Language and Culture at Work
Abstract
Language and Culture at Work provides an overview of the complex role that culture plays in workplace contexts. Eight chapters cover the core aspects of culture at work, comprising: Face and politeness Decision making Leadership Identity Gender Work-life balance The authors draw on a significant corpus of authentic workplace data collected in numerous professional and medical settings involving participants from a variety of different socio-cultural backgrounds (including Chinese, Filipino, Indian, British, Dutch, Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Australian). Using in-depth analyses of authentic interactions and interviews, the book proposes a new integrated framework for researching culture at work from a sociolinguistic perspective. This is key reading for researchers and recommended for those working in the areas of sociolinguistics, communication studies, discourse analysis and applied linguistics. It will be of particular interest to students of professional and workplace communication, intercultural communication and intercultural pragmatics.
... In other words, identity is "the social positioning of self and other" which may vary across contexts and even throughout an interaction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 586). In the social constructionist paradigm, identity is created and recreated through interaction (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998;De Fina, 2003;Schnurr, 2013;Schwantes, 2009;Woodward, 1997) and is a highly contextdependent (Simon, 2004) and collaborative process (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Jenkins (2014, p. 5) states, "[i]t is not something that one can have, or not; it is something that one does.". ...
... In this chapter I started to address RQ2: "What kinds of identities do [German-Turks] construct and negotiate in the focus groups?" and both sub questions: (Mehdi, 2012, p. 13) and how they are "continuously negotiated, revised, and revitalized" (Nagel, 1994, p. 153). Ultimately, participants' performances illustrate that identity construction is a highly context-dependent (Simon, 2004) collaborative process (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017) and is created and recreated in and through interaction (Schnurr, 2013). Overall, the analysis illustrates that the identity construction of participants is highly fragmented and dynamic, where they embrace their Germanness and their Turkishness at different points during an interaction, or both at the same time. ...
... In this regard, the analyses of this study revealed activities of reproduction and Based on the study's findings, it is important to critically reflect on the term social integration and its limited heuristic and academic value for discussing the issues that have been raised in this study. Similar to concepts such as politeness, gender and culture (e.g., Schnurr and Zayts, 2017) which are terms dominantly used in lay vocabulary in mainstream discourses but are problematic academically, so is the term social integration. The study argues that the term lost most of its meaning and what it sets out to convey is heavily blurred and problematic, especially academically. ...
The German media landscape is characterised by discourses of ethnic tension, migration, integration and assimilation in relation to Turkish-Germans (Mueller, 2006; Schneider, 2001) and has led to a stereotypical and negative public image of this very group (Mora, 2009). Such discourses typically construct and portray German-Turks as “the Other”, ultimately intensifying discrimination (Bonfadelli, 2007) and feelings of alienation. This thesis aims to understand how mainstream discourses of German- Turks contribute to this Othering and how they influence the identity construction and sense-making processes of social integration of German-Turks.
To date, little is known about how individuals construct and negotiate social integration discursively. Drawing on over 16 hours of audio- and video-recorded focus group discussions and individual interviews, the study investigates the identity construction of Turkish-Germans against the background of mainstream discourses of social integration and provides insights into the discursive function of social integration. For this purpose, narrative inquiry is adopted to analyse narratives and stories derived from the focus groups. Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) framework to analyse identity with a sociocultural linguistic approach is used to analyse identities constructed within these narratives.
Findings illustrate that participants construct and negotiate their own (and others’) multiple identities by Othering either “the Germans” or “the Turks” and positioning themselves in relation to these larger groups – sometimes embracing and sometimes rejecting membership in them. What is considered to be “the Other” by participants is constantly shifting throughout the processes of identity construction. This highly dynamic nature of identity construction is closely intertwined with issues of social integration. Moreover, I argue that social integration can be understood as a dynamic, multi-participant, ever-changing and interpretive process that is discursively negotiated by (German-Turkish) individuals. The thesis thus contributes to the large number of quantitative studies investigating social integration. It concludes by proposing some theoretical developments around social integration and identity construction and practical suggestions for impact work in Germany and offering recommendations for future research.
... There is an increasing amount of work informed by post-structuralist and constructionist perspectives that is critical of the ways that the notion of culture has been used in intercultural pragmatics research (e.g. Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Such work is particularly critical of the tendency in early research to posit national culture as an explanatory variable for interactional behaviour simply based on the national belonging of individuals. ...
... In investigating intercultural pragmatics, recent work from a critical perspective has devoted attention to the ways that first-order notions of culture conflict with empirical accounts of interactional behaviour. Schnurr and Zayts (2017) examine interactional phenomena such as politeness, leadership and decision-making within workplace discourse, pointing out the gap between participant's first order notions of cultural difference and actual interactional practices observed in the data. This is in line with Mills and Kádár (2011), who point out the stereotypical links individuals tend to construct between culture (whether in a national or regional sense) and pragmatic features. ...
... It is now very widely accepted within pragmatics that the impact of culture is dynamic, yet there is still surprisingly little unpacking of what is actually meant by culture, especially by those who call for it to be studied (solely) in terms of how it is enacted/constructed in interaction. For instance, while Schnurr and Zayts (2017) illustrate differences between first-order claims about (national) cultural behaviour and specific incidents that contradict such claims, they do not unpack the notion of culture itself and its relationship to language. Similarly, sociocognitive approaches refer to concepts such as schema or frame, yet offer little in the way of clear conceptualisation of the types of elements or behaviours that they interface with. ...
Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study. Bringing together an international team of leading editors and contributors, it provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of the key concepts, topics, settings and methodologies involved in sociopragmatic research. The chapters are organised in a systematic fashion, and span a wide range of theoretical research on how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others, and how it helps construct our social worlds. Providing insight into a fascinating array of phenomena and novel research directions, the Handbook is not only relevant to experts of pragmatics but to any reader with an interest in language and its use in different contexts, including researchers in sociology, anthropology and communication, and students of applied linguistics and related areas, as well as professional practitioners in communication research.
... Nevertheless, a pragmatic failure has the potential to cause misunderstandings. A listener from another culture can consider a speaker rude, dishonest, or hostile if he or she does not understand certain cultural norms (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). According to Kádár and House (2020), communications in the ritual frame are anchored in common situations. ...
... According to compositional approaches, culture may be seen in all facets of social life. Different levels of 'cultures' can encompass more readily observable rituals and behaviors and covert ideals, beliefs, and presumptions (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Culture is a set of unconscious-based behaviors and ways of being. ...
We’e Mbaru is a cultural rite of entering a new house in the Manggarai speech community speaking the Pasat-Ruis dialect in Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. Ira is one of the phases in this cultural tradition. At this stage, a Tongka (spokesperson) and participant representatives conduct cultural interactions using go’et (expression or proverb). This study aimed to analyze the speech acts of go’et in the Ira phase. The study used a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data were collected using in-depth interviews with seven key informants, taken purposively with the main criteria of having adequate knowledge of Manggarai culture, good ability to use go’et, and experience as a Tongka. The results showed that the speech acts of go’et in the Ira phase included representative and directive acts (illocutionary acts). The study also found that the expressive speech act of gratitude, prayers, and hopes, and the speech act of giving financial support are categorized as perlocutionary speech acts. The use of go’et by a Tongka and participant representatives is considered a language politeness strategy effective for refining the language used, especially for avoiding face-threatening acts. Tongka and participant representatives need to understand the context and situation of the speech so that the choice of go’et is appropriate and conveyed judiciously.
... For social constructionists, identity is created and recreated through interaction (Woodward, 1997;Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998;De Fina, 2003;Schwantes, 2009;Schnurr, 2013) and is a highly context-dependent (Simon, 2004) and collaborative process (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Implying an anti-essentialist view of identity, Jenkins (2014) notes, "It is not something that one can have, or not; it is something that one does." ...
... Another important theme (see Example 4.9) is the explicit mentioning of cultural categories (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017) Sena explicitly constructs her German identity in the first part of her answer, while mentioning situations where she felt "German". Her stereotypical view, that being late (widely known punctuality of Germans) is a negative behaviour, where she was upset with herself, shows that she perceives herself as German in such circumstances, thereby portrays herself as a person carrying German cultural norms. ...
Utilising the theoretical framework of Bucholtz and Hall (2005) for the analysis of identity as produced in linguistic interaction the current study focuses on the context-specific construction of various identities by second-generation German-Turk descendants. Additionally, it aims to explore the ways they negotiate those various identities by examining the various linguistic choices of interviewees. Despite the vast amount of research on this group in relation to inter alia migration, education, integration, culture clashes and culture confusions, this dissertation aims to address a rather unexplored area of linguistic research on German-Turkish individuals, more specifically, their identity negotiation in spoken interaction. Adopting a qualitative research approach, the present study draws on nine in-depth interviews, conducted with adolescents of Turkish descent born in Germany. It was of interest to explore what kinds of identities participants mobilise within an interaction with an interviewer having the same socio-cultural background, how those individuals position themselves and others, and how their bilingualism and biculturalism intersect within an interactional context. In the present study, it has been found that the most prominent identities constructed by participants were ethnic, individual and religious identities. Hereby, the highly dynamic hybridity of their identity negotiations and the compelling interplay of their Turkish and German ethnic and cultural identities have been revealed. Findings moreover show a balance between their different ethnic and cultural identities and their simultaneous configuration as German-Turkish identities. At the same time, the emphasis on interlocutors' individuality and uniqueness became prevalent and their identification with Islam was rather weak, challenging former studies' findings. Overall, the present study yielded many invaluable insights into identity constructions and future research suggestions are outlined in the conclusion.
... Past research on discursive leadership intended to "foreground the multivariate, dynamic and complex character of [communication] culture" [7, p. 209] and contributed to the field by unveiling how business culture applies to interaction in practice [9], [10]. Ladegaard and Jenks's study adopted a "social constructionist" approach that views culture as a dynamic, fluid, and multifaceted process "which is created, negotiated, and recreated in situ, as people engage in talk and other forms of social interaction" [11, p. 5]. ...
... Scholars and theorists of leadership in favor of a social constructionist or "discursive" approach posit the centrality of language in enacting leadership practices (e.g., Clifton [4]). The literature of discursive leadership often examines research data such as meeting discourse at a microlevel (i.e., in a turn-by-turn fashion) and applies conversation analysis (e.g., Holmes et al. [9]) or interactional sociolinguistics concepts (e.g., Schnurr and Zayts [10]) as the analytical tools. The understanding of leadership in this line of research is presented through a social constructionist lens where leadership is understood to be the joint product of leader-follower interactions. ...
bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Background:
Past research has established the importance of discursive leadership in professional communication, but it has not systematically examined how conformity behaviors emerge as a potentially undesirable consequence of discursive leadership.
Literature review:
Review of the literature on the centrality of communication in leadership processes and conformity behavior suggest a void of analytic tools to adequately examine the negative consequences of discursive leadership.
Research question:
Are later interlocutors more likely to speak similarly to earlier ones if the earlier interlocutors occupy a more central position in the conversation network?
Methodology:
Based on 32,000 words of a transcribed meeting corpus, we measured conformity behaviors using Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency scores, which are widely used in the information retrieval setting. We also operationalized the strength of discursive leadership as a positional centrality measure in the conversation network using a matrix algebra approach in social network analysis.
Results:
Findings support the hypothesis that discursive leadership is associated with conformity in language aligned toward discursive leaders’ opinions.
Conclusions:
This study makes theoretical advances in understanding leadership construction and conformity behaviors between leaders and followers using empirical, authentic meeting data. We also give business people an applied understanding of the process of discursive leadership, which may help them to improve communication efficacy in their organizations by reducing overly conforming behaviors. We recommend that future research include more diverse participants and be combined with a survey to supplement the conversation data.
... There is ample evidence in the interviews that we conducted with expatriates in Hong Kong of such perceived differences in relation to normative expectations and practices that are associated with different cultural groups (see also Schnurr & Zayts 2017). Participants frequently commented, for example, on the fact that Chinese and Westerners had very different expectations relating to work-life balance and that Chinese members of a team typically expect everyone to stay at work until the last person has finished their job, which is reported as being very different to the expectations and practices of Australians and other Westerners who tend to leave the office when their work is finished. ...
... In fact, as we have argued elsewhere in more detail (e.g. Schnurr and Zayts 2012, 2013, 2017, people often tend to over emphasise differences in practices that they associate with a particular cultural group or sociocultural context. Often, these claims are much more difficult to sustain when we examine people's everyday workplace interactions. ...
This chapter examines (Im)politeness in workplace interaction. After outlining our theoretical approach which involves critical realism and interactional sociolinguistics, we review previous research in this area and identify a range of methods of collecting relevant data. The chapter then illustrates the analysis of (Im)politeness in workplace discourse by focusing on transitions at different levels, first involving people moving from country to country (e.g. expatriates), then from institution to institution (e.g. apprentices and newcomers moving into their first job after school) and finally from company to company (e.g. people who change jobs or employers). The analyses demonstrate that (Im)politeness norms comprise one important component of the learning required to integrate into a new workplace context.
... In other words, it concerns the positioning of the self and the other(s) in everyday interactions in which individuals take on specific roles: workplace examples include leaders and subordinates (see e.g. Holmes & Stubbe, 2003;Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Identification is also connected to the surrounding context, the discourses and ideologies that help to determine what kind of identification is feasible (Angouri & Marra, 2010;Angouri et al., 2017). ...
Bringing in insights from sociolinguistics, this conceptual paper advances the theorizing on language and identity in the MNC, viewed as socially constructed by individuals in interaction when they cross fluid linguistic and geographical boundaries. We posit that the identities of global business professionals in the MNC are not intrinsically tied to nationality and native language, they are rather cosmopolitan and constructed in interactions in English as the working language (BELF: English as a Business Lingua Franca). We further conceptualize the multilingual MNC as a social constellation – providing the context for processes of identity construction but also shaped by them. We outline three propositions that capture the ways in which BELF contributes to the construction of a cosmopolitan identity on three dimensions (individual, interactional and contextual) in multilingual professional MNC settings. The first one concerns the identification of individuals as participants in BELF interactions drawing from their different linguistic resources, national origins and professions, and previous experiences. The focus in the second one is on BELF interactions that manifest an orientation to both sharedness and difference in skills, knowledge and social relations. The third proposition concerns the MNC context in terms of enabling BELF interactions and being (re)constructed as a social constellation with fluid linguistic and geographical boundaries. We further elaborate on the methodological implications of sociolinguistic and cosmopolitan approaches to IM research on identity in general, and how our propositions could guide future research on language and identity in the MNC in particular.
... Watts, for example, has analyzed relational work in family discourse (1991,2003). Schnurr (2011, 2014) and Schnurr and Zayts (2017) have studied relational work in genetic counseling contexts. In an online context, Bolander (2013) has researched relational work on blogs, while Placencia (2012) focused on Yahoo!Respuestas, a peer-to-peer question and answer site on which interactants talk about beauty and styling tips. ...
Online communication has become ever more present in our lives and has encompassed the personal as well as the professional sphere. This expansion has continued into the professional workspace of mental healthcare workers who conduct counseling online. Special emphasis needs to be given on how mental healthcare workers utilize online communication to work collaboratively with clients. Previous research has shown that the quality of the therapeutic alliance significantly impacts the outcome of counseling. In this book, the therapeutic alliance is examined from an interpersonal pragmatic perspective. Using a mixed methods approach, five naturally occurring email counseling threads are scrutinized to shed light on how the counselor and her clients work collaboratively to improve the clients' well-being. The content analysis reveals the specific topics that are dealt with in the counseling exchanges. The subsequent discursive moves analysis uncovers systematic discursive patterns that occur within the exchanges. Zooming in on specific aspects through a discourse-analytic approach finally allows for an in-depth description of three captivating phenomena: the use of a metaphor to combat unhelpful thoughts, the use of narratives to construct varying identities, and the intricate process of exiting the actual counseling process once clients have improved. By employing two notions from interpersonal pragmatics - relational work and identity construction - empirical evidence is provided to show how they are linked. Thereby, the book adds to research on interpersonal pragmatics, but also on online and mental health communication. Importantly, it serves as a guide to mental health practitioners by demonstrating how language in online counseling can be analyzed and utilized to negotiate the therapeutic alliance and support clients in their endeavor to improve their well-being. Franziska Thurnherr is a researcher in the public health sector in Switzerland. She has published on interpersonal pragmatics, (online) mental health and computer-mediated communication.
... Workplace discourse, which is often related to social and pragmatic issues, such as gender/sexuality, politeness and leadership identity, has been investigated extensively in the fields of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and pragmatics, amongst others. In recent years, some areas of this research (e.g., Schnurr and Zayts, 2017) have focused on language and culture at work. Building on these previous investigations, the studies in this edited volume explore a number of new approaches. ...
... Societal context is a crucial element in understanding the profound level of speeches and news reports (Abdulmajid, 2019). Media are influenced by the societal context and the events in a country, whether they are political, economic or historical (Fuchs, 2019;Jones & Hafner, 2015;Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). According to Najarzadegan et al. (2017), News is the end product of a complex process that starts with selecting topics and their systematic sorting. ...
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a modern branch of linguistics. The current study applies CDA to a televised speech of El-Sisi, the Egyptian president, on the 47th anniversary of October Victory in its English version. The study aims to reveal ideologies behind the publishing of the speech and its role in shaping the mentality of Egyptians. The researcher applies Fairclough’s (2014a) three-dimensional model. She also uses Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) metafunctions of systemic functional grammar (SFG) as the tool for analysis. The analysis is mainly qualitative. The research answers some questions. The first one is: ‘How the constructive ideologies are expressed through their linguistic structures and features in the English version of El-Sisi’s speech on the 47th of October victory ceremony?’ The second is ‘what is the explanation for including such confidential ideologies in the published English version of El-Sisi’s speech?’ A significant finding is that the delivered messages of the speech reflect some ideological orientations. The ideological orientations are affected and determined by the dominant social ideologies and the general orientation of institutions in Egypt. The study aims to help readers use their skills in analyzing any discourse systematically. The study also highlights the fundamental ideologies needed to direct Egyptians for the benefit of their country. Future researches can focus on the role of words in reflecting ideologies or the role of explicitation and implicitation techniques in conveying beliefs and confidential ideologies.
... Societal context is a crucial element in understanding the profound level of speeches and news reports (Abdulmajid, 2019). Media are influenced by the societal context and the events in a country, whether they are political, economic or historical (Fuchs, 2019;Jones & Hafner, 2015;Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). According to Najarzadegan et al. (2017), News is the end product of a complex process that starts with selecting topics and their systematic sorting. ...
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a modern branch of linguistics. The current study applies CDA to a televised speech of El-Sisi, the Egyptian president, on the 47th anniversary of October Victory in its English version. The study aims to reveal ideologies behind the publishing of the speech and its role in shaping the mentality of Egyptians. The researcher applies Fairclough’s (2014a) three-dimensional model. She also uses Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) metafunctions of systemic functional grammar (SFG) as the tool for analysis. The analysis is mainly qualitative. The research answers some questions. The first one is: ‘How the constructive ideologies are expressed through their linguistic structures and features in the English version of El-Sisi’s speech on the 47th of October victory ceremony?’ The second is ‘what is the explanation for including such confidential ideologies in the published English version of El-Sisi’s speech?’ A significant finding is that the delivered messages of the speech reflect some ideological orientations. The ideological orientations are affected and determined by the dominant social ideologies and the general orientation of institutions in Egypt. The study aims to help readers use their skills in analyzing any discourse systematically. The study also highlights the fundamental ideologies needed to direct Egyptians for the benefit of their country. Future researches can focus on the role of words in reflecting ideologies or the role of explicitation and implicitation techniques in conveying beliefs and confidential ideologies.
... The central role of identity in workplace interactions and public fora -how people perceive themselves and their colleagues at work-has been the subject of several studies (e.g. Angouri & Marra, 2011;Schnurr, 2013;Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). In the role models section in blogs, the most straightforward and frequent way of organizing information is to put old information in theme position and new information towards the end of the rheme, as in Sara Gomez's curriculum. ...
This chapter examines thirty blogs for women engineers from a multimodal perspective, offering new ways of analysing their content and communicative strategies. The qualitative study focuses on how the interplay of different modes such as image, writing, typography and colour can be handled and how interpersonal and ideational realizations are construed. The final aim is to unravel relevant meaning-making practices used in these blogs, which want to achieve different objectives: overcome the limitations women still face in engineering by showcasing opportunities, change the perception of women engineers in society and redress the gender imbalance in engineering companies.
... Research on language in the workplace has tended to focus on white-collar 1 language practices (Holmes, 2012), with early studies favoring institutional discourse in predominantly monolingual work environments (Atkinson & Drew, 1979;Gumperz & Cook-Cumperz, 1982;Heritage, 1985). More recent work has examined multilingual worksites, although white-collar work still tends to be the general focus (Angouri, 2013;Ehrenreich, 2009;Evans & Green, 2001;Hill & Zyl, 2002;Pullin Stark, 2009;Schnurr & Zayts, 2017;Thurlow, 2020). For instance, research in this area has analyzed discourses of diversity and multilingualism (Angouri, 2013) juxtaposed to actual workplace language practices, uncovering implicit "English only" policies with knowledge of English being necessary for professional advancement (Hill & Zyl, 2002). ...
This paper analyzes how multi-level marketing companies (MLMs), via direct selling through electronic commerce (e-commerce) and social media, enact and evade federal language policy to maximize profits. Here we describe the federal language policies that govern this type of e-commerce, and in particular, the language policies of the Federal Trade Commission, which dictate what can and cannot be communicated by MLM companies and their contractors. We then illustrate how these federal language policies are enacted, and at times subverted, for financial gain during the COVID-19 economic and health crisis which rendered many people vulnerable. We draw on the discourse analysis of public documents, MLM insider sources via the first author, and over 100,000 public Instagram posts published by MLM independent contractors collected with the third-party Instagram data extraction tool, Phantombuster. We find that MLM independent contractors, although varying widely with respect to their enactment of federal and corporate policy, frequently reference COVID-19 implicitly or explicitly, a practice prohibited by federal policy. We demonstrate that quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis of language policies and practices of MLM social media provides a productive lens for understanding both the communication challenges of and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This approach reveals the variable ways in which language policies are taken up and discourses recontextualized with new meanings and for new purposes across social media platforms.
... La diversidad cultural que caracteriza a las organizaciones alrededor del mundo presenta el desafío de explorar una variedad de escenarios comunicacionales con el fin de abordar cuestiones culturalmente sensibles de interacción social en el lugar de trabajo (Schnurr y Zayts 2017;Lazzaro-Salazar 2013). Cada cultura codifica sus conocimientos, creencias, valores e ideas a través de sus sistemas lingüísticos, los cuales son utilizados de diversas formas para expresar e interpretar mensajes (Holland y Quinn 1987;Sharifian 2017). ...
El estudio de los conflictos comunicacionales entre profesionales migrantes y nacionales en contextos laborales contribuye a identificar diferencias en normas y expectativas culturales de la comunicación que pueden contribuir a la generación de conflictos y/o malestar laboral que afecten tanto el quehacer profesional como las relaciones interpersonales entre colegas. Este artículo presenta el estudio de validación de la Escala de Conflicto Comunicacional en Organizaciones Interculturales (ECCOI), diseñada en el contexto del proyecto Fondecyt N° 3160104 que indaga sobre la comunicación intercultural en instituciones de la salud pública en Chile. Los resultados de los análisis practicados revelaron que la ECCOI exhibe propiedades psicométricas satisfactorias en términos de su validez de contenido, consistencia interna, estructura factorial, validez convergente y validez discriminante, y que, por lo tanto, resulta adecuada para examinar el conflicto comunicacional en contextos organizacionales interculturales.
... However, these were treated in my project as a source of data that sheds light on different dimensions of doing trust rather than as a more appropriate data source than interviews. Different data offer different lenses for studying the phenomena of interest and allow for a more holistic understanding (see Schnurr and Zayts, 2017). Moreover, rich and diverse datasets point out connections between the different insights and identify patterns that future research could address in more detail (Angouri, 2018). ...
In this chapter, I aim to problematize and reflect on two core concepts that seem to concern workplace researchers, namely linguistic authenticity and researcher’s positioning. In discussing these concepts, I draw and reflect on personal experience of working on my PhD project. The doctoral project under discussion was ethnographically informed and examined the discursive construction and performance of trust between Greek and Turkish business partners involved in cross-border collaboration. Linguistic authenticity and researcher positioning become relevant and affect different stages of the research process, from data collection to data interpretation. In this chapter, I focus on aspects of the data collection process and reflect on how I negotiated access to professional environments, as well as on how I coped with language barriers I faced during fieldwork. I particularly reflect on the role of gender and discuss how my female researcher identity affected the way I was perceived by participants and the relationships developed while in the field. The chapter responds to the need for more reflective work on the concepts of authenticity and positionality of the researcher, which are rarely the topic of discussion/investigation in their own right.
... Recent studies have begun to explore the discursive processes through which leadership is shared among team members, and how different individuals (who are not the official leader) participate in and contribute to the performance of leadership, for example in solving disagreements (Choi and Schnurr, 2014;Schnurr and Chan, 2011), decision making (Clifton, 2017;Schnurr and Zayts, 2017), and the enactment of transformational and relational behaviours (e.g. Vine et al., 2008). ...
In line with recent developments in leadership research which conceptualise leadership as a discursive and collaborative process rather than a set of static attributes and characteristics displayed by individuals, this paper explores some of the discursive processes through which leadership emerges in a sports team. Drawing on over ten hours of naturally occurring interactions among the players of a women's netball team in the UK, and applying the concepts of deontic and epistemic status and stance, we identify and describe some of the specific processes through which leadership is claimed and assigned, as well as rejected, passed on, and eventually accepted by different team members at different points throughout an interaction. While the processes outlined in our analysis contribute to theoretical discussions regarding the notion of emergent leadership, this paper also demonstrates the benefits of taking a discourse analytical approach to leadership, and outlines how such an approach enables researchers to empirically capture emergent leadership in situ.
... This means that group members are assumed to possess the same characteristics, and it is these characteristics that are used as an explanatory variable for behaviour. This tends to involve recourse to discourses that present cultural groups as inherently embodying characteristics such as 'valuing hierarchy', 'being shy', 'being modest', 'being friendly' etc., which are presented as a barrier in communication (Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). Stereotypes about group characteristics function as ready-made explanations for difficulties, the explanation being that the 'other' is irreconcilably different to 'us'. ...
In recent years, there has been increasing momentum towards a multilingual and intercultural perspective within L2 pragmatics pedagogy and research, which places emphasis on developing the productive and interpretive capacities necessary for engaging effectively with individuals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This has foregrounded the need for development of learners' abilities to analyse and reflect on language use, particularly the ability to reflect on the ways that one's own judgments about pragmatic (in)appropriateness are intertwined with broader judgments about people. This chapter considers the relationship between social cognition and evaluations of language use, looking specifically at the role of cultural stereotypes in L2 learners' meta-pragmatic evaluations. The chapter first elaborates a number of insights from recent theoretical work on the interfaces between social (particularly intergroup) cognition and the evaluative bases of pragmatic judgments. The chapter then draws on classroom data from an English language classroom in Japan to illustrate some of the ways in which cultural stereotypes of self and other mediate the ways a small group of intermediate English language learners evaluate pragmatic phenomena.
... Atkinson and Drew 1979;Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 1982;Heritage 1985). More recent investigations into language practices within the workplace context have expanded to include multilingual worksites, but they too have favored white-collar workplaces (Coleman 1989;Clyne 1994;Drew and Sorjonen 1997;Evans and Green 2001;Hill and Zyl 2002;Koester 2006;Holmes 2007;Ehrenreich 2009;Pullin Stark 2009;Forey and Lockwood 2010;Kelly-Holmes and Mautner 2010;Holmes et al. 2012;Angouri 2014;Schnurr and Zayts 2017;Vine 2018;Thurlow 2020). ...
