Workplace Discourse Continuum Discourse PDF

Workplace Discourse
Continuum Discourse Series

Series Editor: Professor Ken Hyland, Institute of Education, University of London.
Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in

the humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways language mediates
and shapes our interactions with each other and with the social, political
and cultural formations of our society. The Continuum Discourse Series aims to
capture the fast-developing interest in discourse to provide students, new and
experienced teachers and researchers in applied linguistics, ELT and English
language with an essential bookshelf. Each book deals with a core topic in
discourse studies to give an in-depth, structured and readable introduction
to an aspect of the way language is used in real life.
Other titles in the series:
Academic Discourse
Ken Hyland
Discourse Analysis: An Introduction
Brian Paltridge
Media Discourse
Joanna Thornborrow
Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing
Ken Hyland
Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis
Paul Baker
Professional Discourse
Britt-Louise Gunnarsson
School Discourse: Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling
Frances Christie and Beverly Derewianka
Workplace Discourse
Almut Koester
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To my husband, Terry Pritchard, for everything
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on Data and Transcription xi
Part I: Describing Workplace Discourse

1. What is Workplace Discourse? 3
1.1 Introduction 3
1.2 Workplace, institutional, professional and business discourse 5
1.3 Communities of practice and discourse communities 7
1.4 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse 9
1.5 Where does workplace discourse occur? 12
1.6 Workplace discourse in a changing world 16
1.7 Outline of the book 16
2. Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in Workplace Discourse 18

2.1 Introduction 18
2.2 Recurring or widespread genres in the workplace 23
2.3 The use of genres within organizations 36
2.4 Conclusion 43
3. What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse? 45

3.1 Introduction 45
3.2 Overview of relevant corpora 45
3.3 Lexico-grammar of the workplace 47
3.4 Pragmatic features 57
3.5 Corpus and genre 61
3.6 Discussion and conclusion 66
4. Working Together and Getting People to Do Things: Directives,

Procedural Discourse and Training 70
4.1 Introduction 70
4.2 Previous studies of directives 71
4.3 A corpus-informed study of procedural workplace discourse 74
4.4 Directives in transactional and collaborative talk 76
viii Contents
4.5 Solidarity and involvement strategies in procedural talk

involving training 84
4.6 Training, apprenticeship and workplace learning 90
4.7 Conclusion 93
Part II: Issues and Applications in Workplace Discourse

5. Relationships at Work: Relational Talk and Humour 97
5.1 Introduction 97
5.2 Work done through relational talk 99
5.3 The role of relational talk within a community of practice 103
5.4 Humour 108
5.5 Humour and workplace culture 109
5.6 Humour in the ABOT Corpus 111
5.7 Conclusion 120
6. Communicating across Cultures: English as an International

Language of Work 122
6.1 Introduction 122
6.2 English as a lingua franca 123
6.3 English as an international language in business 125
6.4 Relational language in lingua franca workplace and
business interactions 131
6.5 English in the multi-ethnic workplace 139
6.6 Discussion and conclusion 141
7. Applying Research: Teaching Workplace Discourse 145

7.1 Introduction 145
7.2 Research-based consultancy 145
7.3 Training and teaching 146
7.4 Using insights from research for teaching and teacher training 149
7.5 Conclusion 159
Appendix I: Adhesive Labels 161

Appendix II: Sample Activities 163
Notes 167
References 171
Index 187
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all the people who have helped me with the work that
has gone into this book. First of all, my fellow researcher, Mike Handford, for
helping me along the way, and providing inspiration and advice on all aspects
of this undertaking. I am also very indebted to those who have read and
commented on parts of the manuscript: Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini, Janet
Holmes, Meredith Mara, Ian McMaster, Patricia Pullin and Celia Roberts. Many
people have helped me with corpora, references and data; and my thanks goes
to Svenja Adolphs, Mirjaliisa Charles, Winnie Cheng, Ulla Connor, Anne Fiddes,
Alan Firth, Ya-Taui (Ellen) Hsueh, Marie-Luise Pitzl, Peter Medway, Andreas
Mller, Mike Nelson and Pamela Rogerson-Revell. I am grateful to TESOL for the
opportunity to present and publish many of the ideas that went into Chapter 7.
Access to the following corpora has been extremely useful for research that
has gone into this book, and I would like to express my appreciation to the
corpus holders for making these available:
z Mike Nelsons Business English Lexis Site

z Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE) in the Research Centre for
Professional Communication in English, Department of English, The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University
z Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English/VOICE Project at the
University of Vienna
My mentor, Michael McCarthy, has continued to provide inspiration for my

research. I am also very grateful to my editors, Colleen Coalter, Ken Hyland and
Gurdeep Mattu for their patience and understanding throughout this project.
I would also like to thank my parents, Helmut and Gisela Koester, for their
support and encouragement. I owe my greatest debt to my husband, Terry
Pritchard, without whom this book could not possibly have been written.
I am grateful for permission to reproduce data samples from the following
sources:
Example 2.1 reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press from:

McCarthy, M. (1998), Spoken Language and Applied Linguistics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Extract from p. 44 (data from the Cambridge
International Corpus).
x Acknowledgements
Example 2.3 reproduced by permission of Mouton de Gruyter from: Cook-

Gumperz, J. and Messerman, L. (1999), Local identities and institutional
practices: Constructing the record of professional collaboration, in Sarangi
and Roberts, pp. 145181. Extract from pp. 15960.
Example 2.8 reproduced by permission of the author from: Medway, P. (1996),
Virtual and material buildings, Written Communication 13 (4), 473514.
Extract from p. 484.
Table 3.1 reproduced by permission of the author and Cambridge University
Press from: Handford, M. (2007), The Genre of the business meeting:
A Corpus-based study. unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham,
School of English Studies,
Figure 3.1 reproduced by permission of the author from: Nelson 2000,
Chapter 8, 8.2.12, available from Mike Nelsons Business English Lexis Site,
http://users.utu.fi/micnel/business_english_lexis_site.htm.
Example 3.6 reproduced by permission of the author from: Cheng, W. (2004),
//did you TOOK// from the miniBAR//: What is the practical rele-
vance of a corpus-driven language study to practioners in Hong Kongs hotel
industry? In U. Connor and T. Upton (eds), 141166. Extract from p. 150.
Example 3.7 reproduced by permission of Svenja Adolphs from: Adolphs, S.,
Brown, B., Carter, R., Crawford, C. and Sahota, O. (2004), Applying corpus
linguistics in a health care context, Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (1), 928.
Extract from p. 19.
Figures 6.1 and 6.2 reproduced by permission of the author from: Connor, U.
(1999), How like you our fish? Accommodation in international business
correspondence in Hewings, M. and Nickerson, C. (eds.) Business English:
Research into Practice, Harlow: Longman, pp. 115128, extracts on pp. 123
and 126.
Example 6.1 reproduced by permission of the author from: Pitzl, M.-L. (2005),
Non-understanding in English as a lingua franca: Examples from a business
context. Vienna English Working PaperS, 14/2, 5071. (Available at http://
www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/Views0502mlp.pdf)
Example 6.3 reproduced by permission of the author from: Rogerson-
Revell, P. (2008). Participation and performance in international business
meetings, English for Specific Purposes 27, 338360. Extract from p. 354.
Example 6.4 reproduced by permission of the author from: Firth, A. (1996),
The discursive accomplishment of normality: On lingua franca English and
conversation analysis, Journal of Pragmatics 26, 237259. Extract from
p. 254.
Example 6.5 reproduced by permission of Celia Roberts from: Roberts, C. and
Campbell, S. (2006), Talk on trial: Job interviews, language and ethnicity.
Department for Work and Pensions Research Report No. 344. Leeds: Corporate
Document Services. Extract on p. 49.
Notes on Data and Transcription
Data
Unless otherwise stated, all extracts in the book are the authors own data.
Transcription
For purposes of anonymity, all speakers, company names and some products
are identified by pseudonyms in the transcripts.
The following transcription conventions were used:
, slightly rising in intonation at end of tone unit;

? high rising intonation at end of tone unit;
. falling intonation at end of tone unit;
! animated intonation;
... noticeable pause or break within a turn of less than 1 second;
sound abruptly cut off, e.g. false start;
italics emphatic stress;
: colon following vowel indicates elongated vowel sound;
:: extra colon indicates longer elongation;
speaker's turn continues without interruption;
A step up in pitch (higher key1);
A shift down in pitch (lower key);
() parentheses around tone units spoken with sotto voce (low key
intonation);
// words between slashes show uncertain transcription;
/?/ indicates inaudible utterances: one ? for each syllable;
overlapping or simultaneous speech;
xii Notes on Data and Transcription
words in these brackets are utterances interjected by a speakers

within another speakers turn;
= latching: no perceptible inter-turn pause;
[] words in square brackets indicate non-linguistic information,
e.g. pauses of 1 second or longer (the number of seconds is
indicated), speakers gestures or actions;
[. . .] indicates that the rest of the speakers turn has been ellipted, or that
the extract starts in the middle of a speaker turn, or that some turns
have been omitted;
.hh inhalation (intake of breath);
hhh aspiration (releasing of breath);
t tongue click;
Heheheh indicates laughter, for each syllable laughed a heh is transcribed.

Part I
Describing Workplace Discourse

Chapter 1
What is Workplace Discourse?
This book sets out to answer the following questions:
z What is workplace discourse?

z What are the distinctive characteristics of workplace discourse?
z What role does discourse play in the activities that people carry out at work?
z What role does discourse play in workplace relationships?
z How do people communicate across cultures at work?
This chapter addresses the first question (what is workplace discourse?), and
discusses how the book attempts to answer the other questions.
1.1 Introduction
This book is about spoken or written interaction occurring in a workplace set-
ting. Workplace discourse involves interactions occurring across a whole range
of occupational settings, from factories to offices, hospitals to government
offices, private businesses to non-profit organizations. Before we explore the
question of what workplace discourse is in more detail, let us look at a typical
example. The following interaction shown in example 1.1 is from a small private
firm based in a mid-western city in the United States of America. Here Mike, who
is one of the managers, has a meeting with his boss, Chris, to discuss his KRAs
(Key Responsibility Areas) a method of evaluating his performance. Mike has
already drawn up a proposal which he discusses in this meeting.
Example 1.1
(1) Mike Twelve oclock already [as hes walking in]
(2) Chris Isnt it amazing?
[Mike sits down]
(3) Mike Okay. [2] You you want me to make a log. To to itll measure . . .
how well Im doing/pre-counting. Recounts/an getting/the list
out to /??/ how do you want that to show up over here.
[4]
(4) Chris As an average . . . number of hours . . . between . . . uh:m . . . request
and delivery.
4 Workplace Discourse
This brief extract from an interaction between co-workers illustrates some of

the key distinguishing features of workplace discourse compared to discourse
occurring in other settings, such as social or intimate ones. In their seminal
study of Talk at Work, Drew and Heritage (1992) propose a range of criteria
which distinguish institutional talk from ordinary conversation, which is usu-
ally considered the neutral benchmark for comparison. The most significant
of these is goal orientation: an orientation by at least one of the participants
to some core goal, task or identity . . . conventionally associated with the
institution (ibid., p. 22). Other distinguishing features of institutional or
workplace discourse are constraints on allowable contributions, that is what
it is considered appropriate to say or write in the workplace setting, and the
existence of special inferential frameworks, which refers to ways of inter-
preting discourse that are particular to the institutional or workplace setting
(ibid., pp. 2125).1 Workplace interactions are also frequently asymmetrical
(Heritage 1997), that is there may be differences in the distribution of
institutional power or expert knowledge between the participants. Thus in
interactions between professionals and lay people (e.g. doctors and patients)
or managers and subordinates, there is a clear imbalance in knowledge and/
or power between the participants. Nevertheless, as we shall see, roles and
identities, as they are manifested through discourse, are not fixed and
immutable, but subject to negotiation.
Each of these distinguishing characteristics of workplace (or institutional
talk) can be can be found in example 1.1. The meeting is goal-oriented, as is
clearly signalled by Mike in the way he frames the purpose of the meeting as
following up on a directive from Chris:
(3) Mike Okay. [2] You you want me to make a log. To to itll measure . . .
how well Im doing/pre-counting. Recounts/an getting/the list
out to /??/ how do you want that to show up over here.
In doing this, he also invokes their respective institutional roles as boss and
subordinate, projecting their relationship in this encounter as an asymmetrical
one. There is an expectation that the discussion in this meeting will stay
focused on the stated purpose of agreeing on the method of evaluation, which
constitutes constraints on what kinds of contributions are allowable. The
participants will also be drawing on inferential frameworks relating to their
understanding of what such an evaluation process involves, which will influence
their interpretation of what is said. The fact that they have an acronym (KRA,
which stands for Key Responsibility Areas) to refer to this procedure is
an indication that it is an established one, and that they do share some
kind of common understanding of it. Lexical choice is another way in
which participants orient to the institutional context, and the use of this acro-
nym is a good illustration of such an orientation (Drew and Heritage 1992,
Heritage 1997).
What is Workplace Discourse? 5
But despite the clear goal-orientation of this encounter, there is nevertheless

a brief phatic exchange at the beginning of the meeting which is unrelated to
the task goal a comment on how quickly the morning has gone:
(1) Mike Twelve oclock already [as hes walking in]

(2) Chris Isnt it amazing?
Despite being focused on accomplishing a particular workplace task, Mike

and Chris nevertheless do some relationship work, however passing and
cursory, through this phatic exchange. Therefore, although workplace dis-
course is primarily about getting things done, relationship-building is also a key
concern for people who work together. This point is returned to later in this
chapter, and is a recurring theme throughout this book.
1.2 Workplace, institutional, professional and

business discourse
A number of different terms are used to talk about the types of interaction
and uses of language that are described in this book. In addition to workplace
discourse, other terms used include institutional discourse, professional
discourse and business discourse. I discuss each of these terms in turn and try
to ascertain whether they all describe the same thing, or whether they refer to
different kinds of discourse.
The terms workplace discourse and institutional discourse are usually more
general, and are often used interchangeably in the literature. For example,
Drew and Heritage (1992, p. 3) describe institutional talk as task-related,
involving at least one participant who represents a formal organization, which
can also be said of workplace discourse.
Business discourse and professional discourse, on the other hand, would
seem to be more specific. While the term workplace discourse describes
interactions occurring across all kinds of occupational settings, only some of
these involve business discourse. Business discourse can be considered a
specific kind of workplace discourse occurring in the commercial sector.
Bargiela-Chiappini et al. (2007, p. 3) define business discourse as social action
in business contexts, specifying that business discourse is all about how people
communicate using talk or writing in commercial organizations. Staying within
this definition, a broader or more narrow view can be taken of what constitutes
business. A narrow, restricted view of business discourse would be to focus
only on company-to-company communication and look at ways in which suppli-
ers and customers do business together, for example through commercial
correspondence (e.g. Connor 1999) or business negotiations (e.g. Charles and
Charles 1999). A broader view would include company-internal communica-
tion as part of business discourse. Interactions between colleagues in private
sector organizations have a great deal in common with interactions among

co-workers in white collar workplaces in the public and semi-public sector,
for example they frequently involve internal meetings. Example 1.1 above is
between co-workers in a private company, and thus fits the broader definition
of business discourse, but not the more narrow one, as it involves in-company
rather than company to company communication.
Many studies of business discourse take this broader view of business, and are
therefore relevant for an investigation of workplace discourse. For example,
a large proportion of the data in the Cambridge and Nottingham Business English
Corpus (CANBEC) are from recordings of internal meetings, and the business
sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE) consists of
many company-internal genres, such as job interviews, in-company meetings
and office talk. Both these corpora are discussed extensively in Chapter 3. This
book is centrally concerned with interactions between co-workers, regardless
of whether they take place in a private company or in a public or semi-public
organization. It is not primarily concerned with commercial communication
between businesses, but such communication is nevertheless a kind of work-
place discourse, and therefore is also included (e.g. in looking at international
business communication in Chapter 6).
As we have seen, institutional discourse is frequently used as a synonym for
workplace discourse, but Sarangi and Roberts (1999, pp. 1519), propose a
more restricted definition of institutional discourse, contrasting it to profes-
sional discourse (see also Gunnarsson 2009 and Roberts forthcoming). They
suggest that everyday uses of the terms professional and institutional provide
useful clues to the difference. A professional, as a member of a vocational
group, is someone who has certain skills and knowledge. An institution, on the
other hand, is not associated with a group of people, but rather with systems,
regulations and the exercise of authority. Professional discourse is thus consti-
tuted by professionals carrying out their duties and responsibilities, whereas
institutional discourse is comprised of genres which are socially sanctioned
by the institution. This may involve having particular types of meetings in an
organization or writing up reports in a certain way. Both modes of discourse
can occur within the same encounter, for example in gate-keeping processes
(e.g. examinations) used for professional certification which legitimate and set
criteria for professional practice (see Roberts and Sarangi 1999). There may
also be tension between institutional and professional discourse, for example if
professionals feel that certain types of institutional discourse are being imposed
on them (see Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999), especially if these are
seen as a nuisance or hindrance to carrying out professional duties. Accord-
ing to Candlin (1997, pp. xixii), professional discourse expresses the licenced
belonging to a profession on the basis of skills and knowledge. Professional
discourse is thus centrally concerned with knowledge construction, and becom-
ing a professional involves acquiring certain types of knowledge and discourses
through apprenticeship and training (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, p. 37). These
themes of apprenticeship and training at work are explored in more detail in

Chapter 4.
While this book is not specifically concerned with professional or institutional
discourse in their more restricted senses, both types of discourse are relevant to
a study of workplace discourse. Much written and spoken workplace discourse
is produced by professionals of all kinds, and everyone who works for an
organization must engage with institutional discourse in some way or another.
Looking again at example 1.1 above, we can see that the speakers orient to
both professional and institutional concerns. The knowledge and skills Mike
needs to perform his job well are relevant to the method through which he is
evaluated, and therefore Mike and Chris discussion can be considered to
involve professional discourse. However, what they are doing is also setting up
a method of controlling Mikes work and ensuring it is consistent with the goals
of the organization; therefore it is also a form of institutional discourse. Both
forms of discourse are therefore important to and make up part of workplace
discourse. This book is thus concerned with workplace discourse in its most
general sense, encompassing institutional, professional and business discourse.
It is of course not possible to be exhaustive in covering all types of workplace
discourse, but examples are drawn from a wide variety of different workplaces,
and the most frequently occurring genres are examined.
1.3 Communities of practice and discourse communities

As example 1.1 shows, differences between ordinary uses of language and
workplace discourse are not absolute, and of course workplaces also differ from
one another. Nevertheless, research into workplace discourse has revealed dis-
tinctive interactive and linguistic patterns across different workplaces as well as
within particular professional or workplace settings (Drew and Heritage 1992,
McCarthy and Handford 2004, Koester 2006). Such patternings are a reflection
of distinctive workplace practices which result from participants interacting in
carrying out their tasks at work. While individuals will have varying degrees of
autonomy depending on the nature of the work, working together always
involves interacting with others through spoken or written genres within the
constraints of certain ways of doing things or practices. Two ways of referring to
such groups or teams in which people do things at work have emerged in the
literature on workplace discourse: communities of practice (Lave and Wenger
1991, Wenger 1998) or discourse communities (Swales 1990). This section,
discusses the similarities and differences between these two concepts, and asks
how they can help us to understand workplace discourse.
In some ways these two concepts are quite similar; however, they come out of
two different research traditions, and differ significantly in their orientation
and emphasis. This can be illustrated by comparing the definitions of a
community of practice and of a discourse community.
According to Wenger (1998, pp. 7273), communities of practice are

characterized by three dimensions:
1. mutual engagement
2. joint enterprise
3. a shared repertoire
Swales (1990, pp. 2427) proposes that a discourse community . . .
1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals

2. has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members
3. uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and
feedback
4. utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative
furtherance of its aims
5. in addition to owning genres, has acquired some specific lexis
6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant context
and discoursal expertise.
Mutual engagement seems similar to mechanisms of intercommunication,

and joint enterprise seems to correspond to common public goals. However,
what Wenger means by the terms mutual engagement and joint enterprise
seems to go far beyond Swales corresponding categories. Mutual engagement
does not simply involve mechanisms of intercommunication, but it creates
mutual relationships and it connects participants in ways that can become
deeper than more abstract similarities in terms of personal features or social
categories (Wenger 1998, p. 76). In the same way, joint enterprise is not just a
stated goal, but creates among participants relations of mutual accountability
(ibid., p. 78).
Looking at all of Swales six defining characteristics of a discourse commu-
nity, it is clear that the emphasis is not on the community as such, but on how it
uses discourse, and more specifically on the utilization of one or more genres
(the fourth characteristic). A discourse community is a socio-rhetorical com-
munity (i.e. a community of genre users), and does not require assimilation of
world view or a threshold level of personal involvement (Swales, 1990 p. 31).
Swales aim and that of other genre analysts in the rhetorical school is to
describe genres, and as a result, discourse communities are not actually given
much attention beyond their role as owners and users of genres. As we shall
see in Chapter 2, which explores the notion of genre in detail, this is somewhat
different in the social constructionist school of genre (see Freedman and
Medway 1994, p. 7), as this school attempts to link genres to the values and
epistemology of the discourse community.
Swales discourse communities are therefore much more narrowly defined than
Wengers communities of practice, and the focus is on how these communities
employ genres. On the other hand, with communities of practice, the role of
discourse is much less clearly defined. Wengers third dimension, shared rep-
ertoire, is again much broader than the notion of genre, including routines,
words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gesture, symbols, genres, actions or
concepts (Wenger, 1998, p. 83). There are linguistic as well as non-linguistic
elements here, and it is not clear what role each of these elements plays in the
practice of the community. Just as the emphasis in discourse communities is on
the notion of discourse, so with communities of practice it is on the concept of
practice. The concept of practice connotes doing, as Wenger says, but not just
doing in and of itself. It is doing in a historical and social context that gives
structure and meaning to what we do. In this sense, practice is always social
practice (ibid., p. 47). Thus, practice is embedded in and interacts with social
structures, and moreover it also interacts with the communitys epistemology:
The competent members of a given workplace community not only manifest

in their daily lives what counts as routine practice, but also, at a metalevel,
they bring to scrutiny the very boundaries of institutional knowledge for
renewal and reification. (Sarangi and Roberts 1999, p. 3)
The concept of community of practice is thus both richer and more complex
than that of discourse community; however, it is more difficult to operationalize
for discourse analysis. Handford (forthcoming) proposes that the frequencies
and patterning of language in workplace discourse discovered through research
using computer-based corpus methods can provide evidence of routine practices
in a workplace community. Chapter 3 of this book examines in detail what such
corpus research can tell us about workplace discourse and ultimately about the
practices within workplace communities. Both terms, discourse community and
community of practice, are employed in this volume, but it is important to
remember that, while they do have some similarities, they are not completely
synonymous. Thus Chapter 2 looks at how workplace genres are used by dis-
course communities, but Chapter 5 uses the notion of community of practice to
explore relational talk and humour. Lave and Wengers (1991) theory of situ-
ated learning in a community of practice is drawn on in examining training
and apprenticeship at work in the second half of Chapter 4.
1.4 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse
The study of workplace discourse is marked by a multiplicity of approaches

originating within a variety of disciplines, including, sociology, anthropology
and linguistics, and various research methods, such as ethnography, conversa-
tion analysis, genre analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and critical discourse
analysis have frequently been used. A detailed review of all these approaches
and methods is beyond the scope of the present chapter, but the aim is to situate
the methods and approaches drawn on in this book within the body of research
on workplace discourse. For a fuller discussion see Sarangi and Roberts (1999)
critical review of approaches to institutional and professional discourse, and
Bargiela-Chiappini et al.s (2007) volume on Business Discourse which provides a
comprehensive overview of research methods in this area.
1.4.1 Interaction order and institutional order

Sarangi and Roberts (1999, pp. 110) suggest that most studies of workplace
discourse can be situated on a continuum from those that focus more on the
interaction order to those that are more interested in the institutional order.
Goffman (1974) called for studying the interaction order, which is the structuring
of participation in a given social situation (Sarangi and Roberts 1999: 2, original
italics) in its own right. This involves studying in detail the actual words and
interactions of the participants in a given situation. But workplace interactions
are also embedded in the institutional order, which is defined by Berger and
Luckman (1967: 83) as the body of transmitted recipe knowledge, that is,
knowledge that supplies the institutionally appropriate rules of conduct.
Most sociolinguistic and discourse analytical studies focus more on the inter-
action order, whereas mainstream sociological studies are more interested in
the institutional order (Sarangi and Roberts, 1992: 2). However, sociolinguistic
studies of workplace discourse vary in terms of how much they focus exclusively
on the interaction order or also take into consideration the institutional order.
Thus, conversation analysis (CA), which has a well-established tradition of
analysing workplace talk, stays within the interaction order, and aims to discover
the relevant categories and identities (including institutional ones) to which
participants orient in a workplace setting through micro-analysis of speaker
turns and sequences (see Hutchby and Woofitt 1998, pp. 145171). Social con-
structionist approaches, on the other hand, take into account the social and
institutional order as well as the interaction order in the interpretation of
the discourse. In fact, these are seen as mutually reflexive, with social and
institutional identities seen as dynamic and subject to negotiation through
interaction (Holmes et al. 1999, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, pp. 812). Discourse
analytic studies which move furthest towards incorporating the institutional or
social order into their framework are those that take a socio-critical approach,
such as critical discourse analysis (CDA). For example, Gee et al. (1996) analyse
the discourse of the new work order, based on the ideas of fast capitalism
in the post-industrial era as a new form of hegemony through which power rela-
tions and control are obscured.
Gee (2005, p. 7) refers to the more sociological perspective as analysing
discourse with a big D and the more sociolinguistic or micro-analytical one as
discourse with a little d. Another way of looking at the interaction order
institutional order continuum is in terms of the way that context is viewed. For
instance, CA takes a talk-intrinsic view, in which context is seen as dynamically

created through interaction; whereas approaches such as social construction-
ism and CDA view context more broadly as also including institutional and
social domains (see Koester 2006, pp. 1116).
1.4.2 Textual, tactical, professional and social space

Bhatias (2004) four-space model also provides a useful way of viewing the
continuum from a more micro-analytic to a more social orientation. Much
research on workplace discourse has examined spoken interaction, for
example studies that employ conversation analytical methods. Bhatias model
focuses on written discourse, but it can be applied equally to spoken discourse.
Bhatia (ibid., pp. 1822) proposes that approaches to discourse can be viewed
on a continuum from a pedagogical perspective to a socio-critical one moving
through four different spaces. Each space corresponds to a particular view of
discourse and knowledge:
1. Textual space
z Discourse as text
z Textual knowledge
2. Tactical space
z Discourse as genre
z Genre knowledge
3. Professional space
z Discourse as professional practice
z Professional expertise
4. Social space
z Discourse as social practice
z Social and pragmatic knowledge
Within textual space, only surface-level properties of discourse are analysed,

and Bhatia refers to this as a pedagogical perspective, since historically, the
study of English for Specific Purposes, which has a pedagogical orientation,
began with such an approach to the analysis of text. Bhatia (ibid., pp. 1213)
notes that for written discourse the historical development in research has been
from textual space to social space, but that this is not necessarily the case for
spoken discourse. These four ways of viewing discourse are not mutually exclusive,
but a researcher might situate their research within one particular space, and
move into other spaces in either direction. Thus an applied linguist would
probably first carry out an exhaustive analysis of discourse as text, and then look
to the social context for an explanation of the lexico-grammatical features

identified (ibid., p. 21). Bhatias own work in genre analysis can be situated
within both tactical and professional space, which he sees as closely linked and
together comprising socio-cognitive space.
The approach taken in this book is also situated within socio-cognitive space,
mainly considering discourse as genre and discourse as professional practice.
Overall, the emphasis is on the interaction order, rather than the social or
institutional order, and analysis is concentrated on discourse with a little d.
An approach which focuses on the interaction order also entails a particular
view of workplace roles and identities. As discussed in section 1.1, participants
take on particular institutional roles in workplace interactions which are often
asymmetrical (e.g. doctor-patient, manager-subordinate), but it cannot simply
be assumed that these institutional roles are always relevant to the talk in which
speakers are engaged. Taking a talk-intrinsic view of context means seeing
institutional roles and identities not as fixed, but as made relevant in and
negotiated through talk (ten Have 1991, Greatbatch and Dingwall 1998).
Within the approach taken here, two research methods are highlighted
as particularly relevant to analysing workplace discourse: genre analysis and
corpus linguistics. As we have seen, the most important distinguishing feature
of workplace discourse is its goal orientation, and therefore genre analysis,
which views discourse as comprising goal-oriented, recurring written or spoken
activities or genres, is particularly suitable. A large number of studies of work-
place discourse, particularly written discourse, have been carried out using
genre analysis (e.g. Devitt 1991, Yates and Orlikowski 1992, Bhatia 1993).
Corpus linguistic methods, on the other hand, have only recently been used to
investigate workplace discourse (e.g. Nelson 2000a, Cheng 2004, Handford
2007), and therefore this is still a relatively new area of enquiry. Traditionally
corpus methods have been associated with discourse as text, but I agree with
Handford (forthcoming) that they can also help us to gain insights into profes-
sional and even social space. By drawing on both genre analysis and corpus
methods it is possible to provide a rich description of the data which accounts
for both micro-features of discourse, such as lexico-grammatical and phraseo-
logical patterns, as well as larger textual or interactive patterns, and to link
these to workplace and professional practices.
1.5 Where does workplace discourse occur?

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, workplace discourse is extremely
diverse, as it encompasses interactions between co-workers, customers and
clients, lay people and professionals and occurs in offices, factories, hospitals,
courtrooms and so forth. Some types of workplace discourse have received a
great deal of attention in previous studies. This includes the areas of medical
discourse and healthcare (e.g. Cicourel 1987 and 1999, Erikson 1999, Ragan
2000) and legal discourse (e.g. Bhatia 1993, Gibbons 1994, Greatbatch and
Dingwall 1998). Business discourse has also been studied extensively (see
Bargiela-Chiappini et al. 2007), especially business correspondence (e.g.
Bargiela-Chiappini and Nickerson 1999), negotiations (e.g. Firth 1995b,
Charles 1996) and business meetings (e.g. Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris
1997a; Handford forthcoming).
Interactions between co-workers comprise the key site for an investigation of
workplace discourse, and these may take place in formal meetings or in more
informal, ad hoc interactions. The Wellington, New Zealand Language in the
Workplace Project (LWP) has compiled a large database of workplace interac-
tions which includes formal as well as and informal interactions from both
white-collar settings, such as government departments and small businesses,
and blue-collar ones, e.g. the factory floor (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine
2004). Studies based on LWP will be drawn on throughout this book. In my own
work on the ABOT Corpus, I have examined mostly informal, unplanned work-
place interactions between co-workers in office settings (see Koester 2006). But
interactions between lay people and professionals or clients and customers are
also represented in the corpus. A useful way of distinguishing between different
sites for investigating workplace discourse is the concept of front regions com-
pared with back regions.
1.5.1 Front regions and back regions

Goffman (1959) suggested that there are two sites in which social life can be
studied: front regions (or frontstage) and back regions (or backstage). Front
regions are areas where a particular performance is or may be in progress,
whereas back regions are where action occurs that is related to the performance
but inconsistent with the appearance fostered by the performance (ibid.,
p. 134). The dramaturgical metaphor used by Goffman is relevant, as it implies
the presence of an audience in frontstage activity, and a setting in which best
behaviour is expected. The backstage setting, on the other hand, is more
relaxed and allows minor acts which might easily be taken as symbolic of inti-
macy and disrespect for others present (ibid., p. 128).
Workplace activities taking place in front regions involve lay-professionals
encounters, for example interactions between health professionals and
patients, or service encounters, where service providers interact with custom-
ers. Interactions between co-workers typically occur in back regions, and they
may constitute the backstage to certain frontstage business or lay-professional
encounters. For example, interactions between health professionals (e.g. doctors,
nurses, lab technicians) form the backstage to front stage interactions with
patients. A business negotiation between two companies may be preceded by a
preparatory company-internal meeting, which thus constitutes the backstage to
the external meeting to take place in the front regions. In retail shops, front
stage activity occurs between sales people and clients, but this work is supported
by workers in back offices (aptly named) engaged in backstage activity, such as
dealing with orders and billing (e.g. one of the settings represented in the
ABOT Corpus is the back office of an organic food cooperative).
Much of the early research on workplace discourse focused on front regions,
particularly in the area of medical discourse (Sarangi and Roberts 1999,
p. 22). The studies in Drew and Heritages (1992) seminal volume on Talk
at Work focus exclusively on the front stage, for example Heritage and Sefis
study of interactions between first time mothers and health visitors, or
Zimmermans work on emergency calls. Since these early studies, back regions
have received increasingly more attention, with Goodwins (1995) examina-
tion of two backstage settings at an airport the airline operations room
and the check-in gate being a particularly interesting example. Studies of
medical discourse have also shifted their attention to the backstage, as attested
by a number of contributions to Sarangi and Roberts (1999) edited volume
on Talk, Work and Institutional Order, such as Ericksons paper on the appren-
ticeship of new doctors and Cook-Gumperz and Messermans study of the
way in which a medical record is collaboratively constructed. The workplace
corpora drawn on in this book contain a mix of frontstage and backstage
interactions. The CANBEC Corpus has both external and internal meetings,
and the business sub-corpus of HKCSE also contains data representing both
front and back regions. Front region data includes front desk encounters in
hotels or job interviews, and back region interactions include informal office
talk and company-internal meetings. The ABOT Corpus consists mainly of
backstage interactions between co-workers, but there are also a few service
encounters in which frontstage activity occurs.
The two examples below show a frontstage and a backstage encounter
from the ABOT Corpus, each one illustrating the key features of each of the
sites described by Goffman. The two examples show the same speaker (Don)
first in a frontstage encounter (example 1.2) and then in a backstage one
(example 1.3), and therefore they illustrate how the same participant adjusts
his behaviour to suit each of these sites of interaction. Don works as a staff
assistant at the front desk of a university office. Example 1.2 shows him
interacting with a visitor to the office, and in example 1.3 he talks with his
co-worker, Andy.
Example 1.2
(1) Visitor /(Hi)/

(2) Don Hello.
(3) Visitor Um . . . [5 sec] Is there a list of . . . uhm . . . faculty assistants?
[1 sec] in the handbook or something like that? I need to try
and /???/
(4) Don No:, there isnt a list in the handbook, I have a . . . typewritten list
here,
(5) Visitor Wow. thank you very much.
Example 1.3
(1) Don Something very important I need to tell you.

(2) Andy Yes
(3) Andy Oo:h. Yes?
(4) Don You know that . . . stuff . . . tha that we brought you from Paris?
That real sweet chestnut stuff?
(5) Andy Yeah. Uhu?
(6) Don Rita said the classic way, to eat that stuff=
(7) Andy =On pears.
[1.5]
(8) Don On whipped cream:
[2]
(9) Andy Heheheheheheh
Example 1.2 shows Don performing his institutional role at the front desk,
where his job is to deal with enquiries. In example 1.3, we see him backstage: he
is not acting in his official role, but engages in an informal interaction with his
colleague, which is marked by intimacy, such as informal language (e.g. stuff)
and laughter. While example 1.2 displays all the typical features of institutional
talk, such as goal-orientation and asymmetry, example 1.3 does not: Don and
Andy do not focus on any task, but engage in off-task small talk, in which their
institutional roles are not relevant (for instance, we cannot tell from this encoun-
ter that Andy is Dons boss). Sarangi and Roberts 1999 (pp. 2122) observe that
Drew and Heritages characterization of institutional talk is based on the analysis
of frontstage data, and that focusing on frontstage talk can lead to certain biases
and limitations on what counts as workplace communication (ibid., p. 22).
If features such as goal-orientation and asymmetry distinguish workplace
interactions from everyday interactions, should such small talk occurring in the
office be considered not to constitute workplace talk? Recent research into rela-
tional talk at work seems to suggest that this would not be satisfactory. First, it is
often difficult to separate out talk that is work-related from non-task talk at
work (Holmes 2000a, Tracy and Naughton 2000, Koester 2006); and even talk
at work which seems to bear no relation to any task at hand may have some
relevance, even if indirect, to other workplace interactions (see Chapter 5).
Moreover, small talk which occurs at work is not exactly the same as small talk
outside work. For instance, in example 1.3, Don begins the encounter with a
mock workplace frame: Something very important I need to tell you. Such
advance summaries of what an upcoming interaction will be about are typical
of workplace interactions and provide evidence of participants orienting to
workplace goals (see Koester 2006, p. 4). In this example, however, Don
actually does not have anything important to impart, but uses this frame as a
humorous device. But it is because his colleague, Andy, can recognize this as
a typical workplace frame that the humour works. It is unlikely that small talk
outside the office would be introduced in the same manner. The view taken in
this book is that relational talk forms an integral part of workplace discourse,
and therefore cannot be disregarded, even if it does not fit our expectations of
what workplace discourse should look like. Including both front and back stage
encounters in an examination of workplace discourse ensures that a rich and
diverse, if fairly complex, picture of what constitutes workplace discourse can
be built up.
1.6 Workplace discourse in a changing world
In the past twenty years, many workplaces have been subject to considerable
structural changes, and workers across a variety of sites are being confronted
with having to renegotiate their knowing, their doing, and their worker
identity (Iedema and Scheeres 2003, p. 316). Much of this is due to rapid
developments and changes in technology, but there has also been a concomi-
tant change in what we could call business ideology. Gee et al. (1996) argue that
the ideas of new capitalism have brought in a new work order which presumes
the need for constant change in order to stay competitive, and involves workers
taking on new tasks, particularly involving communication. These changes have
had an impact on both written and spoken workplace discourse, and Iedema
and Scheeres (2003, p. 319) claim that discourse analysts can no longer con-
sider workplace discourse as stable objects that are simply out there.
According to Fairclough (1992, pp. 204205), one of the ways in which
professional and public discourse has changed is that there is an increasing
tendency towards conversationalization, that is, the adoption of less formal
styles of communication in institutional environments; similarly, Cameron
(2000, pp. 2123) discusses the increasing hybridity of talk in different
domains of social activity.
The changing nature of the workplace discourse is also reflected in this
book, for example in Chapter 2 we consider how genres have evolved and new
genres, such as email, have emerged. Alongside changes in technology which
have had an impact on the way people communicate, people from different
cultures are coming increasingly into contact and working together both
through migration and as a result of the increasingly global nature of business.
Such cross-cultural and multicultural interactions are explored in Chapter 6.
In examining workplace discourse, this book draws on older as well as more
recent studies, as certain characteristics of workplace discourse have remained
constant, even if the technologies have changed.
1.7 Outline of the book
This book is divided into two parts: Part I (Chapters 14) provides a description
of workplace discourse from a number of different perspectives, and Part II
(Chapters 57) looks at specific issues and applications which I suggest are
particularly relevant or timely to a current discussion of workplace discourse.
Chapters 2 and 3 aim to describe the key characteristics of workplace
discourse. It is not possible to provide an exhaustive description, as each sector
of work has its own genres and each workplace has its specific communities
of practice. My aim is to give a flavour of the variety of workplaces and types of
workplace discourse, as well as to suggest frameworks for making sense of this
variety. Chapter 2 deals with workplace genres, and Chapter 3 explores
the question of what corpus linguistic research can tell us about workplace
discourse. Genre analysis and corpus research provide complementary per-
spectives on workplace discourse, and enable us to see not only what different
workplaces have in common, but also what distinguishes them. Chapter 4
focuses specifically on one key workplace activity: getting people to carry
out tasks. This exploration of procedural or directive discourse also leads to
a discussion of another important workplace topic: training and apprenticeship
at work.
A key theme to be explored in this book is the importance of relational
aspects of workplace discourse, despite its overall transactional, or task-oriented
nature. This is a recurring theme throughout the book, but is addressed spe-
cifically in Chapter 5, which examines relational talk and humour. Chapter 6
explores some of the ways in which the increasing internationalization of work
through migration and international business have affected workplace discourse.
Two sites for intercultural workplace interactions are explored: situations in
which people of different nationalities communicate to do business, and work-
place situations in which members of a dominant cultural group interact with
people from minority cultures. The main focus in this chapter is on the use of
English as an international language in business and workplace interactions
between people whose native language is not English. Research in workplace
discourse is often carried out with a view to providing some practical benefit
to the organization or business in which the data are collected (Sarangi and
Roberts 1999, Cheng 2004, Warren 2004), and therefore the practical applica-
tion of such research is often a key objective of the study. These themes are picked
up in the final chapter, which examines the practical applications of research
into workplace discourse for teaching English for professional, occupational and
business purposes.
Chapter 2
Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in

Workplace Discourse
2.1 Introduction
The previous chapter outlined some of the key characteristics of workplace
discourse, but beyond these very general features shared by all language at
work, how are we to make sense of the great diversity of spoken interactions and
text types used in different organizations and professions? Does the language
used on the factory floor really have anything in common with that used in
interactions between health professionals in a hospital, or the texts produced
by the legal profession? Seeing workplace interactions and texts as instances
of genre, that is as goal-oriented, recurring manifestations of certain types
of texts and activities, is useful in trying to make sense of this diversity, and
provides a systematic approach to describing workplace discourse.
That said, as there are a number of different approaches to the study of
genre, which all deal with useful but sometimes seemingly contradictory
aspects of this notion, applying genre analysis to workplace discourse is by
no means straightforward. Bhatia (2004, p. 22) attempts to bring together
the three main approaches to genre the social-constructionist approach, the
so-called Hallidayan approach, which emphasizes schematic structure, and the
rhetorical approach in one definition:
Genre analysis is the study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalized

academic or professional settings, whether defined in terms of typification of
rhetorical action, as in Miller (1984), Bazerman (1994) and Berkenkotter and
Huckin (1995), regularities of stages, goal-oriented processes, as in Martin, Christie
and Rothery (1987), or consistency of communicative purposes, as in Swales (1990)
and Bhatia (1993). (original italics)
While genre analysts in the rhetorical school, following Swales definition,

consider communicative purpose to be the defining and privileged criterion
(Swales 1990, p. 58), Swales himself (Askehave and Swales 2001, Swales 2004)
points out that identifying communicative purpose is not necessarily straightfor-
ward. There may be multiple purposes, or different views within the discourse
Workplace Genres 19
community of what the purpose of the genre is (Askehave and Swales 2001).
Handford (2007, forthcoming) argues that privileging communicative purpose
may mean neglecting other important aspects of genre, such as structure.
In the Hallidayan approach, structure, in particular the presence of certain
obligatory elements (Hasan 1985), is key in identifying genre, but using
exclusively formal criteria runs the risk of conflating genre and text type
(Bhatia 1993, Paltridge 1996). Some textual patterns, such as problem-solution
or general-particular, are common across a range of written genres (Paltridge
ibid.); and equally, a genre may have a variety of structural realizations.
For example, Bhatia (ibid.) argues that sales promotional letters and letters
of application, while quite different structurally, are both instances of promo-
tional genre, due to similar communicative purposes.
In my own work (Koester 2006, p. 22), I take the view that formal linguistic
characteristics are important aspects of genre, however, they should not be
considered as the defining features of a genre, which should be communicative
purpose (original italics). That is to say, it is not the form that determines the
genre, but formal generic patterns are the result of recurring, goal-oriented
activity. In this way, we can also account for the fact that generic structure is
variable (the same genre can be performed in different ways) and that genres
change. Whether or not communicative purpose is taken to be the main
criterion in identifying a genre, it seems clear that both shared communicative
purpose and formal or structural features are important properties of genre.
Yates and Orkilowski(1992), who define genre as a typified communicative
action invoked in response to a recurrent situation (ibid., p. 301) see genre as
being characterized by both substance (which equates more or less to commu-
nicative purpose) and form. Form includes structural and linguistic features,
but may also include elements of the context, such as time and place.
Meanwhile, genre analysts working in the social-constructionist tradition are
less interested in formal properties of genre, and more in the ways in which
genre is embedded in the communicative activities of the members of a disci-
pline (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995, p. 2). Therefore they have tended
to examine how a discourse community uses genres, and how these genres are
related to one another. For example, Devitt (1991) studied the genre set the
range of texts used by tax accountants in the course of their work; and
Bazerman (1994) extended this to the notion of genre system the full set of
genres that instantiate the participation of all the parties (ibid., p. 99), including
those outside the professional community, such as clients and government
organizations (Swales, 2004, uses the term genre network here). Genres are also
seen as inherently dynamic and subject to change, in response to the changing
needs of the discourse community (Miller 1984, Yates and Orlikowski 1992,
Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). Therefore, it is possible to study genre evolu-
tion (Berkenkotter 2008), as Yates and Orlikowski (1991) do in tracing how the
memo genre evolved from the business letter in the nineteenth century to be
transmitted eventually via electronic mail in the twentieth century.
The social constructionist perspective has shifted the emphasis away from
seeing genres as inherently stable and self-contained to recognizing the fluidity
and interconnectedness of genres, as seen for example in recent work by Swales
(2004) and Bhatia (2004), who examine such notions as genre networks, genre
sets or genre colonies. Another instance of this fluidity of genre is the overlap
that exists between related genres, or the difficulty at times in establishing
which genre is being enacted in a particular text or activity. For example, Bhatia
(2004) notes that certain genres, such as book reviews and company reports
are partly promotional and partly informational. Should they therefore be
considered as promotional or informational genres? Two ways of approaching
this kind of gradation and overlap between genres have been proposed in the
work of Bhatia (2004) and McCarthy (1998).
Bhatia (2004, pp. 5784) proposes the idea of genre colonies, which are
grouping of closely related genres that largely share a communicative purpose,
but are different in a number of respects, such as discipline, profession,
contexts of use or participant relationships. One such colony relevant to work-
place discourse is the colony of promotional genres. Some genres in a colony
are more typical representatives of the genre than others, and are therefore
primary members. Primary members in the colony of promotional genres
include advertisements, promotional letters, job applications and book blurbs,
as these have the primary communicative purpose of promoting a product or
service to a potential customer (Bhatia 2004, p. 60). Secondary members of the
colony would not be classified as advertisements, but have a strong promotional
concern, for example fundraising letters or travel brochures. Finally, there are
peripheral genres, which are mixed in terms of their communicative purpose;
for example book reviews and company reports are partly promotional, partly
informational. Such peripheral members may be primary members of another
genre colony, for example annual company reports, which can be described as
belonging primarily to the colony of reporting genres (ibid., p. 62). Promotional
genres which are widely used in the world of work include advertisements, job
applications and sales promotion letters. Another genre colony described by
Bhatia is that of reporting genres, which are used in almost any domain of work,
for example business reports (e.g. annual reports, feasibility reports) police
reports and medical reports.
While Bhatia proposes viewing the overlap between related genres on the
basis of family resemblance, McCarthy (1998) examines how different variables
or dimensions combine to form specific genres, and how small changes in
these variables result in genre shift. This approach was used as a classificatory
scheme to set up the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus Discourse in English
(CANCODE), a corpus of spoken English mainly targeting everyday speech,
but also including some professional and workplace interactions. The two main
dimensions according to which all the interactions were classified are goal
type and context. Three general goal types were identified: collaborative task,
collaborative idea and information provision; and five contexts, based on the
Workplace Genres 21
type of relationship between the participants: transactional, professional,

pedagogical, socializing and intimate.
McCarthy (ibid., pp. 3846) shows how shifts in goal or sub-goal type and in
the relationship between the participants (including the the degree of intimacy
and shared knowledge) and other contextual features (e.g. the physical
environment) results in more or less subtle changes to the specific genre being
performed. For example, two decision-making or planning encounters (a sub-
goal type of collaborative task) from two different contexts (intimate and
professional) are compared: one involving a family planning holiday and the
other a planning meeting in a publishing company. The two encounters are
surprisingly similar in terms of the contextual variables: the setting is informal
and the degree of shared knowledge is high. However, there are subtle
differences in these contextual variables and in the goals which result in the
professional encounter having more indirect language, less deixis and a slightly
higher lexical density. Most significantly, the participants in the planning
meeting must orient to institutional deadlines and targets, which is obviously
not the case in planning a family holiday. Balancing these goals, with relational
concerns (or face work) results in the use of more indirect language in
the publishers meeting, for example (in talking about numbers of reprints
for a title):
Example 2.1
can you just fill me in again [<S01>mm] just very quickly [<S01>mm] how
many and when are they likely to hit me.
(from McCarthy 1998, p. 44, extract from CANCODE, Cambridge University
Press, reproduced with permission)
The use of hedges and vague language (just, very quickly, likely to) make
the request more indirect, and may thus serve to mitigate any perceived threats
to workplace relationships which institutional imperatives could represent (see
Chapter 4.2). Such mitigation is not usually necessary in intimate situations,
such as planning a family holiday. Thus the two encounters can either be
considered to belong to the same or to different genres, depending on the
specificity of generic description. Importantly, the model allows a specific
description of how related genres vary according to the two dimensions of goal
type and context. Two of the CANCODE context types (transactional, which
involves mainly service encounters, and professional) are particularly relevant
for workplace discourse, but the model also shows how everyday genres used
in intimate or social contexts are related to professional or workplace genres.
The latter is an important point, as the professional genres that have been
described in the literature are frequently fairly specialized and conventional-
ized, such as the genre set used by tax accountants: transmittal letters, research
memoranda, tax protests, to name just a few (Devitt 1991). These are genres for
which the discourse community has a name and often explicit structural
conventions. McCarthys (1998) comparison of the intimate and professional
CANCODE data reminds us that not all workplace communication, especially if
it is spoken, involves such formalized genres, but may nevertheless display
generic patterning according to the transactional goal of the encounter, for
example instruction-giving, decision-making, planning or reporting. These
are what Bakhtin (1986) calls primary genres, that is genres which occur
in unmediated conversation; in contrast to secondary genres, which are
instances of highly developed and organized cultural communication and
are primarily written (ibid., p. 62). Not all descriptions accord the status of
genre to such primary genres: Bhatia (2004, pp. 5960) refers to instructions,
descriptions, narratives etc. as generic values or rhetorical acts, and notes
that genres are realized through a combination of such acts. Mller (2006a)
makes a similar point when he says that genres are made up of communicative
forms smaller patterns similar to Levinsons (1992) activity types. It is
certainly true that more complex secondary genres are not confined to single
rhetorical acts; for example Bhatia notes that promotional genres draw
on descriptions and evaluations. Nevertheless, I would like to retain the label
of genre for such primary genres, as they can be described according to the
two main identifying features of genre: communicative purpose and formal/
structural characteristics.
Another aspect of the question of what should count as genre, is the level of
generality of the generic description. Is the business letter a genre, or is this
too general a category to allow generic description, for example, in terms
of communicative purpose or rhetorical structure? Yates and Orlikowski (1992,
p. 303), who are concerned specifically with genres of organizational communi-
cation, take the view that it is possible for genres to be either very general
or very specific, as long as a recurrent situation, a common subject . . . and
common formal features can be identified. Genres thus exist at various levels
of abstraction:
the business letter and the meeting might at one point be genres, whereas
at another point, these types of communication might be considered too
general and the recommendation letter or the personnel committee meeting
might better capture the social sense of recurrent situation. (ibid.).
Therefore, more general genres can be viewed as having sub-genres, which might
in turn have even more specific sub-genres, for example (ibid., pp. 303304):
business letter

letter of recommendation

positive letter of recommendation
Workplace Genres 23
Bhatias (2004) genre colonies are also composed of such genres and sub-
genres, for example within the genre of advertisements, a promotional genre,
we can identify sub-genres such as print advertisements, radio advertisements,
TV commercials.
In addition to different levels of abstraction, genres can also be distinguished
in terms of their normative scope (Yates and Orlikowski 1992, p. 304); that is
the extent to which they are shared across society. Yates and Orlikowski identify
five levels of normative scope:
a. existence in most societies

b. existence in particular societies or cultures
c. use in certain occupations and industries
d. use in particular organizations or corporate cultures
e. use in particular intra-organizational groups, for example departments or teams
Business letters and memos, for example, are used in most industrial societies
(level a), whereas legal cases are specific to the legal profession (level c).
The notion of genre can thus be approached from a number of different
angles; genres can be viewed as multi-layered, and it is possible to investigate
them at a number of different levels. From this complex multi-layering, two
broadly different ways of approaching the investigation of workplace genres
can be discerned. One is to take a more broad brush approach, where genre is
viewed at a more general level of abstraction, and examine genres which recur
across a range of organizations and/or professions. The other is to narrow the
focus to more specialized genres, which may be specific to particular profes-
sions or even to particular workplaces. The most narrow focus would involve a
case study of all the genres used in one particular organization. Both approaches
have certain benefits. With the first approach, genres can be compared across
workplaces, and thus common general characteristics can be identified. With
the second, more focused approach, the emphasis shifts from identifying the
formal and linguistic characteristics of a genre to examining how genres are
embedded in their social context and how the genres used in a workplace or
profession interact with one another.
The chapter is organized around these two approaches to examining work-
place genres. First we review some genres which are very widespread and seem
to play a key role in workplace communication, for example meetings, decision-
making or business correspondence. Then, we turn to the use of genres within
particular professions or organizations.
2.2 Recurring or widespread genres in the workplace
What then are the main genres to recur across a range of workplace contexts
and professions? Genre analysts have tended to avoid devising taxonomies of
genre, and, as Askehave and Swales (2001, p. 196) note, any such taxonomic
schemes, such as Martin and Rotherys (1981) six elemental genres have
been controversial. The same reluctance to categorize genre is evident in
studies of workplace genre. An exception to this is Mllers (2006a, 2006b)
proposal that there are eight (spoken) communicative genres in industrial
organizations:
1. private conversations
2. contact conversations
3. presentation talks
4. training talks
5. evaluation (appraisal) conversations
6. planning conversations
7. crisis conversations
8. analysis talks
Mllers list of eight genres overlaps to a large extent with the genres identified
in my own research on spoken workplace communication (Koester 2006).
Mller (2006b, pp. 150152) stresses that this list does not represent a complete
taxonomy of workplace genres, but is an open inventory based on a corpus
of meetings recorded in three factories (in Germany, France and Spain) belong-
ing to a multinational company. Similarly, the genre set I identified is not
exhaustive, but results from an attempt to categorize the recurring communica-
tive events identified across a range of office environments in the North America
and Britain. The offices were in a variety of organizations and business sectors,
including higher education, publishing, the paper trade, advertising and retail
(Koester 2006.). From approximately 30 hours of audio-recorded data, a
smaller data set was transcribed, and a corpus consisting of 66 conversations
or generic stretches of talk and totalling 34,000 words was compiled (the
Corpus of American and British Office Talk, or ABOT). In order to establish
the genre categories for the corpus, linguistic evidence of speakers goals, iden-
tified through qualitative analysis, was used to pick out recurring genres and
organize exemplars of these into sub-corpora (see Koester 2006, chapters 2
and 3). The following genres were identified, and grouped into three macro-
genres:
1. Unidirectional genres
z Procedural and directive discourse
z Briefing
z Service encounters
z Reporting
z Requesting
Workplace Genres 25
2. Collaborative genres
z Decision-making
z Arrangements
z Discussing and evaluating
3. Non-transactional genres
z Small talk
z Office gossip
Unidirectional genres involve a discursively dominant speaker imparting infor-

mation or instructing/directing another participant; in collaborative genres,
participants contribute more or less equally to the discourse. The genres
grouped under unidirectional and collaborative discourse are all transactional,
that is work-oriented; whereas non-transactional genres are not concerned with
performing workplace tasks, but involve topics outside work (small talk) and
off-task talk about work (office gossip). The most frequently-occurring genres
were decision-making, and procedural/directive discourse, making up 26 and
15 per cent of the corpus respectively.
It is interesting that many of the genres which make up the ABOT corpus are
similar to the genres identified by Mller (2006a, 2006b), although Mllers
data was collected in different countries, quite different workplace environ-
ments (factories rather than offices), and the participants spoke German,
French and Spanish, rather than English. This seems to indicate that many of
these genres are very widespread indeed in spoken workplace communication.
Table 2.1 shows the overlap between Mllers eight genres and genres identi-
fied in the ABOT Corpus.
2.2.1 Decision-making or meetings?

One glaring omission from the above two lists of spoken workplace genres is
business meetings, which clearly play a key role in most workplace settings, and
Table 2.1
Mllers 8 genres (2006a) Similar genres identified in the ABOT Corpus
(Koester 2006)
(1) private conversations non-transactional genres

(2) contact conversations
(3) presentation talks
(4) training talks procedural and directive discourse
(5) evaluation (appraisal) conversations
(6) planning conversations decision-making/arrangements
(7) crisis conversations
(8) analysis talks discussing and evaluating
have been extensively described in the literature on workplace discourse

(Boden 1994, Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1997b, Poncini 2002, Holmes and
Stubbe 2003). Although many of the encounters in the ABOT Corpus (and also
in Mllers corpus) take place in the context of meetings, meetings are not
treated as genres. This is because meetings can have a variety of purposes, for
example planning, problem-solving, reporting (Holmes and Stubbe 2003),
and thus cannot be described as constituting a genre, if one takes a goal-based
definition of genre (see Koester 2006). Mllers genre categories are also largely
derived on the basis of communicative goal; or, more specifically, the reason
(Anlass) for the interaction together with the participant roles (Teilnehmer)
constitute the genre (2006b, p. 149).1 Handford (2007, forthcoming), on the
other hand, argues that communicative goal should not be the sole criterion
for defining genre, but that structural features, in combination with particular
practices and strategies, should be taken into account as well, and that there-
fore the business meeting can be viewed as a genre. Structure is clearly an
important aspect of genre, whether a defining feature or not, and as Handford
points out, meetings do have clear beginnings and endings, whereas the same
is not necessarily true of activities like decision-making. Decision-making may
be invisible in organizations, as it is often incremental and fragmentary
(Boden 1994, p 183), or it may actually take place outside the meetings where
the issues are discussed (Handford 2007).
Nevertheless, there is ample evidence in both the ABOT Corpus and the
Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC),2 used in
Handfords study, that decision-making is a key activity in workplace discourse;
accounting for over 25 per cent of the entire ABOT Corpus. Whether or not a
decision is reached in the actual encounter, a large proportion of spoken
workplace communication seems to involve people actively engaging in verbal
decision-making (Willing 1992, McCarthy and Handford 2004). The following
two extracts involve decision-making in quite different workplace settings, but
they are strikingly similar in terms of the linguistic and interactive features
they share (these are underlined in the examples). Example 2.2 is from a small
family-run business, and involves two colleagues discussing some problems with
their accounts, whereas example 2.3 is from the meeting of a medical team in
the nursing-home care unit of a hospital (both data samples are from North
America).
Example 2.2: Discussing problems with accounts
(1) Chris But I think the it seems to me that what we need to do on those
(2) Amy But
(3) Chris is is . . . basically make our
(4) Amy /say tell em/ were gonna start charging an interest
(5) Chris Yeah make make the interest provision stick. Its there already.
(6) Amy make our interest
Workplace Genres 27
(7) Amy Right

(8) Becky An thats /??/
(9) Amy We just need the systems to make it do that.
Example 2.3: Discussing patient treatment plan
(1) Ellie: I have a problem with this care plan

(2) Barbara: Yeah go ahead
(3) Ellie: Were saying he has self total self-care deficit then shes saying
hes able to eat . . . has the ability to eat and does so effectively
then why are we saying total self-care deficit?
(4) Barbara: Youre right if its self-care deficit . . .
(5) Ellie: Were contradicting ourselves!
(6) Barbara: and we need . . . and we need . . . and we need . . .
(7) Laura: Yeah
(8) Barbara: . . . to identify the . . .
(9) Laura: Mobility mobility umm
(Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999, pp. 159160)
In both encounters, speakers make suggestions how to deal with a particular

problem, for example it seems to me . . . , we need (to) . . .. The language used
is quite direct, with frequent use of the deontic modal verb need, and
unhedged agreement/disagreement and expression of opinion, for example:
z Yeah
z Right
z I have a problem with . . .
z Were contradicting ourselves
z Youre right
The discourse is highly collaborative, with speakers interrupting each other and
jointly putting forward proposals. These examples seem to indicate that it is
possible to identify decision-making in terms of its formal linguistic and interactive
properties, as well as its overall goal orientation (see also Chapter 3, p. 62).
There is clearly a large overlap between meetings and decision-making dis-
course. In discussing data from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Proj-
ect, Holmes and Stubbe (2003, p. 75) note that in many meetings it was important
for those involved to reach decisions on issues, and indeed in some cases this was
the primary function of the meeting. Handford (2007, pp. 249256) points out
that the role of decision-making in meetings may be influenced by the relation-
ship of the participants. Overall, there is more linguistic evidence in CANBEC
of problem-solving and decision-making discourse (e.g. the use of the words
problem and issue) in company-internal meetings than in external meetings
(meetings between different companies). External meetings often involved

reporting about decisions already made or discussing such decisions in some
way. In internal meetings, decision-making was often the focus in meetings
between peers, especially in strategic meetings; whereas meetings between
managers and subordinates frequently involved handing down decisions
made by upper management. However, Cook-Gumperz, and Messerman,
(1999) point out that there is not always a straightforward relationship between
decision-making and status. In the medical team meetings exemplified in
extract 2.3, it is regularly the lower status members, such as the social worker
(Barbara in example 2.3 above) or dieticians, who play a key role in deciding
what goes in the medical records. In the ABOT Corpus, it is also the case that
those driving the decision-making process are not always the most senior in
status, and more generally there is evidence that in collaborative discourse
differences in status play a less important role than in unidirectional discourse
(see Chapter 4).
The advantage of decision-making as a genre category is that the linguistic
characteristics of decision-making discourse linked to the discourse goals (e.g.
the use of deontic modals like need) can be more easily described than those
of meetings, where the goals may be more diverse. This means genres can be
compared easily across workplace contexts. On the other hand, meetings
have a spatio-temporal reality within the workplace context, and meetings as a
genre label has the advantage of being recognized by its users. Perhaps another
way of looking at the difference between decision-making and meetings as
generic categories (besides the goal-based versus structure-based definitions),
is to see decision-making as a primary genre, which also occurs in non-
workplace contexts (as seen in the discussion above of the CANCODE data),
and meetings as a secondary genre with a recognized cultural identity in the
workplace.
2.2.2 The structure of meetings

Most descriptions of meetings have tended to identify a three-part generic
structure, for example, Bargiela-Chiappini, and Harris (1995) found that both
British and Italian management meetings could be divided into the following
phases:
1. Opening Phase
2. Debating Phase
3. Closing Phase
Holmes and Stubbe (2003) propose a similar three-part structure, but label
the second phase exploratory. Handford (2007, forthcoming) elaborates on
this three-phase model and proposes further stages which take into account the
Workplace Genres 29
preparation leading up to a meeting and what happens as a result of the

meeting:
Stage pre-2: Meeting preparation

Stage pre-1: Pre meeting
(transition move)
Stage 1: Meeting coheres
(transition move)
Stage 2: Discussion of the agenda/topic
(transition move)
Stage 3: Closing of meeting
Stage 4: Post-meeting effects
The pre-meeting involves any talk (often phatic) that occurs before the offi-
cial start of the meeting. The first and the last stages (meeting preparation and
post-meeting effects) are different from the other four, as they do not describe
specific interactive events; but including these in the model recognizes the fact
that meetings do not exist in a vacuum but are in fact highly intertextual
(Handford 2007, p. 319). Handford argues that the model should also take
account of the turn-by-turn nature of meetings, and therefore includes a transi-
tion move between three of the stages as shown above. For example to signal
the transition between the pre-meeting stage and stage 1, the chair may say
something like: okay well we might just start without Seth (from Holmes and
Stubbe 2003, p. 57).
The core stage of a meeting the discussion of the agenda/topic consists
of several phases, which tend to follow either a linear or a spiral pattern, as
identified by Holmes and Stubbe (2003, pp. 6871). In a meeting following a
linear pattern, each problem is dealt with before moving on to the next; if it
has a spiral pattern, a point may recur several times with further discussion.
Meetings, or stages of meetings, with a decision-focus tend to have a spiral
pattern, whereas information exchange meetings (typically between managers
and subordinates) tend to be more linear (Handford 2007). Handford shows
that there is considerable variety in how/whether each of the stages is realized
and how developed it is. Some of the factors which seem to have an influence
here include the regularity of the meeting, whether the meeting is internal or
external and what the relationship between the participants is. For example, in
regular internal meetings, stage 1 (meeting coheres) tends to be quite short
and perfunctory (ibid., p. 321).
2.2.3 Service encounters

Service encounters comprise another genre occurring in the ABOT Corpus
which is quite widespread in institutional and workplace discourse, and has
received considerable attention in the literature. Service encounters are front

stage activities (see Chapter 1.3), frequently involving interactions between
service providers and the general public, for example retail sales. Some of the
foundational studies in genre analysis were based on market transactions
(Mitchell 1957/75) and small shop encounters (Hasan 1985), and other retail
settings examined include encounters in bookshops (Aston 1988) and at the
supermarket checkout (Kuiper and Flindall 2000). The leisure industry has
also received some attention, for example service encounters in travel agencies
(Ventola 1987, Coupland and Ylnne-McEwen 2000, Ylnne-McEwen 2004), in
restaurants (Merritt 1976) and at the front desk of hotels (Schneider 1989,
Cheng 2004). Many service encounters take place over the telephone,
particularly with the growth of call centres, which have been the focus of a
number of studies (Cameron 2000, Cheepen 2000, Taylor and Bain 2003).
Telephone calls may also be initiated by customers, as for example in the case
of calls to emergency services (Zimmerman 1992), or queries regarding bills
or banking, for example Iacobuccis (1990) study of customers calls to the
telephone company regarding their phone bills. Besides such interactions
between lay people and professionals, service encounters also take place
between companies or professionals, for example the commodity trading
studied by Firth (1995a and 1995b), or the encounters between wholesale paper
sellers and their customers that form part of the ABOT corpus.
With such a diversity of encounter types and settings, does it make sense
to think of the category of service encounters as constituting a genre with a
common communicative purpose and having particular structural features?
There are at least two factors which can be said to be common to all service
encounters. First, the roles of service provider and customer (or service receiver)
are constants in all service encounters. Secondly, the main transactional goal of
such encounters is that of giving or obtaining a service of some kind, whether it
be transacting actual goods or services, or simply obtaining information.
However, specifying the structural features of the genre is not straight-
forward. Hasan (1985) described the generic structure potential of service
encounters as consisting of certain obligatory and optional moves or
elements:
z Obligatory elements: sales request, sales compliance, sale, purchase,

purchase closure
z Optional elements: greeting, sales initiation, sales enquiry, finis
However, positing that all the above moves are obligatory is problematic, as
Ventola (1987) points out, as there are clearly many service encounters which
do not include an actual transaction in the form of a sale and a purchase. For
instance, frequently customers may only make an enquiry of some kind, but
the interaction is nevertheless still a service encounter. One could say that at a
minimum all service encounters will include a service request and a service
compliance of some kind, but this does not really tell us very much about an
Workplace Genres 31
encounter. In fact, focusing too much on structure may mean missing what is
most interesting about the encounter, and indeed many studies have examined
other aspects of service encounters. For example, Goodwin (1995) looked at
how teams working in the operations room of an airport collaboratively con-
struct responses to queries from pilots of incoming flights. Zimmermans (1992)
study of calls to emergency services examined the sometimes difficult task of
achieving alignment with callers in order to get the required information.
Furthermore, many service encounters include a substantial amount of
relational talk, in addition to the transactional elements, as a number of studies
have shown. McCarthy (2000) describes close contact service encounters in
hair-dressing salons and during driving lessons, where server and client are in
close physical proximity for an extended period, and shows that relational talk
is prominent in such interactions, with transactional elements only making up
a small portion of the talk. McCarthy convincingly demonstrates that relational
talk plays a key role in such service encounters, and other studies have also
focused on the role of small talk and other relational elements of talk in some
service encounters, for example travel agency interactions (Coupland and
Ylnne-McEwen 2000, Ylnne-McEwen 2004) and supermarket checkout talk
(Cheepen 2000).
The presence or absence of relational talk in service encounters clearly has a
great deal to do with the nature of the service encounter, for example, small
talk is unlikely in a situation where participants must focus exclusively on the
task at hand, for example in responding to an emergency call. But, the nature
of the relationship between server and client is also an important factor: whether
they are strangers or have occasional or even regular contact with one another.
Where there is a relationship to build or maintain, attention to relational aspects
of the interaction will be more important than if it is a one-off encounter. For
example, Ylnne-McEwen (1996) found that, in travel agency encounters, the
level of acquaintance between server and client played a role in the occurrence
of relational talk.3 Where there is no relationship to maintain, transactional ele-
ments of the genre may dominate, with phatic elements limited to greetings
and thanking, as for example in the beginning of a service encounter at the
front desk of a university office in example 2.4 (which we have already seen in
Chapter 1, example 1.2):
Example 2.4:
(1) Visitor /(Hi)/

(2) Server Hello.
(3) Visitor Um . . . (5 sec) Is there a list of . . . uhm . . . faculty assistants?
[1 sec] in the handbook or something like that? I need to try
and /???/
(4) Server No:, there isnt a list in the handbook, I have a . . . typewritten
list here,
(5) Visitor Wow. thank you very much.
In such interactions, the participants exclusively enact their pre-established

roles as server and servee, but if a relationship has already been established, they
may step out of these roles and interact on a more personal level. Example 2.5
shows a small talk sequence from another service encounter in a university office
here between a student and two secretaries involving an enquiry about the stu-
dents user name. In the relational talk shown, the participants refer to a previous
encounter with the student, in which she had left some food for her mothers
birthday dinner in the English office for the secretaries to look after.
Example 2.5:
(1) Liz Did your mum like her dinner.

(2) Jenny Yeah hehehe
(3) Susan I know it was a while ago,
(4) Liz Shed been-Shed been to Sainsburys hadnt she.
(5) Jenny Hehehehe Yeah /??/
(6) Liz And she was cooking dinner for her mum.
[3]
(7) Susan Oh was it for your mum. I didnt realize that.
(8) Liz Yeah,
(9) Liz For your mums birthday.
Here the asymmetry of the service encounter and the attendant institutional
roles are temporarily suspended and participants interact as equals, referring to
common ground and to the relationship that already exists between them (see
also Ylnne-McEwen 2004). This relational episode occurs in the middle of the
transactional encounter, effectively interrupting the service provision.
Where, on the other hand, there is a relationship, but it is not well-established,
evidence from the ABOT Corpus suggests that phatic communion occurring at
the beginning and end of encounters is particularly prevalent in workplace
encounters (Koester 2006, p. 142, see also Laver 1975). One striking example of
this is a service encounter involving a meeting between a supplier and customer,
where the small talk at the beginning and end of the meeting take up 18 and
8 turns respectively. What may play a particularly important role in service
encounters is the power difference that often exists between server/supplier
and customer, which seems to result in a predominance of negative politeness
(see Chapter 4.2), characterized by a large amount of hedging and indirect lan-
guage, as is the case in the above-mentioned customer-supplier meeting (key
language is underlined):
Example 2.6
(1) Ian Uh Just wanted to come and chat to you a little bit about the
company. /Cause the-/ paper brokers have changed a little bit,
Workplace Genres 33
(2) Paul Oh yeah? What you been up to then

(3) Ian Uh:m . . . Well I I did quite a bit with Danny Murphy and
<Paul>: Mm Bob Green. Um centrally. And uh . . . we used to do
quite a bit- with you as well. Uh:m . . . /but at least i- /
This exchange marks the transition from the 18 turns of initial small talk to
the actual business of the meeting, and it is marked by extensive hedging on the
part of the supplier, Paul: just wanted to, a little bit, quite a bit.
Another type of service encounter in which such negative politeness is impor-
tant is in interactions at the front desk of a hotel. Chengs (2004) analysis of in
a number of checking out encounters in Hong Kong hotels revealed that Chi-
nese front desk staff interacting in English with international clients sometimes
failed to display the expected degree of negative politeness, thus falling short of
the level of service stipulated by the hotels mission statement:
Only six [of eleven] checking out discourses clearly communicate a message
of customer care and concern for providing impeccable service that is so
central to the mission of the hotel. (Cheng 2004, p. 157)
The role played by relational talk is of course an important topic for most
workplace genres (see Koester 2004b and 2006). But, because there is such a
range in the possible social distance between servers and clients (as compared,
for example with workplace colleagues, where a certain level of familiarity can
be assumed), the discursive shape of service encounters may be particularly
diverse as a result.
One objection to viewing service encounters as genres could be the argu-
ment that different types of discursive activity can take place within a service
encounter setting. For example, service encounters between companies often
involve protracted negotiations, which could be considered a different genre
entirely (Firth 1995a and 1995b). Ylnne-McEwen (1996) takes a bottom-up
approach to analysing travel agency encounters, looking at the local manage-
ment of the discourse and the goals the participants are orienting to, rather
than classifying such discourse a priori as a service encounter.4 Therefore, an
interaction can be considered to constitute a service encounter if the main
transactional goal is that of giving or obtaining a service or information. Taking
a bottom-up approach allows for the possibility that more than one genre may
be performed in the course of an interaction, for example the customer-
supplier encounter from the ABOT Corpus mentioned above mostly involves
service provision, but does contain some elements of negotiation.
2.2.4 E-mail
Turning to written workplace genres, various forms of business correspondence,
particularly letters, faxes and e-mail are central to the work of any organization.
Over the last decade or so, e-mail as emerged as an important or perhaps

even the most important means of communication in the workplace. But can it
be considered a genre? In their seminal study of genres of organizational com-
munication, Yates and Orlikowski (1992) identify e-mail as being a medium, not
a genre. They stress that the distinction between medium and genre is an impor-
tant one:
Media are the physical means by which communication is created, transmitted

or stored. Genres are typified communicative actions invoked in recurrent
situations and characterized by similar substance and form. (p. 319)
However, they acknowledge that the medium may play a role in the recurrent
situation and form of a genre. On the one hand, the recurrent situation may
involve the use of a specific medium, for example, an e-mail message typically
evokes an e-mail response; and on the other hand, the medium can be an aspect
of a genres form, for example letters are traditionally paper-based (ibid., p. 310).
Other studies, even some which build on Yates and Orlikowskis work
(Mullholand 1999, Nickerson 1999), treat e-mail as a genre in its own right. In
examining e-mail as a genre in a Dutch multinational corporation, Nickerson
(1999) invokes the conventional association of genre with a medium discussed
by Yates and Orlikowski. She suggests that it may be possible to identify a com-
mon communicative purpose for e-mails, citing a number of studies (Sherblom
1988, Markus 1994, Ziv 1996) which show that e-mail seems to be used primarily
to exchange information in organizational settings (ibid., p. 40); whereas other
media, for example face-to-face communication, may be chosen for other
purposes which do not involve the straightforward exchange of information.
Nickersons study examines the use of English in the Dutch multinational as an
aspect of the form of the genre, resulting from the recurrent situation in
which it is used (ibid., p. 42). Mulholland (1999) also views e-mail as a genre,
but notes that as people learn to use e-mail by trial and error, they are influ-
enced by other companion genres (such as letters and memoranda), and that
therefore, e-mail draws on features of other genres. (ibid., p. 58).
There are also different theories about the origins of e-mail. According to
Yates and Orlikowski (1992), e-mail has evolved from the genre of written
memos, but they note that the medium of e-mail may also be used for more
ephemeral types of messages which resemble other genres, such as voice mail
(ibid., p. 317). According to Gimenez (2000), e-mail is derived from telephone
conversations, and therefore has many features of spoken language, such as
simple syntax, reliance on context, elliptical forms and informal language.
Louhiala-Salminen (1999) suggests that new demands in todays business
environment, such as the need to communicate across time zones, results in the
choice of e-mail and fax for types of communication that might have been done
via the telephone previously. There seems to be general agreement in most
studies that e-mail is influenced by both written and spoken genres, and is
Workplace Genres 35
therefore a kind of hybrid genre (Yates and Orlikowski 1992, Mullholland

1999, Louhiala-Salminen 1999).
However, a number of studies examining specific types of e-mail communica-
tion throw doubt on the notion that a common communicative purpose can be
identified for all e-mail. A recent study by Jensen (2009) on professional e-mail
negotiation would seem to strengthen the case for seeing e-mail as a medium
rather than a genre, as such interactions clearly have more in common with
face-to-face negotiations than with other types of e-mail communication, such
as internal messages, where the focus is on conveying information.
Gimenez (2006) discusses the phenomenon of embedded e-mails, where a
series of messages sent back and forth results in a chain of textually connected
messages. Such embedded e-mails seem to fulfil a particular need in a globalized
business environment, as the appropriate communication tool when the
complexity of the topic being discussed by a geographically dispersed team calls
for team decision-making (ibid., p. 162). This is clearly quite a different com-
municative purpose from the one of simple information exchange identified by
Nickerson (1999). What Gimenez seems to be describing is a particular genre
of e-mail with specific formal and structural features that all contribute to the
overall communicative purpose. In terms of structure, an embedded e-mail
begins with a chain initiator, followed by one or several embedded messages
and concludes with a chain terminator. Other key formal features of the genre
are the carbon copy (CC) and forward (FW) facilities, which allow messages to
be sent to several participants and passed from recipient to recipient. This
enables multiple participation in the decision-making process, with different
levels of participation of the recipients: some of them actively involved and
others as witnesses of the process (Gimenez 2006, pp. 161162).
Gimenez (ibid.) is mainly concerned with showing how e-mail has changed in
response to a changing business environment involving new demands on com-
munication, namely the need to make decisions in geographically dispersed
teams and to keep a written record of the process. What all studies of e-mail do
seem to agree on is that e-mail communication is the site par excellence for examin-
ing genre change or evolution in organizational settings. Many studies high-
light the emergent nature of e-mail and faxes, such as the lack of standardization,
which leads to much more variation, for example in the level of formality, when
compared with letters or memos (Mullholland 1999, Louhiala-Salminen 1999,
Koester 2004a). Yates and Orlikowski (1992), Orlikowski et al. (1995) and Yates
et al. (1999) examine e-mail and other forms of electronic communication to
illustrate the process of genre change, and the way in which genre both shapes
and is shaped by communicative practice in organizations. For example,
Orlikowski et al. (1995) show how specific individuals (so-called mediators)
influence the adoption of new computer-mediated modes of communication
in an organization.
A diachronic examination of the studies of e-mail communication provides
a telling illustration in itself of the way in which e-mail has evolved from an
electronic medium for conveying information, such as company-internal memos

(Yates and Orlikowski 1992) to a much more versatile tool used for a variety of
purposes, including decision-making (Gimenez 2006) and negotiation (Jensen
2009). With the increased use of e-mail and other forms of electronically
mediated communication, such as newsgroups and business networking, for a
wide variety of communicative purposes, it seems more accurate to speak of
genres of e-mail and other forms of electronic communication, as Yates et al.
(1999) do, rather than e-mail as a genre. For example, in analysing messages
posted on a Japanese company-internal electronic news system, Yates et al.
(1999) identify six different genres, including official announcement, trip
report, and lost and found notices.
But whether or not e-mail is treated as a genre in its own right, it exemplifies
two important aspects of genres in todays workplace: (1) the rapid evolution of
the genres that are used, and (2) the increasing hybridity of many genres.
A further, related aspect of e-mail which is discussed in a number of studies is
that it is not used in isolation, but in conjunction with other written and spoken
genres. Gimenez (2006, p. 164) notes that embedded emails are often used in
conjunction with conference calls, and Louhiala-Salminen (2002, p. 217) talks
of the interwining of email communication with phone calls in dealing with a
particular problem in the course of a managers day. This interaction of work-
place genres with one another is the subject of the remainder of this chapter.
2.3 The use of genres within organizations
Workplace genres do not of course exist in isolation, but the discourse

community, whether at the organizational or professional level, uses a genre
repertoire (Orlikowski and Yates 2004). Looking at the kinds of genre used
within different workplace contexts, a very general distinction can be made
regarding such genre sets or repertoires. In some professions, such as the legal
professions and tax accounting, written texts play a key role. The work carried
out by professionals in these fields consists in producing texts, and texts thus
essentially constitute and define the work (Devitt 1991). In many other jobs, the
work is carried out less (or less exclusively) through written texts, and more
through a process of collaborative tasks. Verbal communication may interact
with material resources or artefacts (Goodwin 1995) that people use in their
work (charts, forms, lab equipment, electronic devices etc.); or the work itself
may be constituted mainly through non-verbal action (as in the case of manual
labour), and language may merely accompany the task. This kind of language
has been referred to as language-in-action (Ure 1971). Of course, even in
professions which are heavily text-based, such as tax accounting, verbal genres
will still be used; for example, tax accountants will have meetings or telephone
conversations with clients. Both written and spoken genres are used in all work-
places, but in some professions written texts play a much greater role than in
Workplace Genres 37
others. Written and spoken workplace genres also interact with one another,
for example, meetings are minuted or medical records are produced as a result
of verbal consultations. This relationship, or intertextuality, between written
and spoken genres will also be examined, as well as the relationship between
genre and material artefacts (Goodwin 1995) or tools (Berkenkotter and
Huckin 1995)5 that are used in their enactment.
2.3.1 Text-based genres

Devitts (1991) much cited study of the range of written genres used by tax
accountants illustrates the way in which a genre set is used by a professional
group in the course of its daily work routine and how these genres are part and
parcel of the discourse communitys values and epistemology. Texts are central
to the work of tax accountants, as they are both the resources and the products of
this profession. Texts are its products, as tax accountants charge fees for the
texts they write for their clients. They are also its resource, as other texts, such
as tax returns or letters from the tax authority, are the subject of the texts they
write, and texts, such as tax publications, provide the authority for what the
accountants write. Devitt concludes that,
These texts and their interaction are so integral to the communitys work that
they essentially constitute and govern the tax accounting community, defining
and reflecting that communitys epistemology and values. (ibid., pp. 336357)
Other professions in which one can expect written texts to play such an essen-
tial, enabling role are law and academia (ibid., p. 344). In his work on research
genres, Swales (2004) examines how different academic genres are linked to
one another through hierarchies, sets, chains and networks. According to
Swales, genre networks are the totality of genres available for a particular
sector (such as the research world) (ibid., p. 22), whereas genre sets are the
total genre network that a particular individual or . . . class of individuals
engages in (ibid., p. 20). Studying genre hierarchies, reveals those genres
which are most highly valued in different academic disciplines, which may be,
for example, the research article, research monograph or conference presenta-
tion, depending on the discipline (ibid, pp. 1218). Genre chains consist of a
series of genres which are chronologically linked to one another, in that one
genre is a necessary antecedent for another (ibid., p. 18), as for example
proposals for conference papers or research articles, which go through a review
and redrafting process before the presentation of the conference paper or the
publication of the article. The chain may consist entirely of written texts, as
in the case of a research article, but even an oral genre like the conference
presentation (which in some cases is a written text read out loud), is preceded
by a chain of written genres, from the call for papers through to the abstract,
review process, and sometimes the submission of the written paper prior to the
conference.
2.3.2 Action-based genres

In other areas of work, producing and responding to written texts plays a lesser
role, and work is carried out more through spoken genres, which may involve
interaction with the physical environment. In such contexts, non-verbal activi-
ties may be integral to the genres used, and language may even play a
subsidiary or supporting role to the activity. Ure (1971) uses the term language-
in-action, borrowed from Malinowski, to describe situations in which it is
essential to know about the the action accompanying the text (ibid., p. 443) to
understand what is going on, as in example 2.7:
Example 2.7
(1) Mark Theres a matt one,

(2) Val Mm,
(3) Mark Thats with nothing on it, [1] yeah?
(4) Val Mm =
(5) Mark = An it stays like tha:t, yeah?
(6) Val Yeah =
(7) Mark = Thats . . . not got any varnish on it.
(8) Val Right.
Without knowing that this conversation takes place in a printing company,

and that the printer (Mark) is showing a label he has just printed to a colleague,
it would be very difficult to make sense of this interaction. This is due to the
frequent use of deixis, typical of language-in-action, as a result of speakers
referring to material artefacts which form part of their work. While one would
typically associate such language with manual labour, for example Weigel and
Weigels (1985) study of directives in the work of migrant labourers, language-
in-action plays an important role in a variety of workplaces. In the ABOT Corpus,
all the settings in which data were collected were white-collar offices (with the
exception of the printing company), and language-in-action typically occurs in
interactions involving procedural discourse or briefing.
While in extreme forms of language-in-action, language plays a role which
is completely ancillary to and perhaps even unnecessary for the action; in
many cases, linguistic and non-linguistic elements of the genre are essential to
accomplish the task at hand. Goodwin (1995) gives an interesting example
from an airport ground operations room of the way in which actions, language
and material artefacts interact in collaboratively constructing a response to
queries from pilots of incoming flights. Announcements from pilots who are
Workplace Genres 39
coming in to land a plane are received by a flight tracker, who consults video
monitors showing the current status of the gates, and confirms to the pilot
whether or not the gate is ready to receive the plane. In doing this, the
flight tracker may also need input from a ramp planner, which may lead to
a collaborative construction of the response given to the pilot. In this very
specialized genre, a co-ordination of linguistic interaction, interaction with
material artefacts, and action (including the pilot flying the plane and the
physical orientation of operators in the control room towards the monitors)
are essential for its successful accomplishment. Goodwin refers to this activity as
a service encounter (clearly of a very specialized kind), and although she does
not use the term genre, her reference to the predictability with which such
sequences are routinely played out (ibid., p. 176), clearly shows that this is
a typified communicative action invoked in response to a recurrent situation
(Yates and Orlikowski 1992, p. 301).
Although, as we have seen, professional discourse tends to involve a large
number of written genres, there are some professions in which language-in-
action also plays an important role. The medical professions readily come to
mind (e.g. examining a patient or performing an operation), but the same is
true of architects, who need to refer to material artefacts, such as building
plans, models and physical structures. Medway (1996) gives the following
example (2.8) from an interaction between architects:
Example 2.8
Dave: OK, OK, I understand, OK, I thought this was the second floor
plan. So heres the main wall, and then . . . so that this is, this is
75 cm right here, right, and then . . . and then it cuts in a meter.
Nelson: Yes, on the top level.
Dave: OK on the top, over here.
Nelson: Yes.
Dave: That.
Nelson: But on the main level it only goes 150, so it goes in that much, and
it goes out like that, it goes back in like that.
(from Medway 1996, p. 484)
The language is typical of language-in-action with frequent use of deixis

(this, here, that), but what is interesting about this example is that, although
the material artefact the speakers are consulting is a building plan, they seem
to be describing an actual building. Dave says, heres the main wall, although
he is simply pointing to some markings on a two-dimensional plan there is
no actual wall there. Medway (1996) argues that this virtual building is as
real for the speakers as a physical building, although it does not yet exist: the
virtual building seems to be a shared reality for the participants. They talk
about it entirely as if it had substantive current existence (ibid., p. 482). Some
interesting characteristics of the virtual building are that knowledge about

it may be unevenly distributed between the participants, as illustrated in
example 2.8, where Nelson seems to have more complete knowledge than Dave,
and that the virtual building can be changed through talk, that is through joint
decisions made about changes to the building plans. According to Medway
(1996 and 2007), the genres used by architects draw on a range of symbolic
and semiotic systems, that is verbal, gestural and graphical representation.
For example, architects plans often combine graphical representation with
writing, and example 2.8 shows a combination of speech and gesture (pointing
to different parts of the plan).
But language-in-action which involves the construction of such virtual worlds
is not restricted to the language of architects. Example 2.9 below (from the
ABOT Corpus) is from the sales office of a paper wholesaler. The extract is part
of a lengthy explanation of the office manager, Ben, to a new sales rep, Sam,
about the procedure he needs to follow when a printer wants to order adhesive
labels (see also Chapter 4.5). He explains that Ben needs to get details from the
customer about the format of the plate they use for printing, in order to see
whether the companys labels are the right format for that plate. This involves
Ben in explaining the printing process in great detail:
Example 2.9
(1) Ben So heres his printing plate, an on his printing plate, hes got
lets say theyre lets say theyre um: labels for peanuts.
(2) Sam Yeah,
(3) Ben [drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks]
so on each one o those, . . . theyre just white labels, and in the
middle o that you might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a
couple o legs and a couple o arms an /?/ an put peanuts
under it right? Alright?
(4) Sam Yeah. . . [chuckles]
(5) Ben So all youve got on here,. . . is loads o little peanuts, with arms
an legs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going
round an round a cylinder, . . . thats /flat/ wrapped round a
cylindar like that right, . . . an here comes all the labels yeah? . . . .
So here comes these labels, . . . an all those little . . . peanuts, land,
right in the middle of all those . . . labels, right?
In explaining the printing process, Ben constructs a whole virtual printing

press in operation, aided by a drawing on a piece of paper representing the
sheet with labels. As with the virtual buildings, the printing process he describes
is not actually happening, but the participants focus their attention on this
activity as if it were actually taking place. Using this virtual situation as part of
Workplace Genres 41
his explanation has a pedagogical purpose in trying to make the explanation

vivid and entertaining for the new and very young sales rep. Action-based
genres thus involve situated workplace activities, where verbal activities
interact with non-verbal ones, and thereby are integrated into an extra-
textual environment. However, this environment may involve virtual as well
as physical worlds.
2.3.3 The Interaction of spoken and written genres

The juxtaposition in the previous section of text and action-based genres is an
attempt to capture some of the key ways in which workplaces may differ in terms
of their genre repertoire. But, of course the text versus action or written versus
spoken distinction represents two extremes. Most people use a range of written
and spoken genres in the workplace, as well as genres in which some kind of non-
verbal activity plays a role. The key point is that performing genres may involve
drawing on both verbal and non-verbal resources, and that the genres used within
an organization or a persons daily work routine are linked to one another in vari-
ous ways. Devitt (1991, p. 336) remarks on the high degree of intertextuality in
the genres used by tax accountants: No text is single, as texts refer to one another,
draw from one another, create the purpose for one another.
Such intertextuality can also exist between the written and spoken genres
used in a workplace. In observing all the activities carried out by one manager
in the course of a day, Louhiala-Salminen (2002, p. 217) notes that:
throughout the day spoken and written communication were totally inter-
twined, there was hardly any activity in either mode where the other would
not be present as well; many phone calls were to confirm an issue in an e-mail
message, e-mail messages referred to phone calls, and they were constantly
discussed in face-to-face communication with colleagues.
This intertextuality is reflected in the many explicit references in the discourse

used by the participants to other discourse acts, for example writing I tried
to call you back in an e-mail.
A written document may also be the topic of discussion, in which case
understanding the intertextual references is absolutely essential in order
to make sense of the interaction. Koester (2004a, pp. 4346) shows the
following example (2.10. below) from the ABOT Corpus of a meeting
between a sales manager and his boss, the president of the company, where
they discuss a document the former has drawn up to give his sales team.
The draft document is a list of conversation stoppers, that is things that
sales reps should not say in their phone calls with potential customers. The
president, Chris, makes a number of suggestions how he thinks the
document can be improved:
Example 2.10
(21) Chris Uh . . . I dont know why this is . . . large. Isnt this the same as all
the rest of these? Its just another . . . example?
(22) Joe Yeah. It should be, [1.5] Yeah thats just another example.
(23) Chris
[. . .]
(24) Chris U:hm . . . an a- an maybe just a note at the end here, that says
to the person Ask yourself is this question . . . a: an indirect
invitation for the prospect to end the conversation [Joe:
Yeah] because . . . I mean if they really answered that honestly,
almost all of these are.
The interaction is replete with references to the document discussed using

deictic items such as this, these, that, here, and this spoken advice-giving
sequence (a specific type of procedural discourse) is entirely dependent on the
written text discussed.
Another way in which written and spoken genres can be linked is if, as is
frequently the case in organizational settings, a written record is routinely made
of a verbal event, such as a meeting. Cook-Gumperz and Messerman (1999)
discuss the case of record-keeping in the medical profession. They studied an
interdisciplinary medical team in the nursing home care unit of a hospital,
combining ethnographic fieldwork with discourse analysis of weekly team
meetings (see example 2.3 above). The purpose of the meetings was to review
patients treatment plans and to produce a written record in the form of a
revised treatment plan. Thus the team meetings, which involve decision-making
regarding patient care and the treatment plans, are specialized genres used in
this institution, and perhaps in other similar professional medical settings.
Cook-Gumperz and Messermans (1990) study focuses on the way in which
negotiated consensus is achieved in the meetings and how the records are
created as a result. They discovered that there is an essential tension (ibid.,
p. 151) between the what happens in the meetings and what ends up in
the records. The meetings are local, situated interactional events, which are
subject to all the ambiguities and problems of any interactional exchange
(ibid., p. 148), but the records must provide an institutionally sanctioned account
of the decisions made at the meeting. This means that decisions taken at the
meetings must be made to fit the institutional requirements, which includes the
form and wording required by the treatment plan. This kind of tension between
spoken workplace genres and the records that are kept of them is probably not
unique to the medical profession. The written genres provide the official and
institutionally sanctioned records of the interactive events, but are not merely
factual descriptions of what was done (ibid., p. 170).
Workplace Genres 43
Such intertextual links between genres used in the workplace remind us that
individual genres are embedded in workplace processes and may be part of a
genre chain (Swales 2004). This is reflected in Handfords (2007 and forth-
coming) model of the meeting genre in the pre-meeting and post-meeting
phases (see section 2.2.1). Similarly, Mller (2006b, pp. 144149) notes that
whereas dealing with a workplace task may involve a meeting at the core of the
process, this will be preceded and followed by a succession of activities, some of
which will involve communicating with others (e.g. through phone calls and
e-mail), while others will not (e.g. producing or copying documentation).
Examining the intertextual links between all the different genres used in
an organization or professional group is one way of trying to understand the
communitys epistemology and values (Devitt 1991, p. 337), as Devitt for
example has done. Smart (1998) made a similar attempt in a case study using
interpretive ethnography to investigate the Bank of Canada economists knowl-
edge-making practices. Smart (ibid., p. 117) found that the economists employ
a distinctive discourse combining language, statistics, and mathematics to cre-
ate specialized knowledge. The way the economy is intersubjectively perceived
in this professional community is informed by a set of oral and written genres,
such as regular meetings, analytic notes, research memoranda and the policy
document (ibid., p. 117). The genres used by the economists thus play a par-
ticular role within the epistemology of the discourse community; however,
Smart does not analyse these genres or their use in any detail. Medway (2007,
p. 195) summarizes the role of intertextuality in workplace discourse in the
following way:
Intertextuality is of central importance in workplace discourse. It ties all the

separate written and spoken communications into a single multi-stranded
web of discourse (a text is a textile, something woven) and in the process
knits the diverse participants together into a discourse community. (original
italics)
2.4 Conclusion
Drawing on the three main approaches to genre analysis, this chapter has
attempted to show how diverse and multi-layered any attempt to describe the
world of workplace genres necessarily will be. While the notion of genre remains
difficult to pin down, it nevertheless provides a useful lens through which
to view workplace discourse. As genres, the activities and texts used in the
workplace can be examined for their structural and formal characteristics,
as well as for the ways in which they are embedded in the practices of the
discourse community. I have suggested that there are broadly two ways of
approaching the study of genre in the workplace: on the one hand, a particular
genre can be examined across different workplaces or professions, whereas
another kind of perspective is provided by the examination of the use of differ-

ent genres within a particular workplace or professional group.
The first approach is particularly useful for identifying the formal and
structural characteristics of a genre, and for generalizing findings beyond
specific workplace contexts. In this chapter, I have attempted to identify some
of the key characteristics of a number of genres which are used very widely
across different workplace settings: decision-making and meetings, service
encounters and e-mail. However, we have also seen that identifying genres at
such a general level of abstraction is not unproblematic, and that it may not be
possible to formulate generic descriptions which are relevant for all realizations
of the genre across different workplace contexts.
The second approach has led us into an investigation of genres first as
interrelated written (and spoken) texts within particular workplaces or
professions, and secondly as situated actions, in which verbal and non-verbal
activities interact with material resources. While we have seen that some profes-
sions or workplaces may be either more text- or action-based, the text versus
action distinction also provides two perspectives on how genres are integrated
into and constitute the workplace practices of an individual or a group within
an organization.
The topic of genre in workplace discourse is a recurring one in this book.
In the following chapter, which examines workplace discourse and corpora, we
see how corpus linguistic research can provide further insights into the genres
used at work.
Chapter 3
What Can a Corpus Tell Us about

Workplace Discourse?
3.1 Introduction
As outlined in Chapter 1, one of the questions this book seeks to answer is:
What are the distinctive characteristics of workplace discourse? This question
has been explored in previous research using a variety of methodological
approaches, including conversation analysis (CA) (e.g. Drew and Heritage
1992), genre analysis (e.g. Bhatia 1993) and social constructionist approaches
(e.g. Holmes and Stubbe 2003). Despite the proliferation of research activity in
the field of business, professional and workplace discourse, few studies have
used corpus linguistic methods to analyse the nature of workplace and business
discourse (McCarthy and Handford 2004).
However, some recent corpus-driven studies1 (e.g. Nelson 2000a, 2000b, and
2006, Cheng 2004 and 2007, Handford 2007 and forthcoming) provide some
fascinating insights into some of the distinctive features of workplace and business
language. The most obvious contribution of corpus analytical methods to the
study of a variety or register is in providing information about the most frequent
lexical items and collocations. However, corpus methods have also been used to
explore a range of features which have usually been examined using exclusively
qualitative methods. These include pragmatic features, such as speech acts and
politeness markers, interactive features, such as interruptions and question tags,
as well as genre and even prosody. This chapter reviews relevant findings from
corpus studies of workplace discourse, which generally combine qualitative with
quantitative methods to explore features of lexico-grammar (including colloca-
tion and chunks), pragmatics (including interactive features) and genre.
3.2 Overview of relevant corpora
Mega-corpora, such as the British National Corpus (BNC) with 100 million
words, the Bank of English with currently over 500 million words, have been
around for some time now, and have yielded many insights into the lexis, grammar
and phraseology of the English language. While many of these large corpora con-
tain sub-corpora of more specific varieties, including professional and business
genres, most studies of more specialized varieties or genres have been carried out
using much smaller collections of texts. This includes studies drawing on small,
specialized corpora, particularly in the area of English for Academic and Specific
Purposes (e.g. Hyland 2002, 2004; Flowerdew 2008). Smaller specialized corpora
are in many ways more suitable for studying specific registers or genres, as they are
carefully targeted, and set up to reflect the contextual features of the genre, such
as information about the setting and the participants. There are now corpora of
both written and spoken academic English, for example the 6.5 million-word
British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE) containing proficient student
writing, the 1.8 million Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic English (MICASE)
containing transcripts of spoken interactions, such as lectures, seminars and
dissertation defences, and the smaller British Academic Spoken English (BASE)
Corpus (consisting of 160 lectures and 39 seminars). There are also much smaller
and more specialized ESP/EAP corpora, for example the 250,000-word Corpus of
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) consisting of 60 summary reports com-
missioned by the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (Flowerdew
2008), or the Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC), which consists of
200 letters of application (Connor et al.1997, Upton and Connor 2001).
Particularly relevant for our purposes, are those specialized corpora which
focus specifically on business and workplace discourse. I use the word corpus
and corpora to refer to collections of written and spoken data which are com-
piled in such a way that they are searchable using corpus linguistic computer
software, such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1999), and which, in the case of spoken
texts, have been fully transcribed. This is an important distinction, as a number
of collections of spoken workplace data which inform some key studies in the
field have not been analysed quantitatively using corpus tools. Such collections
include the Language in the Workplace Project based at Victoria University of
Wellington in New Zealand, which consists of approximately 2,000 spoken
interactions (see Holmes and Stubbe 2003) and Bargiela-Chiappini and Harriss
(1997b) research on business meetings based on approximately 18 hours of
business meetings. The intention is not to criticize these projects, which have
generated extremely valuable studies of workplace and business discourse, but
this chapter focuses specifically on what studies derived from corpora, as defined
here, have revealed about the nature of workplace discourse.
The first such corpus of note to be compiled is Mike Nelsons Business
English Corpus, BEC (Nelson 2000b). It contains 1 million words of spoken
and written business data, with slightly more written than spoken texts. Nelson
makes the very useful distinction between language about business and
language doing business. Language used for talking about business is from
texts such as business books, newspapers and interviews; whereas language
used for actually doing business can be found, for example, in emails, reports,
meetings, negotiations and phone calls. While BEC focuses specifically on
business discourse (see Chapter 1), and therefore is not necessarily represen-
tative of workplace discourse in general, it does cover a very important area
within workplace discourse. Also, as the first corpus of its kind, the work carried
What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse? 47
out by Nelson is pioneering, and provides a model of how a corpus of work-

place discourse can be compiled and analysed.
More recently, the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Business English
Corpus (CANBEC) has been compiled, consisting exclusively of spoken
language doing business (Handford 2007, forthcoming). This 1 million-word
corpus consists mainly of business meetings recorded mostly in the United
Kingdom in a large variety of business sectors, including the pharmaceutical
industry, information technology and manufacturing. The majority (three in
every four) of the meetings are company internal meetings, and therefore
involve workplace discourse, whereas the external meetings between compa-
nies are more specifically concerned with business discourse.
A wider range of workplace genres were targeted in the 262,000-word busi-
ness sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), which
consists of 30 hours of meetings, service encounters, workplace presentations,
job interviews, telephone conversations and informal office talk recorded in
Hong Kong. Much of the corpus consists of company-internal interactions, and
therefore it provides a good coverage of workplace discourse in general. The
speakers are Hong Kong Chinese, native speakers of English and speakers
with mother tongues other than Chinese, and settings include a wide range
of workplace contexts, including the service industry, for example hotels (see
Warren 2004). Recently two written workplace corpora, the Hong Kong Engi-
neering Corpus (currently at over 9 million words) and the Hong Kong Finan-
cial Services Corpus (currently over 7 million words), have been added to the
projects being carried out at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (see Research
Centre for Professional Communication in English Website).
In discussing what corpora can tell us about workplace discourse, I draw
particularly on the three corpora described above (BEC, CANBEC, HKCSE), as
these are the largest business and workplace corpora to date. But a number of
smaller and more specialized workplace corpora have also yielded findings
which are relevant for a description of workplace discourse, and are therefore
also discussed in this chapter.
3.3 Lexico-grammar of the workplace
3.3.1 Frequent words

One of the great benefits of corpus software is that it can quickly count
things that would be extremely painstaking, or even impossible, to count
manually. This means, for example, that the most frequent words in the
corpus, and by extension in that particular register or genre, can easily be
identified using corpus analytical methods. However, such knowledge of
frequency is meaningless without some kind of benchmark against which to
measure it. The benchmark against which special types of discourse (e.g. insti-
tutional or academic) have usually been compared is ordinary conversation.
This was the approach used by McCarthy and Handford (2004) in a study
analyzing a sub-corpus of 250,000 words from CANBEC, in which they posed
the question: To what extent is SBE [Spoken Business English] like or unlike
everyday informal conversation? (ibid., p. 172). The CANBEC sub-corpus was
compared to a sub-corpus of the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of
Discourse in English (CANCODE) consisting of social and family conversations,
and also to the academic sub-corpus from CANCODE (see also OKeeffe
et al. 2007, pp. 204216). Handford (2007 and forthcoming) examines word fre-
quency in the whole 1-million-word CANBEC Corpus, and compares this to the
combined Socializing and Intimate sub-corpora (SOCINT) from CANCODE. Both
the two-way and three-way comparisons are revealing of the ways in which spoken
workplace discourse is different from but also similar to everyday language.
The first step was to create raw frequency lists, which, at first sight, look quite
similar across the different corpora, as the most frequent words are always
grammatical ones, for example the, I and and. But even in such lists of
highly frequent words, some differences emerge. I is the most frequent
word in the conversational sub-corpus, whereas the is at the top of the list for
CANBEC and the academic corpus (OKeeffe et al. 2007, p. 207). This differ-
ence reflects the more personal orientation of casual conversation compared
with the more institutional and objective nature of business and academic dis-
course. The order of frequency of the pronouns is also interesting: you occurs
more frequently than I in both CANBEC and the academic sub-corpus,
whereas we is much more frequent in CANBEC than in the other two corpora
(ibid.). This highlights the important role of the group, team or organization
in business; and the increased use of you may reflect the importance of direc-
tives and requests in academic and business discourse.
3.3.2 Keywords
The distinctive lexis of a genre or register comes out much more clearly using
a keywords list. Keywords (Scott 1999) are those words whose frequency is
unusually high in the genre compared to their normal frequency in the lan-
guage. Corpus software, such as Wordsmith Tools (ibid.), generally has a keywords
tool, which can establish the keywords in a corpus or text compared with a
benchmark corpus (usually a more general one). The software analyses word
lists from both corpora (the specialized corpus and the reference corpus) and
compares the relative frequency of the words. Those words that have a high
frequency in both texts (i.e. grammatical items, such as articles and prepositions),
will therefore not come out as key, but instead lexical words which are distinc-
tive of the genre will be foregrounded.
Keywords were identified for CANBEC based on a comparison to the SOCINT
sub-corpus from CANCODE (Handford 2007 and forthcoming). Table 3.1 shows
the top 50 keywords in CANBEC. In contrast to the raw frequency list, the
keyword list contains a number of lexical words which we would expect to have
a high frequency in business language compared with everyday language, such
Table 3.1 Top 50 keywords CANBEC

N WORD FREQ.
1 WE 12,078
2 WEVE 2,752
3 OKAY 2,951
4 WERE 2,376
5 HMM 527
6 THE 32,032
7 CRANE 460
8 CUSTOMER 495
9 LIFT 653
10 NEED 1,812
11 CRANES 377
12 ORDER 560
13 MEETING 594
14 SALES 380
15 THOUSAND 731
16 HUNDRED 944
17 ORDERS 345
18 IF 5,362
19 WHICH 2,101
20 WILL 1,776
21 CUSTOMERS 307
22 PER 452
23 PRICE 395
24 MAIL 281
25 BUSINESS 522
26 LIFTS 239
27 IS 8,660
28 MONTH 503
29 WELL 1,085
30 STOCK 289
31 ISSUE 287
32 PRODUCT 224
33 CENT 329
34 PROBLEM 660
35 FOR 6,210
36 US 1,418
37 SERVER 161
38 SO 7,983
39 VEHICLE 191
40 ER 8,059
41 POINT 738
42 TYRE 159
43 LIST 344
44 COMPANY 527
45 INFORMATION 339
46 SYSTEM 272
47 TERMS 277
48 CELLAR 144
49 TWO 2,366
50 TO 18,403
Source: Adapted from Handford (2007, p. 180, extract from

CANBEC, Cambridge University Press, reproduced with
permission)
as customer(s), meeting, sales, order(s) and so forth.2 Interestingly, some

grammatical words still appear near the top of the list, for example we,
the, if, us, so. This indicates that even though these words have a high
frequency in the language in general, they are nevertheless still unusually
frequent in spoken business discourse. One reason for the high frequency of
some of these keywords is that many of them occur as part of re-occurring
phrases or chunks, as we shall see. A number of backchannels and fillers are
also in the list (okay, hmm, er), which highlights the interactive nature of
workplace meetings. What is also striking is the position of the semi-modal
need in the list in tenth position and the presence of the words issue and
problem. Even such minimal information as provided by a keyword list affords
an intriguing glimpse into the world of spoken business discourse: there seems
to be more emphasis on the group, that is the company or organization (we,
us), than the individual; discourse markers like if and so seem to point to
the importance of negotiating; and discussing and/or resolving problems seems
to be a key activity (need, issue, problem).
Nelson (2000a, 2000b) also produced frequency and keyword lists for the
Business English Corpus (BEC), using the 2 million word BNC sampler corpus
(a subset of the British National Corpus), consisting of general English, as a
reference corpus. In the list of the 100 most key words in BEC, lexical business
words are much more in evidence than in CANBEC, showing words like busi-
ness, market, customer, supplier, sale, management in the top 10 (see
Nelson 2000b, The 100 most key words in the Business English Corpus).
This can be explained by the fact that BEC includes written as well as spoken
discourse (therefore interactive features are less in evidence), and is composed
not only of language doing business (as is the case for CANBEC), but also
language about business. When language is used to do business, the business
world forms part of the assumed shared knowledge between the participants,
but is not always referred to explicitly; whereas in talking about business (e.g. in
interviews or magazines), the business world is referred to explicitly with busi-
ness lexis, such as market, export, merger. The keywords in BEC fall into
five semantic categories: people in business, business activities, business
actions, business descriptions and business events and entities (Nelson 2006,
p. 222). Table 3.2 shows examples of keywords in each of these categories:
Table 3.2 Examples of top 50 keywords in BEC in 5 semantic categories

