Power and Politeness in the Workplace: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work (Routledge Linguistics Classics)

Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This __Routledge Linguistics Classic__ is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. __Power and Politeness in the Workplace__ continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 Preface 8 Acknowledgements 14 1 Power, Politeness and the Workplace Context 18 Power, politeness and context 18 Power 20 Politeness 22 Context 25 The Wellington Language in the Workplace Project 29 Brief outline of content of the book 31 Notes 34 2 From Office to Production Line: Constructing a Corpus of Workplace Data 35 Designing a method of collecting workplace data 36 Collecting the data 37 Conclusion 45 Notes 47 3 Getting Things Done at Work 48 Being direct downwards 50 Mitigation and management between equals 57 Getting the boss to cooperate – requests and indirectives 60 Hints 67 Conclusion 70 Notes 71 4 Workplace Meetings 73 Introduction 73 Types of meetings 76 How are meetings structured? 82 Managing interaction in meetings 88 Doing power and politeness in meetings: two case studies 95 Conclusion 102 Notes 103 5 Small Talk and Social Chat at Work 104 The distribution of social talk in the workplace 106 Social functions of non-task-oriented talk at work 113 Conclusion 123 Notes 124 6 Humour in the Workplace 126 Functions of humour in the workplace 127 Humour and workplace culture 139 Conclusion 151 Notes 152 7 Miscommunication and Problematic Talk at Work 154 Miscommunication 156 Negotiating with the boss 161 Negotiating ‘downwards’ 165 Problems, power and partnership 171 Conclusion 179 Notes 180 8 Conclusion: Some Implications and Applications 181 Introduction 181 Getting integrated at work 182 Reflection as a learning strategy for the workplace 189 Conclusion 193 Notes 197 Appendix: Transcription Conventions 198 References 199 Index 211 Drawing on a large and varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. The authors also researched the less obvious types of workplace talk such as humor and small talk which may enhance the construction of effective workplace relationships. Recommendations as to practical implications of their analyses are given