... The majority of existing research on men in non-traditional jobs like nursing focuses on the non-verbal coping mechanisms that men use. There is some research into linguistic behaviour of men in women's jobs (e.g., Schnurr & Zayts, 2017;Schnurr, 2008;Kiesling, 2007;Mullany, 2007;Holmes, 2006), but little which examines the language of male nurses whilst convening with their nurse colleagues (see, however, McDowell, 2018(see, however, McDowell, , 2015a(see, however, McDowell, , 2015b. ...
... Many sociologists have pointed to ways in which macro-level societal structures are instantiated at the micro-level through concepts such as agency (Giddens 1984) and habitus (Bourdieu 1977), while sociolinguists who espouse a social realist approach have described how societal norms constrain appropriate language use in different contexts, and how they are negotiated in face-to-face interaction (eg Wodak 2008;Cameron 2009;Bell 2016;Coupland 2016;Schnurr and Zayts 2017). This article explores the insights that can be gained by examining the stories people tell in workplace interaction and interviews. ...
The concept of encounter between Māori and Pākehā which has been the focus of so much historical and anthropological research also provides a rich source of insight for sociolinguists interested in the details of everyday workplace talk. Exploring the concept of ‘the culture order’ we discuss ways in which workplace narratives may provide evidence of subtle differences in Māori and Pākehā ways of telling stories at work. More than twenty years ago, examining Māori and Pākehā narratives in conversational contexts, features were identified in the narrative structure, as well as in the preoccupations of the different ethnic groups, which could be interpreted as contributing to the construction of distinctive ethnic identities. More recently, the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) team has turned attention to workplace narratives, noting nuanced construction of identity in this discourse activity. We offer evidence of hybridised identities which allow for positive orientation to Te Ao Māori while navigating a Pākehā-dominant corporate world.
... She further strengthens her argument by making reference to her husband's socio-cultural background which is often described as patriarchal (Chee & West, 2004;Cullen, 1999;Lee, 2004;Ladegaard, 2012;Schnurr and Zayts, 2017): 'he is Mainland Chinese and it's just not done' (lines 35 and 36). Through these references to abstract norms and expectations, and by using the passive voice when making these claims, together with the pragmatic particle 'just', our interviewee constructs them as naturalised, taken-for-granted, and unchangeable. ...
This paper illustrates some of the ways in which the notion of (paid) work is actively being gendered, and how these gendering processes take place not only through organisational practices but also in discourses that circulate outside an organisation in the private domain. Drawing on 15 in‐depth interviews with women who opted out of their own professional career in order to accompany their husbands on their overseas work assignment to Hong Kong, we demonstrate some of the benefits of using a discourse analytical approach to capturing and identifying the processes through which these women actively (although not necessarily consciously) gender the notion of work, thereby reinforcing the gender order and its male bias. We argue that identifying and making visible these gendered and gendering practices is an important component of, and a potential trigger for change both in organisations as well as private contexts.
... Chen (2006) is of the opinion that slangy expressions are part of a language that is usually informal and out of standard usage and may consist of both newly coined words and phrases and of new or extended meanings attached to established terms. According to Hartmann and Stock cited in Olumuyiwa (1989), slang is "a variety of speech characterized by newly coined and rapidly changing vocabulary used by the young or by social and professional groups for 'in-group' communication and thus tending to prevent understanding by the rest of the speech community". From the above definition, slangy expressions are mostly employed by youths and young adults to suit their communication needs when interacting with their peers. ...
This paper undertakes a sociolinguistic analysis of slangy expressions in Nigerian Pidgin. The corpus for this study was gotten systematically through participant observation of conversational discourses in everyday contexts amongst Nigerians living in the Warri-Ughelli-Sapele axes of Delta State. These linguistic data were then recorded and transcribed to aid analysis. The study adopted the Referential theory of Richards and Ogden (1923) in the analysis of data using the descriptive research methodology. These set of data were from conversations in football viewing centres, bukas (roadside food vendors), motor-parks, university campuses, and the market. Slangy expressions as used by presenters on private radio stations and lyrics of popular Nigerian songs were also analysed descriptively. A total of thirty-three (33) slangy expressions were analysed contextually and referentially. The paper ended on the note that every speaker poses a variety of slangy expressions and tends to choose among them in accordance with the social situation that calls for their use and that these expressions are fully intelligible to the speakers. Nigerian pidgin slangy expressions are a product of social force and the creative use of language by Nigerians in order to satisfy their communication needs.
... Moreover, this variation and diversity in behaviours and leadership styles shows that any attempts at generalising (preferred) leadership practices in a particular socio-cultural context are fraud with difficulties (see also Li et al 2013;Schnurr and Zayts fc;Takano 2005). Cultural stereotypes will never be able to capture the complexity and dynamics of actual interaction. ...
This chapter explores the complex relationship between leadership and culture with a particular emphasis on critically discussing some of the cultural stereotypes that exist about leadership in the context of Hong Kong. Drawing on audio- and video-recorded data collected at two workplaces in Hong Kong, this paper challenges some of the predominant stereotypes about leadership in Hong Kong and contrasts them with insights gained through a fine-grained in-depth analysis of leadership discourse that occurred in actual workplace encounters. Findings illustrate that while there is evidence in our data to support some of the cultural stereotypes about leadership in Hong Kong (e.g. that Chinese leaders tend to be autocratic and often assume a ‘father’ role while subordinates are submissive and expect to be told what to do), the everyday practices of leadership of actual people interacting with each other in actual workplaces doing actual things are much more complex and often more contradictory than these stereotypical claims and grand statements suggest. In actual practice, leadership is a highly complex and multifaceted concept and people draw on a wide range of different leadership styles to meet the situational demands.
In the international business (IB) research field, many have suggested paradigmatic changes to address the complexity of cultural issues. Different paradigms represent different approaches to culture, and in this study, we apply positivist, interpretive, and critical approaches in the context of IB relationships. To address these different approaches within IB instruction, we introduce the theory of interpersonal knowledge. By utilizing this theory and examples of how to analyze business relationships using different approaches to culture, IB teachers can clarify the different approaches and help their students deepen their understanding of the meaning of interpersonal-level analysis in intercultural business settings.
Background
Sociolinguistic research on workplace mental health stigma is scarce and consequently, there are a lack of relevant conceptual models. Drawing on Goffman’s notion of stigma as a ‘language of relationships’, and Heller’s concept of ‘discursive space’, this paper offers a conceptual model of how stigma is produced and reinforced in workplace settings. Specifically, the model maps the complex discursive processes of mental health stigmatization through workplace discursive practices.
Methods
The model is empirically grounded and draws on 23 in-depth participant interviews with professional services employees in Hong Kong. Through a meta-discursive analysis of the employees’ experience in the workplace, the paper investigates how mental health stigma is produced in the workplace.
Results
Conceiving the workplace as a discursive space, the model demonstrates that mental health stigma unfolds across three discursive layers, namely immediate encounters, organizational practices, and societal ideologies. Mediated by discursive practices, such as identity management, stigma is both produced and perpetuated across the three layers.
Conclusions
The paper provides a model for analyzing the production of mental health stigma through dynamic discursive activities in the workplace. By doing so, it offers a way to systematically map how stigma, brought about through discourse in organizational settings, can regulate both interpersonal relationships and resource allocation (such as career prospects).
The crucial role language plays in constituting our reality, and in achieving political influence and control, has long been known in scholarship. However, appreciation of the role of language in understanding our social realities and power relations has not been fully translated to education or even to research beyond linguistically focussed academic strands. Bringing together well-established scholars from a range of disciplines, this book demonstrates why language awareness and discourse consciousness should be considered a key skill in business and professional life, and looks closely at language in areas such as entrepreneurship, leadership, human resource management, medical, financial, or business communication, ecology, media, and politics. The authors demonstrate how the understanding of the minutiae of language use in a variety of professional contexts leads to knowledge that will empower future generations of professionals and enable them to develop a self-reflexive, critical, and more ethical practice.
This chapter reviews work on politeness and rapport management from an intercultural pragmatics perspective. After an initial introduction, the first main section considers conceptual and methodological challenges and explores three key issues: the various ways in which culture has been conceptualized within politeness theory, the challenge of integrating micro and macro perspectives on intercultural interaction, and first-order and second-order perspectives on politeness and culture. The second main section of the chapter turns to the performance of intercultural politeness. It starts by reporting on the many intercultural studies that have analyzed the impact of different speech and behavioral practices on interpersonal relations. It then reviews the much smaller number of intercultural politeness studies that have examined interlocutors’ potentially different interpretations of the context. After this, it turns to the possible impact of differing cultural values on intercultural politeness. The third main section focuses on intercultural politeness from an evaluation perspective. It presents recent theorizing on the evaluation process and considers methodological challenges in obtaining and interpreting relevant data. The chapter ends by proposing some areas for future research.
The crucial role language plays in constituting our reality, and in achieving political influence and control, has long been known in scholarship. However, appreciation of the role of language in understanding our social realities and power relations has not been fully translated to education or even to research beyond linguistically focussed academic strands. Bringing together well-established scholars from a range of disciplines, this book demonstrates why language awareness and discourse consciousness should be considered a key skill in business and professional life, and looks closely at language in areas such as entrepreneurship, leadership, human resource management, medical, financial, or business communication, ecology, media, and politics. The authors demonstrate how the understanding of the minutiae of language use in a variety of professional contexts leads to knowledge that will empower future generations of professionals and enable them to develop a self-reflexive, critical, and more ethical practice.
We study the moment-by-moment unfolding of bad news delivery in an unplanned business meeting between two professionals using English as a lingua franca. We aim to show how the negotiation of the valence and meaning of the news creates a place for the situated construction of professional identities and social relations. Applying multimodal conversation analysis supported by ethnographic fieldwork we analyze audio and video recorded data. The findings show how the professionals first collaboratively (re)establish the conditions for the news delivery and then work toward achieving epistemic and emotional congruence through their use of multimodal resources (talk, gaze, gestures, and material objects) and sociocultural and organizational knowledge. This chapter provides insights into professional identity construction as a collaborative accomplishment, and how it is impacted by situational contingencies. The study also illustrates the situated practices by which egalitarian leadership style is enacted by the Nordic manager in the multinational company.KeywordsBad news deliveryIdentityEnglish as a lingua francaMultimodalityConversation analysis
This research explores intercultural communication at a binational organization in the Mexico-U.S. border region where Mexican and Anglo staff use the first personal plural ‘nosotros' to (de)emphasize group membership(s), repair conflict, and inclusively define their community of practice. In collaborative intergroup contexts, a collective identity is constructed by emphasizing shared tasks, especially with ‘nosotros.’ In intergroup conflict, antagonistic features highlight opposition between groups using the exclusive first personal plural and deictic expressions of location. Lastly, conflict repair recognizes intergroup differences and appeals to affective relationships to establish a shared identity.
Expressing emotion is considered essential in the U.S. business communication tradition; however, its importance is uncertain beyond the U.S., and more specifically, in Chinese business contexts. This study explores emotion in U.S. and Chinese business communication through the analyses of attitude markers in the shareholders’ letters of U.S. and mainland Chinese corporations. The analyses reveal that while emotion is embedded in the discourse of companies from both cultural models, its expression is more frequent and intense in the U.S. texts. The observed dissimilarities are discussed in terms of underlying sociocultural factors. Implications arise for the teaching and learning of business communication which are still largely defined by U.S. approaches. With the rising prominence of mainland Chinese corporations worldwide, the findings provide strong evidence for students and professionals to understand Chinese as well as U.S. rhetorical styles in business communication in order to be better prepared for the global business environment.
This paper explores the role of narratives as resources for enacting group membership and community building in the case of one company, a Greek-Turkish partnership, SforSteel. We pay special attention to the function of iterative stories and specifically one that indexes the origin of the partnership. The analysis shows that the story, and its episodes, act as significant interactional resources for partners to claim a shared regional identity, that of people coming from the area of Trabzon in the Black Sea region. By negotiating a common origin, the partners simultaneously strengthen their long-term relationship and continuously reconnect the past to the present. The strong long-term relationship has a symbolic status and constitutes a condition for being accepted in this community. Through the analysis of this story our discussion addresses the importance of iterativity and the foundational relationship between community and trust.
National stereotypes are inherently evaluative, often negatively, and potentially prejudicial. While research has examined stereotypes from an organisational perspective, this is overwhelmingly in experimental settings involving students ( Landy, 2008 ); in other words not in workplaces, and not involving employees doing their jobs. Through a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of 53 authentic business meetings, this study finds that among certain communities, national stereotypes are used in workplace narratives, and argues that such narratives constitute a contextual, situated social practice. The novel methodology pinpoints and categorises all stereotypes in business-meeting narratives, before discussing what role they play in indexing the identities of the stereotyped and the stereotyping. Finally, evaluation, ideology and power are critically engaged with to explain their use or non-use, thus making a theoretical contribution to studies of evaluation, workplace narratives, and stereotyping in discourse. While ethically problematic, and potentially detrimental to business success, their use may be motivated by local workplace goals.
The cross-cultural study of the words defining social values are of particular importance in interdisciplinary contexts, as the knowledge of their culture-specific semantic as well as discursive characteristics contributes to a better understanding of how people think and act in a society. The paper focuses on the English lexeme tolerance and its translation equivalents in Russian and Serbian. It aims to specify linguacultural characterizations of the notion of tolerance in British, Russian and Serbian cultures. The data were taken from dictionaries, British National Corpus (BNC), Russian National Corpus (RNC), Corpus of Contemporary Serbian (SrpKor), as well as media and Internet resources. The combined methodology (pragma-semantic, discourse and lingua-cultural analysis) enabled us to reveal that the dictionary equivalents of the English lexeme tolerance are not complete, but partial. The findings show that in Russian and Serbian the words of Latin etymology tolerantnost’ and tolerancija seem to invoke both positive and negative attitudes, reflecting cultural norms and values. The paper contributes to the understanding of tolerance in the observed linguacultures and confirms that it is important to consider interdisciplinary approaches to language studies.
Theories of social capital hold that strong interpersonal relationships can be leveraged to facilitate information sharing, gain trust, and strengthen group solidarity. Thus, it is often predicted that international workers are disadvantaged in these areas because they lack established social ties. Using data from disagreements between American interns and their colleagues in Japanese companies, this study critically examines this prediction by illustrating some ways participants use socially constructed representations of intercultural ideologies in ways that facilitate similar outcomes and substitute for their lack of relational histories. Specifically, these representations temporarily reverse flows of information, resist restrictions stemming from perceived lack of trust, and create shared humor that helps redefine in-group boundaries. By using a formal social capital model to interpret these results, this study helps position socially constructed representations of interculturality within a broader theoretical account of the potentially many forms of symbolic ‘capital’ that enable action. (Social capital, interculturality, disagreements, workplace, social identity)*
Much like in everyday life, politeness is key to the smooth running of relationships and interactions. Professional contexts, however, tend to be characterised by a plethora of behaviours that may be specific to that context. They include ‘polite’ behaviours, ‘impolite’ behaviours and behaviours that arguably fall somewhere between – or outside – such concepts. The twelve chapters making up this edited collection explore these behaviours in a range of communication contexts representative of business, medical, legal and security settings. Between them, the contributions will help readers to theorize about – and in some cases operationalize (im)politeness and related behaviours for – these real-world settings. The authors take a broad, yet theoretically underpinned, definition of politeness and use it to help explain, analyse and inform professional interactions. They demonstrate the importance of understanding how interactions are negotiated and managed in professional settings. The edited collection has something to offer, therefore, to academics, professionals and practitioners alike.
De-Gendering Gendered Occupations brings together contributions from researchers on language and gender studies and workplace discourse to unpack and challenge hegemonic gendered norms encoded in what are traditionally considered female occupations. The volume integrates a range of theoretical frameworks, including conversation analysis, pragmatics, and interactional sociolinguistics, to analyse data from such professions as primary education, healthcare, and speech and language therapy across various geographic contexts. Through this lens, the first part of the book examines men’s linguistic practices with the second part offering a comparative analysis of 'male' and 'female' discourse. The settings discussed here allow readers to gain insights into the ways in which cultural, professional, and gendered identity intersect for practitioners in these professions and in turn, future implications for discourse around gendered professions more generally. This book will be key reading for students and researchers in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, gender studies, cultural studies, and professional discourse.
This chapter examines healthcare communication in multicultural and multilingual contexts, using Hong Kong and Chile as examples. In contrast to most previous studies on medical communication in multicultural contexts that focus on communication with patients of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the chapter explores diversity among healthcare professionals. Due to mostly socioeconomic factors, professional mobility in healthcare has been on the increase in the last few decades. For example, in Hong Kong, migrant medical professionals comprise a significant proportion (around 1/7) of the workforce. Improved socioeconomic conditions as a result of a move overseas, however, do not come without hurdles, such as a typically required period of extensive re-training or internship in a new country followed by stringent professional exams, and social and cultural adaptation to a new working and living environment. To explore these issues in detail, we draw on the data from an on-going collaborative project on migrant doctors in Hong Kong and Chile. Our data are semi-structured interviews with professionals who have received their professional training in one country, and relocated to another country (Hong Kong or Chile) afterwards. To begin with, we discuss the advantages and the limitations of using interview data in empirical linguistic research in medical contexts. Then, drawing on the notion of accounts (Arribas-Ayllon et al., 2011) that refers to understanding language use as action-oriented, situated and strategic, we examine how these migrant medical professionals reflect on the intersections of healthcare systems, cultures and practices, and the challenges that the transitions overseas have brought to them. We discuss the importance of socialization processes, including linguistic and cultural socialization, in making sense of the new intercultural experiences for these migrant doctors. To conclude, we discuss how the localized transitions of individuals contribute to and are a part of global transitioning of healthcare service deliveries.
All aspects of illness and healthcare are mediated by language: experiences of illness, death and healthcare provision are talked and written about (face-to-face or online), while medical consultations, research interviews, public health communications and even some diagnostic instruments are all inherently linguistic in nature. How we talk to, about and for each other in such a sensitive context has consequences for our relationships, our sense of self, how we understand and reason about our health, as well as for the quality care we receive. Yet, linguistic analysis has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream of medical education, health communication training and even the medical or health humanities.
The chapters in this volume bring together applied linguistic work using discourse analysis, corpus methods, conversation analysis, metaphor analysis, cognitive linguistics, multiculturalism research, interactional sociolinguistics, narrative analysis, and (im)politeness to make sense of a variety of international healthcare contexts and situations. These include:
-clinician-patient interactions
-receptionist-patient interactions
-online support forums
-online counselling
-public health communication
-media representations
-medical accounts
-diagnostic tools and definitions
-research interviews with doctors and patients
The volume demonstrates how linguistic analysis can not only improve understandings of the lived-experience of different illnesses, but also has implications for communications training, disease prevention, treatment and self-management, the effectiveness of public health messaging, access to appropriate care, professional mobility and professional terminology, among others..
