Investigating Workplace Discourse

Exploring the characteristics of different types of workplace conversations, including decision-making, training, briefing or making arrangements, this enthralling account pays particular attention to interactions with a more social focus, such as small talk or office gossip. Presenting a range of approaches to analyzing such workplace discourse, Almut Koester argues for a combination of quantitative corpus-based methods, to compare specific linguistic features in different genres and qualitative methods involving a close analysis of individual conversations, to explore such issues as politeness, power, conflict and consensus-building. A corpus of conversations recorded in a variety of office environments both in the UK and the USA is used throughout to demonstrate the interplay between speakers accomplishing tasks and maintaining relationships in the workplace.

Almut Koester is Lecturer in English Language in the Department of English, University of Birmingham, UK.

Notes on data and transcription

ix

Acknowledgements

xi

Workplace discourse: an overview

1

(10)

Introduction

1

(2)

Institutional, professional and workplace discourse

3

(6)

Outline of the book

9

(2)

Approaches to analysing workplace discourse

11

(20)

Introduction

11

(1)

The role of context

11

(5)

Quantitative and qualitative approaches

16

(5)

Genre analysis

21

(4)

Goals, frames and genre

25

(3)

The ABOT Corpus

28

(2)

Conclusion

30

(1)

Pursuing transactional goals: spoken workplace genres

31

(21)

Introduction

31

(1)

Description of the corpus

31

(4)

Decision-making

35

(8)

Procedural / directive discourse

43

(4)

Fuzzy boundaries between genres

47

(3)

Conclusion

50

(2)

Relational goals: a framework for analysing interpersonal dimensions of workplace talk

52

(20)

Introduction

52

(1)

Workplace and business relationships

52

(1)

Relational goals and genre

53

(1)

Types of relational talk

54

(6)

The functions of relational talk

60

(3)

The lexico-grammatical level: approaches to linguistic manifestations of relational goals

63

(8)

Conclusion

71

(1)

A corpus-based comparison of workplace genres

72

(36)

Introduction

72

(3)

Methods of corpus analysis

75

(1)

Modality

76

(12)

Vague language

88

(6)

Hedges and intensifiers

94

(4)

Idioms

98

(6)

Summary: analysis of interpersonal markers

104

(2)

Conclusion

106

(2)

Negotiating consensus and conflict in workplace talk

108

(29)

Introduction

108

(1)

Negotiating politeness and solidarity in unequal encounters

108

(14)

Dealing with conflict in collaborative talk

122

(13)

Conclusion

135

(2)

Relational talk in workplace interactions

137

(23)

Introduction

137

(2)

Non-transactional conversations: office gossip and small talk

139

(2)

Relational talk in transactional discourse

141

(3)

Relational sequences and turns

144

(14)

Conclusion

158

(2)

Conclusion

160

(4)

Notes

164

(3)

Bibliography

167

(12)

Index

179

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Investigating Workplace Discourse

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials