Power and Politeness in the Workplace

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Talk at Work

Janet Holmes, Maria Stubbe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317611530
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

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.

1

Power, Politeness and the Workplace Context

Power, politeness and context

This book explores the complex and fascinating relationship between power and politeness in the workplace. Our focus is workplace discourse and we examine how people ‘do’ power and politeness throughout the day in their talk at work. A good starting point for our exploration is the following brief excerpt taken from a meeting of a project team in a multinational organisation (Example 1.1).

Example 1.1

Context: Regular weekly meeting of project team in white-collar, commercial organisation.¹

1	HAR:	look’s like there’s been actually a request for screendumps
2		I know it was outside of the scope
3		but people will be pretty worried about it
4	CLA:	no screendumps
5	MATT:	we-
6	CLA:	no screendumps
7	PEG:	[sarcastically] thank you Clara
8	CLA:	/no screendumps\
9	MATT:	/we know\we know you didn’t want them and we um er/we’ve\
10	CLA:	/that does not\ meet the criteria
		[several reasons provided why screendumps should be allowed]
11	CLA:	thanks for looking at that though
12	SAN:	so that’s a clear well maybe no
13	CLA:	it’s a no
14	SAN:	it’s a no a royal no
15	CLA:	did people feel disempowered by that decision
16	PEG:	[sarcastically] no

This excerpt, taken from the middle of the team’s meeting, provides a useful means of introducing some of the main themes of this book. First, it is very difficult to understand without substantial glossing. Second, it illustrates a very blunt and explicit exercise of power and authority, and an apparent disregard of the norms of conventional politeness. Third, it demonstrates the kinds of things people achieve with words at work: giving instructions, disagreeing with and challenging each other, avoiding miscommunication, amusing their colleagues, maintaining good collegial relations, and so on. We will briefly discuss these points in this chapter, but they will also recur regularly throughout the book.

In the meeting from which Example 1.1 is taken, a project team is discussing how best to provide instructions to other members of their organisation about a specialised computer process. The group has been meeting for several weeks and has developed very good rapport and a sparky style of interaction. Example 1.1 revolves around a request to allow people to print off material from the computer screen (i.e. to ‘screendump’). Clara is the overall manager of the section from which most of this project team has been selected; Sandy is the project manager. With this background it is easier to understand the referential content of the excerpt: Clara is giving a very clear directive that under no circumstances will people be allowed to print material from their screens.

A great deal of workplace talk is firmly embedded in its social and organisational context in this way. Co-workers typically take a great deal for granted; they share common assumptions, a common reference system, and use the same jargon or system of verbal shortcuts. They often share extensive background knowledge and experiences and may have similar values and attitudes towards work and the objectives of their organisation. Together these constitute a common workplace culture. Indeed, many workplace groups, such as those interacting in Example 1.1, could be described as ‘communities of practice’ – groups who regularly engage with each other in the service of a joint enterprise, and who share a repertoire of resources which enables them to communicate in a kind of verbal shorthand which is often difficult for outsiders to penetrate (Wenger 1998). The community of practice is a concept which illuminates a number of aspects of workplace interaction.

Example 1.1 is also a very clear instance of ‘doing power’ at work. Clara is the most senior person at the meeting and her uncompromising, explicit and repeated directive no screendumps (lines 4, 6, 8) reflects her status in the organisational hierarchy. No one else in this meeting, not even Sandy, the project manager, could acceptably express themselves in such an uncompromisingly direct manner, except perhaps with humorous intent (see Chapter 6). Clara is here doing power very explicitly and baldly, apparently disregarding conventionally polite ways of disagreeing with her colleagues.

On the other hand, the team’s well-established rapport and its in-group solidarity mechanisms enable them to ‘manage’ Clara’s peremptory veto in a way that preserves good working relations. Peggy’s sarcastic thank you Clara (line 7) provides an initial tension-breaker. Members of the team then provide reasons for allowing screendumps, and Clara responds (line 11) with a more conventionally polite dismissal of their suggestions thanks for looking at that though. Sandy’s internally contradictory suggestion that Clara may be wavering so that’s a clear well maybe no (line 12) is deliberately humorous, but it leads Clara to restate her position quite explicitly it’s a no (line 13). Again Sandy defuses the tension with a humorous hyperbolic comment it’s a no a royal no (line 14), echoing a reference to an earlier episode in which Clara’s status had been satirised as queen. Finally, Clara too contributes to the defusing of the tension with a tongue-in-cheek comment which draws explicit attention to feelings which people usually conceal in a business context did people feel disempowered by that decision (line 15). The team’s firmly established good relationships thus enable them to ride out Clara’s ‘bald-on-record’ directives, without irreparable damage to the ‘face needs’ of team members.²

This short excerpt illustrates nicely the ongoing negotiations between power and politeness which are typical of interactions in many workplaces. Effective management of workplace relationships takes account of the face needs of colleagues, as well as the objectives of the organisation and the individuals involved. Before describing the database used in the analyses of workplace interaction in this book, we will briefly discuss the concepts of power, politeness and context which underpin the analyses, and in the process introduce the theoretical frameworks we have found useful.

Power

There are many ways of defining power. From a sociological or psychological perspective, power is treated as a relative concept which includes both the ability to control others and the ability to accomplish one’s goals. This is manifest in the degree to which one person or group can impose their plans and evaluations at the expense of others.³ A more anthropological and social constructionist perspective extends this potential influence to embrace definitions of social reality (Gal 1995). Language is clearly a crucial means of enacting power, and equally a very important component in the construction of social reality. A social constructionist approach analyses every interaction as involving people enacting, reproducing and sometimes resisting institutional power relationships in their use of discourse by means of a range of coercive and collaborative strategies (e.g. Crawford 1995; Davies 1991; Dwyer 1993; Fairclough 1989; Ianello 1992).

Power in the workplace may be manifested in a number of ways. In Example 1.1, Clara’s authoritative position enabled her to define the rules which others were obliged to follow. But the linguistic manifestation of power need not be so blatant. In Example 1.2, a government organisation is discussing an issue which is a current hot topic in many New Zealand workplaces, namely the extent to which employees’ access to the internet should be monitored and, in particular, the organisation’s responsibilities and liability in cases where employees gain access to pornography through their workplace internet connections.

Example 1.2

Context: Regular meeting of senior management team in white collar organisation.

1	SAL:	it’s all too woolly I think in regards values violations
2		I’m more likely to come down on someone strongly and thumpingly
3		for a personal values violation than a minor rules valuation
4	GEO:	what I said in the beginning was it all depends where you sit
5		in other words whether you think that’s a values violation /and =
6	SAL:	/well I guess that depends on what they are\
7	GEO:	= that’s I mean\ as I said you know
8	SAL:	but if it’s the bestiality issue
9	ROB:	oh yeah
10	SAL:	something which is at the edge of the law there’s the legal side
11	ROB:	bestiality is not at the edge of the law it’s absolutely black and white
12		illegal

The excerpt illustrates Sally and Georgia exploring the issue of what the legislation means and how it should or could be interpreted (lines 1–7). Sally then introduces a specific issue, the bestiality issue (line 8) at which point Robin enters the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Power, Politeness and the Workplace Context
• 2 From Office to Production Line: Constructing a Corpus of Workplace Data
• 3 Getting Things Done at Work
• 4 Workplace Meetings
• 5 Small Talk and Social Chat at Work
• 6 Humour in the Workplace
• 7 Miscommunication and Problematic Talk at Work
• 8 Conclusion: Some Implications and Applications
• Appendix: Transcription Conventions
• References
• Index