This research reports intercultural dialogue of meaning making in literacy by lecturers, engaged with an assessment moderation process of early childhood education (ECE) preservice teacher education across Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The purpose of the dialogue was to inform pedagogical and conceptual knowledge in their courses. The research question is: How does intercultural dialogue inform teacher education literacy practices? Methods include (1) a blind assessment review process using 30 examples from ‘high’ to ‘low’ exemplars of ECE students’ literacy assessment annotations, some from each country, and (2) textual analysis of intercultural student feedback and reflection from student forum comments and, semi-structured reflexive interviews with students about the assessment moderation process. Rich academic reflections on the data have led to our recommendations that the conceptual framework of intercultural praxis could be applied in early childhood preservice teacher education practice. Further, we suggest there are increased possibilities for the use of intercultural literacy with ECE preservice student teachers using virtual and explicit collaborations and texts as explained in this research.
Digital disruption leads to new possibilities of combining physical and digital aspects in the same environment. Phygital is one kind of environment, where physical and digital elements are integrated for the introduction of robots and artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and sensors. The paper: 1) defines the components of phygital environments, giving examples of their application in organizations; 2) provides suggestions to structure human resource management (HRM) during the transition to phygital organizational environments; 3) presents practical indications for developing effective internal communication on the introduction of one phygital component (augmented reality or AR). The last objective is fulfilled through a Corpus-assisted discourse analysis of TED talks dealing with augmented reality. Findings point out that: the process of applying AR is an experience well-represented by the metaphor of a journey; managers and human resources specialists should include, in the internal communication, technical aspects of AR technology, expectations and possibilities due to the implementation of this technology, and possible perceived changes in the organizational environment.
This research investigates an intercultural praxis approach to using visual research methods, in Australia and Vietnam, with preservice teachers in a Diploma of Early Childhood (DEC) course. The paper results from limited research with DEC preservice teachers exploring the development of intercultural praxis and limited research in teaching whilst using visual images (photos). The methodology is supported by using Bennett’s developmental continuum for intercultural sensitivity and draws on sociocultural theories to consider how these DEC preservice teachers’ histories and situational contexts are relevant in understanding the development of intercultural communication. Mixed methods include a comparative analysis of student-produced visual multiliteracy images (photographs) generated in Australia and Vietnam, during 2015 and 2016, annotations on those photos and interviews with two cohorts of students (n = 27) six months after their experiences in Vietnam. Analysis is reinforced with Sorrells’ intercultural praxis framework to understand students’ capacity to use inquiry, framing, positioning, and dialogue processes as a result of their study tour to Vietnam. The paper outlines and reinforces the importance of being explicit in developing intercultural sensitivity in dynamic teaching contexts and illustrates the increasing awareness of intercultural communication with these DEC students.
In this article, we problematize the concept of “culture” in genetic counseling. With globalization and increased mobility of both genetic professionals and clients, there is an increased acknowledgement of the impact of “culture” on a counseling process. There is, however, little agreement on what “culture” is. The essentialist understanding that has long been dominant in the medical literature views culture as a set of shared beliefs, attitudes and practices among a group of people. Such an approach does not account for the individual differences and the dynamic nature of genetic counseling encounters. Following Zayts and Schnurr (2017), we use the distinction between two orders of culture: culture1 that refers to the static, generalized understanding of culture that is external to the specific context, and culture2, an analytic concept that denotes dynamic enactments of culture, emerging in the interaction. We use empirical data from genetic counseling sessions to illustrate these different facets of culture and to consider how and why speakers draw on them. The clinical implications of the study include highlighting the importance of cultural awareness among counselors, including cultural self‐awareness, and demonstrating how authentic interactional data could be used to enhance cultural training in genetic counseling.
This paper problematizes the stereotypical view that leadership is culturally linked and underlines the significant role of subordinates in shaping leadership styles. Employing micro-analytic techniques, the study analyses meetings of two work teams in an international corporation. Findings reveal that although the team leaders are of the same national culture (Swedish), leadership is practiced in a very different manner and can be enacted in ways not adhering to their cultural norms. Moreover, leadership is collaboratively constructed by all participants. This paper highlights the importance of studying authentic leadership discourse and going beyond cultural stereotypes for future research into leadership practices.
人們通常認為一個領導的領導行為與該領導的文化背景息息相關，本文對這一觀念的準確性提出質疑，并指出下屬在建構領導的領導行為的過程中扮演重要角色。本文運用微觀分析法，考察同一跨國公司中兩個工作組的會議交流過程，重點分析會議主持活動。 研究表明，雖然兩工作組的領導來自同一文化背景(瑞典文化），但他們領導方式大不相同。研究還發現領導行為呈動態發展趨勢，且不一定符合所屬文化背景的規範。此外，我們認為領導行為是所有參與者共同建構的结果，下屬在建構領導的領導行為方面發揮重要作用。本文強調採用真實語料及超越文化和陳規定型觀念對領導行為的研究的重要性。
The expanding orientations to translingualism are motivated by a gradual shift from the structuralist paradigm that has been treated as foundational in modern linguistics. Structuralism encouraged scholars to consider language, like other social constructs, as organized as a self-defining and closed structure, set apart from spatiotemporal 'context' (which included diverse considerations such as history, geography, politics, and society). Translingualism calls for a shift from these structuralist assumptions to consider more mobile, expansive, situated, and holistic practices. In this article, I articulate how a poststructuralist paradigm might help us theorize and practice translingualism according to a spatial orientation that embeds communication in space and time, considering all resources as working together as an assemblage in shaping meaning. I illustrate from my ongoing research with international STEM scholars in a Midwestern American university to theorize how translingualism will redefine the role of constructs such as language, non-verbal artifacts, and context in communicative proficiency.
In many societies the relative social status of different social and cultural groups results in hegemonic relationships or an ‘order’ which manifests itself as sets of taken-for-granted societal norms or ideologies which influence behavior, including linguistic behavior. I label this concept the culture order , and propose it as a potential sociolinguistic universal. Drawing on the research of the Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) team, I provide evidence of some of the complex components of the New Zealand culture order. Using a social realist theoretical framework, and an interactional sociolinguistics approach, I identify a number of areas of contrast in the discourses instantiating the Māori and Pākehā culture orders (e.g. meeting norms, ways of criticising others), as well as discourse norms apparently shared by both groups (e.g. the Modesty Maxim; see Leech 2014). The complexities of these similarities and differences are discussed as well as their implications for hegemonic relationships. (Culture order, workplace discourse, sociolinguistic universals, egalitarianism, meeting norms)*
This collection provides a kaleidoscopic view of a range of identity struggles in the workplace context. It features twenty-two case studies that present an eclectic mix of workplaces in different socio-cultural contexts. They include, among others, household workers in Peru and Hong Kong, female professionals in India and the UK, social workers in Botswana and on Canadian reserves, tourist guides in Europe and construction workers in New Zealand. The volume addresses important questions on professional competence, group membership, (sometimes competing) expectations, and identity boundaries. The chapters establish that identity struggles are a reflection of issues of knowledge, competing norms and attempts for social change.
The rare booklet Diccionario pueril para uso dos meninos, ou dos que principiaõ o A B C, e a soletrar
dicções belongs to the considerable number of metalinguistic manuals that were published in the city of
Pernambuco by the printer Francisco Luís Ameno (1713-1793).On its title page, the author identifies
himself as ‘Luiz Alvares Pinto, born in the city of S. Antonio do Recife de Pernambuco’. Although there is
a nineteenth century contestation of the authorship, there seems to be no doubt that the author is identical
with the Pernambucan ‘Mulatto, musician, chapel-master and teacher’ who is known in his country of
origin as Luís Alves Pinto (1719-1789).The Diccionario pueril is not actually an exact dictionary, it is instead,
a school manual addressed to matters of correct pronunciation and spelling, promising an outlook on the
ideas of a linguist with normative ideas that manifest conscience of the differences in the Portuguese
language.
RESUMO. Que conceito de 'imagem' emerge da evolução semântica dos principais princípios estéticos que se inscreveram no pensamento ocidental? Tal é a pergunta-chave que anima o corpo analítico deste texto. Para sustentar, teoricamente, uma resposta a esta questão, é aqui introduzida a distinção seminal entre 'objetos da percepção e objetos para a percepção', que nos permitirá analisar e compreender o modo como as formas imagéticas artísticas expõem e transpõem os regimes estéticos. Palavras-chave: arte, belo, estética, imagem, percepção, sublime.
Objects of perception and objects for perception. From the aesthetic concepts to the picture theory ABSTRACT. Which concept of 'picture' arises from the semantic evolution of the main aesthetic principles that have marked Western thought? Such is the key question that enlightens the analytic core of this paper. To theoretically sustain an answer to this question, it is here introduced the seminal distinction between 'objects of perception and objects for perception', allowing us to analyze and understand how artistic pictorial forms expose and transpose aesthetic regimes.
