This volume empirically explores how different linguistic resources are used to achieve appropriate workplace role inhabitance and to achieve work-oriented communicative ends in a variety of workplaces in Japan. Appropriate role inhabitance is seen to include considerations of gender and interpersonal familiarity (e.g., time in service), along with speaker orientation to normative structures for marking power and politeness. How linguistic resources are deployed to achieve the ârightâ workplace persona for specific interactional moments is the underlying focus of all the contributions to this volume.
With a few notable exceptions, including the massive paired studies from the 1990s, Josee no Kotoba: Shokubahen âWomenâs Speech: In the Workplaceâ and Dansee no Kotoba: Shokubahen âMenâs Speech: In the Workplaceâ (published as a single volume in Gendai Nihongo KenkyĆ«kai 2011), Japanese workplace discourse based on naturally occurring data has not been fully investigated. This is, perhaps, in part because the workplace is âa restricted research siteâ (Mullany 2007), but this has not impeded recent researchers from beginning to find ways to develop workplace discourse projects cross-culturally, as we delineate below. Some follow-up work to the paired 1990s studies has also begun in Japan. Gaps remain, nonetheless, in the literature on Japanese workplace discourse, and this project aims to fill some of those gaps.
Research on workplace discourse in Western scholarship has investigated a wide variety of topics including identity construction and speech acts in different workplaces (e.g., Angouri and Marra 2012; Baxter 2008; Koester 2006; Holmes et al. 1999; Holmes 2006; Marra 2012; Mullany 2007; Rees and Monrouxe 2010). It has analyzed how leadership identities are constructed in a wide range of professional and institutional settings. Leadership identities are often constructed by performing speech acts, such as setting agenda, summarizing decisions, and closing the meeting (e.g., Holmes et al. 1999). A higher status can be indexed by the initiating and closing of teasing sequences and small talk as well (Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Mullany 2007; Rees and Monrouxe 2010). For example, Rees and Monrouxe (2010), who studied interactions among a student, patient, and doctor in bedside teaching encounters in a medical workplace in the UK, report that it is usually students who are teased and it is doctors who terminate laughter by resuming non-laughing talk. Those in higher positions, however, do not always assert their power and often minimize status asymmetries by various indirect strategies including negative politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1987). In addition, collaborative talk makes status difference less obvious and creates a more equal relationship (e.g., Holmes and Stubbe 2003).
Some studies especially investigated how professional identities are constructed through gendered language (e.g., Mullany 2007). One of the questions about gendered language in the workplace is whether male and female workers in managerial positions issue directives differently (Holmes 2006; Mullany 2007). The dominant ideology associated with workplace directives assumes that while male workersâ directives are direct, contestive, and authoritative, female workersâ directives are indirect and less authoritative. Contrary to this assumption, the findings of the studies based on naturally occurring workplace interactions indicate that male and female workers in managerial positions use a wide range of directives, including ones typically associated with the other gender (Holmes 2006; Mullany 2007). This line of research demonstrates that gender is not a major factor that influences the choice of directives. Rather, choice of directives is generally made according to relative power, status, and role responsibility. However, gender inequality in workplaces still remains, due to male and female professionalsâ perception of gender ideologies (cf. Mullany 2007).
Other studies examined how disagreement is dealt with in the workplace (Angouri 2012; Holmes and Marra 2004; Marra 2012; McCrae 2009). The research found that direct expression of disagreement in the workplace is generally uncommon. In New Zealand workplaces, disagreements are often expressed implicitly or indirectly among co-workers who are native speakers of English (Holmes and Marra 2004). In intercultural settings, disagreements tend to be reinterpreted as miscommunication or misunderstanding (Marra 2012). In some communities, however, disagreement is considered a ânormalâ work-related action. In companies in Europe, participants in meetings treat âdisagreementâ as an inherent part of the problem-solving process and do not perceive disagreement as a face-threatening act or impoliteness (Angouri 2012).
In addition, this line of research in Western settings (e.g., Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Vine 2004) often touches upon the correlation between power and politeness in workplace interactions, which offers information about how workers not only work to achieve their institutional goals but also to maintain good social relationships in workplaces. Some studies have analyzed directives in the workplace to see whether professionals mitigate their directives to accommodate their co-workersâ face needs (Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Holmes and Woodhams 2013; Koester 2006; Vine 2004). These studies indicate that in issuing directives, professionals carefully manage the balance between getting things done and keeping a good relationship with their subordinates by taking situational factors into consideration (Holmes and Stubbe 2003; Holmes and Woodhams 2013; Koester 2006; Vine 2009). Holmes and Stubbe (2003) show that context and setting, the nature and length of relationships, and/or the nature of the required task affect how managers issue directives to their subordinates. For example, a superior tends to use indirect forms to an unfamiliar subordinate, but her directives may become more direct once the two become comfortable with one another. Attention to co-workersâ feelings is another important consideration in issuing directives (Vine 2009). Directives exchanged between equals are always mitigated, and managers soften their directives to their subordinates. In the workplace, where rapport among co-workers is indispensable (Holmes and Marra 2004), humor and small talk contribute to enhancing rapport and minimizing power differences. Humor can mitigate face-threatening acts such as disagreements and requests. Workers in a subordinate position can deploy humor in order to express resistance or disagreement. In addition, humor works as a âtension releaseâ (Holmes and Stubbe 2003: 71) when participants in a meeting face difficult situations. In sum, research on workplace discourse in Western scholarship has demonstrated that (1) professionals discursively construct their identity in workplace interaction; (2) workplace gender inequality persists due to professionalsâ perception and evaluation of gender ideologies rather than use of gendered language; and (3) professionals carefully balance between power and politeness by paying attention to face-needs of their co-workers.
A few studies on Japanese workplaces (e.g., Miller 1988, 1994; Murata 2014, 2015; Saito 2011, 2012; [Shibamoto] Smith 1992; Takano 2005; Yamada 1992) suggest that Japanese business discourse differs from that of the West. This assessment, too, needs more focused empirical support, requiring empirical studies such as several of the contributions in this volume, which directly address findings from the corresponding empirical work in Western settings. But beyond focused comparisons to findings of interest in other regions, it is of critical importance to offer detailed empirical studies of aspects of the Japanese workplace that complicate the associations of, for example, politeness to power(lessness); gender to particular workplace role asymmetries; and workplace talk to seriousness and formality. For example, with respect to the relation between politeness and power, Takano (2005) reported that politeness is a display of power. Since Takanoâs research predominantly focuses on female professionals in managerial positions, however, it is vital to investigate how other Japanese workers manipulate power and politeness. Further, we need to know more about exactly how power and politeness are negotiated and strategically balanced in different Japanese workplaces, differently located on societa...