obscure expressions and ambiguity. Be brief and orderly
• Geoffrey Leech


  Proposed politeness principles:

  • Tact (minimising cost to others)
  • Generosity (Maximising cost to self)
  • Approbation (Maximising praise of others)
  • Modesty (Minimising praise of self)
  • Agreement (Minimising disagreement)
  • Sympathy
• Discourse community


  A group of people who share specialist lexis that others don’t understand
• Legal language has a very specialised register which is often made up of jargon and low frequency, often old English, Latin, or French words
• Plain English Campaign


  A campaign to make language more accessible to the general public, especially legal and medical language
• Peter Tiersma (1999)


  “Why is it that lawyers, who excel communicating with a jury, seem incapable of writing an ordinary, comprehensible, English sentence in a contract, deed, or will?“
• Who suggested strategies used by lawyers in their language?

  Paul Simpson and Andrea Mayr (2010)
• Lawyer language

  • Interatives
  • Change of state verbs
  • Factives Cleft structures
  • Comparators
  • Wh-type questions
  • Genitive constructions
  • Definite referring expressions