Modern work life is increasingly characterized by a shift from the traditional, hierarchical organization to more collaborative forms, often referred to as ‘the post-bureaucratic organization’. Within this setting, team decision making is becoming a crucial activity for managing the complex and multiprofessional processes at play. The study of organizational decision making has had a long tradition in the social sciences, but largely without attending to the micro-analytic level of organizational interaction. This article provides a systematic review of discourse analytic studies on team decision making in professional settings such as healthcare, social work, education and business. The procedures used for identifying eligible studies included online database searches such as JSTOR, ISI Web of Science, ERIC, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, as well as searches in reference lists in scientific papers and books on discourse and decision making. Findings show that there are few discourse studies that explicitly deal with team decision making and that these are located empirically in different professional domains. A majority of the studies use ethnographic insights to supplement their analyses, but without analysing discourse outside the context of the meeting. The discussion will focus on discourse strategies related to assessing information, reaching agreement, managing disagreement, as well as how organizational hierarchies influence the use and effect of these strategies.
Modern work life is increasingly characterized by a shift from the traditional, hierarchical organization to more collaborative forms, often referred to as 'the post-bureaucratic organization'. Within this setting, team decision making is becoming a crucial activity for managing the complex and multiprofessional processes at play. The study of organizational decision making has had a long tradition in the social sciences, but largely without attending to the micro-analytic level of organizational interaction. This article provides a systematic review of discourse analytic studies on team decision making in professional settings such as healthcare, social work, education and business. The procedures used for identifying eligible studies included online database searches such as JSTOR, ISI Web of Science, ERIC, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, as well as searches in reference lists in scientific papers and books on discourse and decision making. Findings show that there are few discourse studies that explicitly deal with team decision making and that these are located empirically in different professional domains. A majority of the studies use ethnographic insights to supplement their analyses, but without analysing discourse outside the context of the meeting. The discussion will focus on discourse strategies related to assessing information, reaching agreement, managing disagreement, as well as how organizational hierarchies influence the use and effect of these strategies.
The papers in this special issue on Chinese 'face' and im/politeness collectively raise very real challenges for the ways in which the now wellknown distinction between first order and second order approaches is conceptualized and operationalized by face and politeness researchers. They highlight the difficulties we inevitably encounter when analyzing face and im/politeness across languages and cultures, in particular, those arising from (1) the use of English as a scientific metalanguage to describe concepts and practices in other languages and cultures, (2) the inherent ambiguity and conservatism of folk concepts such as face and politeness, and (3) the difficulties in teasing out face and im/politeness as important phenomena in their own right. In this paper it is suggested that these issues arise as a consequence of the relative paucity of critical discussion of the first-second order distinction by analysts. It is argued that the first-second order distinction needs to be more carefully deconstructed in regards to both its epistemological and ontological loci. It is suggested that equating first order approaches with an "emic" perspective and second order approaches with a "scientific" perspective masks a number of important distinctions that are too often glossed over by those who make claims to being either first or second order researchers. It is concluded that rather than treating the first-second order distinction as a simplistic dichotomy, it is much more productive to deploy the multiple loci of the first-second order distinction in clarifying the various focal points for analysis and theorization in face and politeness research.
Most previous research on (im)politeness in Chinese has not centered on strong disagreement although a few studies have examined disagreement in Chinese via elicitation or in unequal-status situations. This study attempts to uncover strong disagreement emerging as a strategy for facework and relationship management employed by non-familial equal-status Mandarin-speaking participants in everyday practice in a southeastern city of mainland China. Spontaneous mundane conversations were collected through interactional sociolinguistic methods and analyzed by means of the discursive approach featuring the avoidance of overgeneralization, the elusiveness of (im)politeness and the inclusion of participants’ emic perspectives. The participants were found to co-construct strong disagreement to conduct facework and manage relationships without any manifestation of negative evaluations. Most of the instances of strong disagreement were face and relationship maintaining or face and relationship enhancing, although some appeared to be face threatening. A close look at the local specificities of the conversations reveals that these face-threatening instances still functioned to maintain the interactants’ relationships. The study suggests the importance of situating research in local contexts and the necessity to revisit stereotypes concerning Chinese. The findings can promote the understanding of intercultural communication that involves native Chinese speakers.
Im/politeness is often conceptualised as the hearer's evaluation of a speaker's behaviour in discursive politeness research, representing the broader concern with the participant's perspective in current im/politeness research. Yet despite the importance afforded evaluations in such approaches, the notion of evaluation itself has remained, with just a few notable exceptions, remarkably under-theorised in pragmatics. In this paper it is proposed, building on work from discursive psychology and ethnomethodology, that im/politeness evaluations are intimately inter-related with the interactional achievement of social actions and pragmatic meanings vis-à-vis the moral order, and thus evaluations of im/politeness can be ultimately understood as a form of social practice. However, it is argued that an analysis of im/politeness as social practice necessitates a move away from a simplistic speaker–hearer model of interaction to a consideration of the broader participation framework (Goffman, 1981) within which they arise, and the positioning of the analysts vis-à-vis that participation order. A key finding from close analysis of evaluations of im/politeness in interaction relative to these participation footings is that they are distributed, variable and cumulative in nature.
Communication is an important component in the construction of workplace identities, including leader and group identities. Micro-level analysis of everyday workplace discourse provides valuable insights into the way leadership is constructed and how workplace culture is created, maintained, and changed. In this context, leaders and managers are inevitably significant and influential participants, with a crucial impact on workplace culture. Drawing on audio and video data collected in 12 meetings of an IT department, the analysis demonstrates ways in which two leaders, who succeed each other in the role of Director, reinforce and shape the culture of the workplace in which they operate. While both leaders claim teamwork as an important cultural value for their teams, their respective instantiations of teamwork are rather different. To explore the leaders' effect on the culture of their department, this investigation of leadership change examines ways in which the leaders manage regular workplace meetings (communication with a predominantly transactional orientation) and how they contribute to workplace humour (more relationally oriented behaviour). The analysis provides detailed evidence of the ways in which a change in leadership style can create the conditions for a change in the culture of a community of practice.
Despite the recent interest in discursive approaches to leadership, relatively little research actually provides fine-grained analyses of how leadership is dialogically achieved in interaction. Taking a social constructionist approach to leadership and using discursive constructionism as a research methodology to analyze transcripts of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, this article explicates the doing of leadership as a member’s accomplishment. It defines leadership in terms of being able to influence the management of meaning through the way in which decisions are framed using assessments. In this way, certain meanings are privileged over others and so meaning is managed. Findings support current theories of leadership that show it to be a distributed process rather than the possession of any one person. Furthermore, it is argued that by highlighting discursive techniques by which leadership is achieved, the results of this research can benefit practitioners.
There are no sex differences in cognitive ability but enduring sex differences in competitiveness, life goals, the relative emphasis on agency versus connection. Policy-makers’ and feminist emphasis on equal opportunities and family-friendly policies assumes that sex discrimination is the primary source of sex differentials in labour market outcomes—notably the pay gap between men and women. However, some careers and occupations cannot be domesticated—examples are given—and this also poses limits to social engineering. Recent research shows that high levels of female employment and family-friendly policies reduce gender equality in the workforce and produce the glass ceiling. Preference theory is the only theory that can explain these new trends, the continuing pay gap and occupational segregation. Preference theory implies that there are at least three types of career rather than one. However, the differences between men and women's career goals are smaller than sometimes thought.
Understanding Intercultural Communication provides a practical framework to help readers to understand intercultural communication and to solve intercultural problems. Each chapter exemplifies the everyday intercultural through ethnographic narratives in which people make sense of each other in home, work and study locations. Underpinned by a grammar of culture developed by the author, this book addresses key issues in intercultural communication, including: the positive contribution of people from diverse cultural backgrounds; the politics of Self and Other which promote negative stereotyping; the basis for a de-centred approach to globalisation in which periphery cultural realities can gain voice and ownership. Written by a leading researcher in the field, the new edition of this important text has been revised to invite the reader to reflect and develop their own intercultural and research strategies, and updated to include new ideas that have emerged in Holliday’s own work and elsewhere. This book is a key resource for academics, students and practitioners in intercultural communication and related fields.
This book is a theoretical and practical discussion of intercultural communication and interaction and is aimed at academic courses as well as professional development programmes. It focuses, from a critical perspective, on the intercultural dynamics established between the members of multicultural groups/teams in various types of work environments. Selected academics and other experts on intercultural communication and interaction, representing different approaches and professional experience, joined, collaborated and contributed to the fulfilment of a three-year project where they developed a model in eight axes: - Intercultural Responsibility, Emotional Management, Intercultural Interaction, Communicative Interaction, Ethnography, Biography, Diversity Management and Working in Multicultural Teams. Each chapter provides an interdisciplinary account of its topic as well as an activity which aims to illustrate the ideas proposed. © 2010 Manuela Guilherme, Evelyne Glaser, María del Carmen Méndez García and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved.
This paper examines the discursive processes involved in the construction and negotiation of face in Chinese business interactions. Drawing on 20 hours of authentic video- and audio-recorded business meetings in two companies in Hong Kong, we analyse how interlocutors do facework while orienting to and actively constructing their interpersonal relationships. Our particular focus is disagreements upwards, i. e., those, potentially very face-threatening, disagreements that are uttered by subordinates targeted at their superiors. Findings illustrate that some disagreements are relatively strong but face and relationship maintaining, while others are relatively weak but face and relationship challenging. We not only argue that the processes of doing facework and managing relationships are closely interwoven, but we also illustrate the important role of identity in these processes, and argue that the notion of identity should be incorporated into theories of face and relationship management as it constitutes an integral aspect of how interlocutors construct and negotiate face.
This chapter explores the complex relationship between leadership and culture with a particular emphasis on critically discussing some of the cultural stereotypes that exist about leadership in the context of Hong Kong. Drawing on audio- and video-recorded data collected at two workplaces in Hong Kong, this paper challenges some of the predominant stereotypes about leadership in Hong Kong and contrasts them with insights gained through a fine-grained in-depth analysis of leadership discourse that occurred in actual workplace encounters. Findings illustrate that while there is evidence in our data to support some of the cultural stereotypes about leadership in Hong Kong (e.g. that Chinese leaders tend to be autocratic and often assume a ‘father’ role while subordinates are submissive and expect to be told what to do), the everyday practices of leadership of actual people interacting with each other in actual workplaces doing actual things are much more complex and often more contradictory than these stereotypical claims and grand statements suggest. In actual practice, leadership is a highly complex and multifaceted concept and people draw on a wide range of different leadership styles to meet the situational demands.
This advanced textbook critically reviews a range of theoretical and empirical work on gendered discourses, and explores how gendered discourses can be identified, described and named. It also examines the actual workings of discourses in terms of construction and their potential to 'damage'. For upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in discourse analysis, gender studies, social psychology and media studies.
Combining perspectives from discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, this introduction provides students with a comprehensive, up-to-date and critical overview of the field of intercultural communication. Ingrid Piller explains communication in context using two main approaches.The first treats cultural identity, difference and similarity as discursive constructions. The second, informed by bilingualism studies, highlights the use and prestige of different languages and language varieties as well as the varying access that speakers have to them. Linguistics students will find this book a useful tool for studying language and globalization as well as applied linguistics. Key features include: Case studies from around the world Learning objectives, key points, exercises and suggestions for further reading in each chapter Reader-friendly, accessible style.
This chapter considers the female voice in public contexts as a theoretical issue: it asks whether and how women’s relationship to public discourse may be accounted for in general terms. That question might seem to go against the grain of recent, ‘third wave’ language and gender scholarship with its emphasis on ‘looking locally’ (see Editor’s Introduction). Researchers have become wary of generalizing about the linguistic position of women, and sceptical about the universalizing ‘grand narratives’ produced by some of their predecessors. The following discussion will reflect that scepticism, in that generalizations about gender will be examined critically, and attention will be given to the ‘local’ conditions affecting women’s public utterance in different times, places and social groups. Yet at the same time, for both empirical and political reasons, I do not want to discount a priori the possibility of ‘thinking globally’ about the status of the female voice in public contexts.
This book proposes a new theoretical and methodological approach to the investigation and explanation of intercultural differences in conflict management strategies and relational (politeness) strategies in workplace settings, taking the Chinese workplace as its focus.
This book challenges two tacit presumptions in the field of intercultural communication research. Firstly, misunderstandings can frequently be found in intercultural communication, although, one could not claim that intercultural communication is constituted by misunderstandings alone. This volume shows how new perspectives on linguistic analyses of intercultural communication go beyond the analysis of misunderstanding. Secondly, intercultural communication is not solely constituted by the fact that individuals from different cultural groups interact. Each contribution of this volume analyses to what extent instances of discourse are institutionally and/or interculturally determined. These linguistic reflections involve different theoretical frameworks, e.g. functional grammar, systemic functional linguistics, functional pragmatics, rhetorical conversation analysis, ethno-methodological conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology and a critical discourse approach. As the contributions focus on the discourse of genetic counseling, gate-keeping discourse, international team co-operation, international business communication, workplace discourse, internet communication, and lamentation discourse, the book exemplifies that the analysis of intercultural communication is organized in response to social needs and, therefore, may contribute to the social justification of linguistics.
This book critically examines the main features of intercultural communication. It addresses how ideology permeates intercultural processes and develops an alternative ‘grammar’ of culture. It explores intercultural communication within the context of global politics, seeks to address the specific problems that derive from Western ideology, and sets out an agenda for research. ‘Taking on issues normally left in the margins, Adrian Holliday has revised the way we think of intercultural communication by insisting that we consider its ideological component. In this brilliant and engaging book about culture and the interstices that comprise the grounds for our interactions, he shows us the necessity for a cosmopolitan process that expands the basis of our intercultural work. This is a compelling book that should be read by scholars and the general public alike. It is accessible, factual, and clear.’ – Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University.
Gender inequality in employment is a complex phenomenon that consists of both objective and subjective dimensions. The latter has been overlooked in previous research. This study examines the subjective perceptions of gender inequality at work of Hong Kong people. It analyses a data set collected from a large-scale territory-wide survey of 2,020 respondents. First, it was found that there are significant gender differences in what constitutes gender inequality as well as the perceived prevalence of gender inequality in Hong Kong. In addition to gender, respondents' age, marital status, and education are found to affect their sensitivity to gender inequality. Results of two-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) also show a significant interaction effect of gender and employment status. More research is called for to advance our understanding of subjective perceptions of gender inequality in the workplace, particularly in the Asian context.
Increasing attention to the distinction between first- and second-order im/politeness has led to considerable soul-searching among theorists regarding which of the two should form the basis of a theory of im/politeness. In this article, I take an alternative path: I build on norms of Politeness1, as attested in influential texts laying out Politeness1 norms in different parts of the world from antiquity to this day, to extract from them the core elements of a theory of Politeness2. By affording us with some glimpses into the diachronic intertwining of Politeness1 and Politeness2, this analysis helps explain why it has been so difficult to keep these two notions apart in previous research. At the same time, it suggests some possible ways forward. Specifically, this survey reveals two overarching themes regarding the role of politeness (and, by implication, impoliteness) in these cultures. The first concerns the social regulatory role of Politeness1 norms, while the second concerns the relationship of Politeness1 norms with an underlying morality. I propose that these two elements should be placed at the heart of an empirically grounded theory of Politeness2.
The book introduces both theoretical and applied perspectives, identifying and explaining the relevant frameworks and drawing on a range of activities/examples of how gender is constructed in discourse.
‘Workplace leadership’ is a gendered concept. As a public rather than a private domain, the workplace is typically male-dominated (e.g. Kendall and Tannen, 1997; McConnell-Ginet, 2000), and in most societies, men occupy the most powerful positions in companies and organisations (e.g. Hearn and Parkin, 1988; Sinclair, 1998). Until very recently, the prevailing stereotype of a leader, chief executive officer, and even senior manager has been decidedly male (e.g. Marshall, 1995), and the female voice in these public contexts has often been silenced.
Employing a discourse analytical approach this book focuses on the under-researched strategy of humour to illustrate how discursive performances of leadership are influenced by gender and workplace culture. Far from being a superfluous strategy that distracts from business, humour performs a myriad of important functions in the workplace context.
Implicit in most recent social science explanations of human behavior is a conception of man as universal homo economicus. Although such a conception is capable of giving a powerful account of a great deal of human action, its account of the nature and variety of human values is inadequate. Cultural assumptions about the meaning of “self” and “others,” and about relations between human beings, are likely to vary from one society to another. These assumptions affect the collective decision processes of political elites under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. The author first addresses the question of how to construct a compelling cultural explanation, and then offers evidence which suggests that, because Chinese, Japanese, and Russians tend to hold somewhat different conceptions of “self” and “others” than do Americans (the former tending to be more collectivist than the latter), these different conceptions have implications for collective decision making.
The overall effect of the changes made in this third edition of Communicating Across Cultures At Work includes a further increase in the focus on work and business. The second edition expanded this coverage by including a chapter on work activities such as negotiating and management; this edition includes a new chapter, Chapter 9, on international intercultural work communication, covering working in virtual teams, offshoring, working in international alliances, working in multinational enterprises and international business-to-business relations.
This article examines the question of control in participative decision-making (PDM). Control poses a particular problem in organizations today, as organizational survival is arguably dependent on the contributions of subordinates, whose viewpoints may diverge from existing organizational premises. The question of what kind of management control, if any, is exercised in PDM, becomes relevant. Yet, despite the heavy emphasis on the importance of language and communication in facilitating PDM, there is a lack of empirical research on the discourse features of facilitative management. The present article attempts to fill this gap by analyzing the pragmalinguistic patterns of facilitation in PDM sessions in three banks in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that facilitation follows distinctive patterns, using discourse strategies quite different from those of gatekeeping control. Linguistic features such as modals, pronouns etc. correspondingly exhibit a different pattern of use. However, facilitative discourse also displays certain features commonly found in the discourse of authoritative control, such as the use of questions, rephrasing etc. Wliile control is evident in the guidance provided, the facilitative manager may come to a point where positional power has to submit to the unfolding PDM process. The patterns observed can be accounted for by the particular organizational and cultural contexts of the management discourse.
This article categorizes definitions of work life balance (WLB) according to a framework of ethical ideologies. By understanding what perspective the definition of WLB is framed within, practitioners and academics will be better able to assess the suitability of that definition for a particular application. Although many current definitions are absolutist in nature, dictating a “right” balance that all should aspire to, the author argues that definitions reflecting a situationalist perspective are most valuable to academics and practitioners. Definitions from a situationalist perspective offer an opportunity to explore what factors contribute to attainment of WLB for particular groups of people. Once there are broadly agreed definitions of WLB for groups of people, relevant measures of WLB and WLB initiatives that respond to these definitions can be developed. This will provide a baseline for the comparative analysis of WLB programs. Implications for organization development interventions and change management practice are explored.