People in Business Business Business Business Events
Business Activities Actions Descriptions and Entities
Customer business sell high sale

Manager investment manage big merger
Supplier delivery achieve international export
Distributor development improve successful performance
Staff payment operate best market
Source: Adapted from Nelson (2000b)

As with CANBEC, even looking only at keywords points to some interesting

general tendencies in the lexis. Nelson (2000b) notes that the key lexis is overtly
positive in nature (e.g. achieve, improve, best, successful) with very
few negative words. It is also dynamic and action-orientated (e.g. manage,
operate, export) and clearly non-emotive: adjectives like nice, lovely
terrible are negatively key, meaning they occur less frequently than is the
norm. Nelson also observes that most of the adjectives refer to things, such
as products and companies (e.g. big banks, international company), rather
than to people. One interesting difference between the keywords in BEC and
CANBEC is that while in BEC there are few keywords with a negative meaning
or connotation, in CANBEC problem and issue are in the top 50 keywords.
This again highlights the difference between language about and language
doing business: in talking or writing about business (usually for public con-
sumption), the emphasis will often be on successes and positive developments,
whereas when actually engaged in doing business, the focus is often on prob-
lem-solving of some kind, as we shall see in analysing business and workplace
discourse in more detail.
A keyword list is clearly limited in what it can tell us about workplace or busi-
ness discourse as a whole. Nevertheless, both Nelsons and Handfords work on
business English corpora show that frequency and keyword lists provide a kind
of window onto discourse, pointing to potential areas of interest to explore
further, both in terms of the collocations and phrases these words enter into,
and the type of pragmatic and discoursal function they perform, as discussed in
the rest of this section.
3.3.3 Collocations and chunks

Collocations and semantic prosody
Words that have been identified by corpus software as frequent or key, can then
be examined in more detail using concordancing. Concordance programmes
provided by corpus software such as Wordsmith Tools (Scott 1999) will find all
or a selection of instances of a search word or phrase in the corpus. These are
displayed in concordance lines, which show the word/phrase in the middle
of the screen and seven or eight words of co-text on either side. This allows
the researcher to identify common collocations and phraseological patterns
containing the search word or phrase. Figure 3.1 shows an example of a concor-
dance from Nelsons (2000a) research using BEC. The search phrase is high
interest rate, and the concordance shows collocations occurring to the
immediate left of this phrase, for example extremely and murderously.
Nelson (2006) created concordances for 10 keywords in each of the semantic
categories in which these had been grouped (see section 3.3.2 above). He then
analysed the collocations for each keyword according to their semantic proso-
dies. The term semantic prosody (Louw 1993) refers to the meanings and
Figure 3.1 Concordance for high interest rate (Source: From Nelson 2000b,
Chapter 8, 8.2.12)
connotations that a word acquires by being consistently used with certain

collocates. Most frequently, semantic prosody is used to refer to positive or
negative associations of a word acquired through its collocational environment,
but Nelson also uses it for other types of semantic meaning emerging from
frequent collocations. For example, one prosody identified for the keyword
manager is titles, as in the collocations General Manager or Senior IT
Manager.
Nelson found that many of the prosodies identified were shared by several
keywords, for example four key adjectives, high, low, competitive and
corporate shared the semantic prosody of extremes, for example:
z extremely high interest rates

z coffee stocks are exceptionally low
z powerful corporate brands
z extremely competitive
Therefore, his analysis of the prosodies of keywords shows that the semantic
sets into which the keywords are grouped, such as people in business or busi-
ness activities, are semantically linked to one another through shared semantic
prosodies.
But are these semantic prosodies specific to business? In order to answer this
question, Nelson (2006, pp. 229231) compared five of the keywords from BEC
with the same words in the BNC sampler corpus. What he found was that, in
a business environment, collocates become more fixed, that is a larger percent-
age of the collocations in BEC formed part of semantic-prosodic sets than in
the BNC, where collocations were more varied. He also found that there
were some unique business-related semantic prosodies. For example, in the
BNC, global has collocations in two semantic sets with general prosodies:
climate (e.g. global warming) and people (e.g. global consumer); whereas
in BEC it has collocations in six semantic sets which all have a business
prosody: business characteristics/qualities, business activities, products,
companies, people, economic/financial indicators (e.g. global economic
indicators). These findings seem to provide confirmation of Drew and
Heritages (1992) assertion that there are constraints on allowable contribu-
tions (ibid., p. 22) in institutional discourse. The fixing of collocational
patterns into particular semantic sets represents a restriction of the linguistic

choices available to speakers and writers. Such a convergence of results using
corpus linguistic methods with findings arrived at from a micro-analysis of inter-
active turn-taking (as practised by conversation analysts) provides convincing
evidence that these findings are robust.
Chunks
In addition to the type of collocation discussed above, where the focus tends to
be on lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjective), many of the keywords in CANBEC
and BEC frequently occurred in particular phrasal strings or chunks of two
or more words, which partly accounts for their high frequency. For example,
we need to is a very high-frequency chunk in BEC, and in CANBEC, need
frequently occurs in the following combinations of two to five words (Handford
2007, forthcoming):
z need to
z we need to
z we need to do
z I think we need to
Such recurring strings of words have been given different labels: lexical
bundles (Biber et al. 1999), formulaic sequences (Wray 2002, Schmitt 2004),
chunks ( De Cock 2000, OKeeffe et al. 2007) and clusters (Handford 2007,
forthcoming). Corpus software can identify such chunks (the term that will be
used here), but some minimal frequency needs to be set as a cut-off point
to determine whether or not a string qualifies as a chunk. Biber et al. and
Handford stipulate a minimal frequency of at least 10 occurrences per million
words, whereas OKeeffe et al. set a minimal frequency of 20 per 5 million
words, in order to capture a greater number of low-frequency six-word chunks.
A computer can only identify strings of words, but cannot decide whether or
not these strings are meaningful in any way. It will therefore also pick out syn-
tactically incomplete strings, such as a bit of or at the end of, as well as chunks
that have semantic unity and syntactic integrity (OKeeffe et al. 2007, p. 64),
for example at the end of the day. OKeeffe et al. (ibid., pp. 7071) argue
that many such syntactic fragments nevertheless have pragmatic integrity,
and should therefore be considered meaningful chunks. They often perform
particular pragmatic or discourse functions, for example a bit of is routinely
used as a frame to downtone utterances, for example a bit of a mess/
problem/nuisance (ibid.).
A number of corpus studies of specialized genres have shown that such
chunks often perform specific pragmatic functions, and therefore play a key
role within the genre (Oakey 2002; Simpson 2004; Handford 2007, forthcom-
ing; OKeeffe et al. 2007). Simpson examines the most frequent formulaic
expressions in spoken academic discourse from the Michigan Corpus of

Spoken Academic English (MICASE) and shows that these perform a number
of discourse-organizing and interpersonal functions. For example, the
chunk look at it is used by American university professors to present contrast-
ing perspectives on an issue (e.g. lets look at it another way), which is a
key pragmatic function in academic discourse. Simpson (2004, pp. 5960)
concludes that seemingly transparent formulaic expression(s) [are] used to
introduce meanings that lie at the heart of discourse in the academy. Other
studies of the role of chunks within particular genres are Oakey (2002), who
examines the functions of lexical phrases across different written academic
genres, and McCarthy and Handford (2004) and OKeeffe et al. (2007),
who compare chunks and their pragmatic functions in spoken academic and
business discourse.
Here we look in some detail at the most frequent chunks identified by
Handford (forthcoming) in CANBEC, and compare a selection of these with
their use in the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken
English (HKCSE-bus, see Research Centre for Professional Communication
in English website). One reason why studying chunks is important in identify-
ing the characteristics of workplace language is their sheer ubiquity and
frequency. A number of chunks in CANBEC have a higher frequency than
some very common single words (ibid.). The chunks with the highest
frequency, you know and I think, are more frequent than really and
work; and longer, less frequent chunks like I dont know and at the end
of the day still occur more frequently than the business nouns industry and
profit.
Handford searched for chunks (or clusters) of two to six words, and
categorized these, following Simpson (2004) into two broad functional
categories: discourse marking and interactional functions. Discourse marking
categories include such functions as focusing, linking and summarizing;
interactional categories include a wide variety of functions, such as checking
understanding, hedging, hypothesizing, evaluating. Below is a list of the four
most frequent two- three- and four-word chunks found in CANBEC:
Two-word chunks
you know
I think
of the
I mean
Three-word chunks
I dont know
a lot of
at the moment
we need to
four-word chunks:
at the end of
the end of the
have a look at
a bit of a
(extract from CANBEC, Cambridge University Press, reproduced with
permission)
A search for the same chunks in HKCSE-bus revealed that all these chunks
also occurred at least 10 times per 1 million words here, and therefore qualify
as chunks (according to Handfords cut-off point).3 However, on the whole
there was quite a disparity in the relative frequencies of the items in the two
corpora. The only chunks that had broadly similar frequencies were I think,
I mean, I dont know and at the end of. A more detailed examination of the
contexts of uses of the various chunks in both corpora would be necessary to
explain this disparity in frequency, but there are a number of possible reasons.
One reason could be the speaker composition of the corpus: most participants
in CANBEC are native speakers, with recordings mostly made in the United
Kingdom; whereas HKCSE is composed of one-third Hong Kong Chinese
speakers, and all recordings were made in Hong Kong. Another important
factor could be the different genres included in the corpora. While both are
corpora of spoken business and workplace discourse, CANBEC is composed
mainly of business meetings, whereas HKCSE-bus contains a greater variety of
workplace genres, such as job interviews and presentations. If chunks perform
specific functions within a genre, one would expect their frequency and func-
tion to vary from genre to genre.
A more detailed comparison of one three-word chunk, so I think, which
was very frequent and had similar frequencies in both corpora, is quite
revealing.
In CANBEC so I think performs a number of functions: most commonly it
is used for summarizing, but also for explaining, elaborating and disagreeing
(Handford forthcoming). It occurs more frequently in external meetings
(between companies) than in internal meetings (between colleagues), and in
these internal meetings it is frequently used as a tactical summary (Charles
and Charles 1999), where a speaker summarizes the discussion in a way that is
favourable to his or her own position.
In HKCSE-bus, so I think is used quite differently. Many of the 40 instances
of the chunk occur in job placement interviews in Hong Kong hotels
with students on a BA programme in Hotel Management (Warren 2006). Very
broadly it still has a summarizing function, due largely to the discourse
marking function of so (Schriffrin 1987), but both interviewers and inter-
viewees use it in specific ways within the job interview. Interviewers seem to
use the chunk to perform a broader range of functions than interviewees,
which is perhaps a reflection of their greater power in the interview. One way
it is used by interviewers is to move to the next stage of the interview, for

example:
Example 3.14
so um so I think its a great time for for us actually explore a little bit * um a:
** mhm you know on the different departments in the particular hotel that
you might be interested in
Another way this chunk is used by the interviewer is to highlight some key
aspect of the job, here that the hours are long:
Example 3.2
its not like another shop or bank it closes so you cant (.) but basically we are
open all the time a: mm B: so I think in our industry you when youre com-
mitted* a: **mm B: you will find that hours can be quite long a: mm mm
But they also use it to summarize benefits of the placement for the intervie-
wee in terms of gaining experience for their career, e.g.:
Example 3.3
* so I think this is er would be eventually quite interesting a: ** mhm mm to

do that at the beginning * also to exactly some practical (.) training some
cross a: ** to get more comprehen-
Interviewees seem to use this chunk primarily to provide an upshot of their

answer to a question posed by the interviewer, for example:
Example 3.4
a: ah yeah I I should say two or three but in fact I I can go um which depart-
ment I can go is is not very depend on my preference because I think every
department for me is er very fresh so I think er it is not a concrete answer on
that kind of question
In a number of instances, this involves, summarizing their suitability for or

reasons for wanting the job, e.g.:
Example 3.5
a: and to see er their er how to deal with the guest when the guest have er when
the guest is demanding *and so I think its very interesting for me b: **mm
Here the interviewee has been explaining why she would like to work in
the front office of the hotel for her placement, and the summary of this
explanation is introduced by so I think (Warren 2006).
The analysis of chunks in both CANBEC and HKCSE shows that identifying
high-frequency chunks in a specific register, such as workplace discourse, not
only provides a more complete picture of the lexico-grammatical characteris-
tics of the register, but also leads to a discovery of important pragmatic func-
tions performed by these chunks in workplace interactions. As we have seen,
high-frequency chunks can perform quite specific functions within a genre,
and thus constitute a kind of generic fingerprint (Farr 2007). Therefore the
identification of high-frequency words and chunks through corpus methods
provides a kind of window onto discourse, pointing the researcher to aspects
of the data to explore in more detail from the point of view of pragmatics
and genre.
3.4 Pragmatic features

Something as bare as a frequency or keyword list can provide a systematic
point of entry(Adolphs et al. 2004, p. 14) into the data. Concordance searches
for keyword collocations can then be carried out, and examination of the
contexts in which these collocations occur may then lead on to exploring
their pragmatic functions. Such an approach is used by Cheng (2004) to study
checking out discourse in recordings of hotel interactions from HKCSE-bus.
A frequency list generated with corpus software showed that the lexical item
minibar was unexpectedly frequent and occurred in all the checking out
interactions. The next step was then to create concordances for the most
frequent items. Studying concordance lines of frequent items in spoken data
is interesting not only to find common collocations, but also to discover
whether any of the items are used predominantly by one particular speaker
(ibid., p. 145). In service encounters such as hotel front desk interactions,
there is a clear role distinction between the participants: certain words will
be used more, or even exclusively, by hotel staff, for example sir/
madam. Interestingly, the word minibar was used exclusively by hotel
staff and never by a guest. This led to a qualitative examination of the
discourse context of minibar, ranging from a study of politeness features5 it
was (or was not) used with, the intonation patterns in which the word occurred,
to the positioning of the lexical item within the structural organization of
the discourse.
The findings from this analysis were that the hotels corporate message of
customer care was frequently at odds with what actually happened in checking
out discourses, in particular the way receptionists handled asking about use of
the minibar. For example, transcribing the data using Brazils (1985 and 1997)
discourse intonation model showed that most of the questions to the guests
regarding the minibar had rising intonation, e.g.:
Example 3.6
b: // HAVE you got a minibar KEY//

B: // I wasnt GIven one//
(Cheng 2004, p. 150)
In the discourse intonation model, rising tone indicates an assumption of

shared knowledge, whereas falling tone marks the utterance as communicating
new information. By using rising tone, the receptionist projects an assumption
that the answer will be yes; moreover the use of a rise, instead of a fall-rise,
adds insistence or forcefulness to the utterance, as this tone tends to be used
by dominant speakers (Brazil 1997, pp. 8698). Cheng (2004. p. 153) notes that
the choice of rising tone is probably not appropriate in this context, which
could explain the fact that the guests negative responses tended to be quite
emphatic.
Another workplace study which takes the same approach, starting with a
keyword list and concordances, leading to an investigation of pragmatic
features of the discourse, is Adolphs et al.s (2004) examination of a small
corpus (totalling approximately 60,000 words) of telephone calls to NHS
Direct, a telephone advice service provided by the National Health Service in
the United Kingdom. The telephone calls were made by researchers, posing
as members of the public, to nurses and health advisors working for NHS
Direct, who did not know which of the calls were made by the researchers.
Once medical terminology had been removed from the keyword list, the
remaining lexical items fell into the following categories: negatives, imper-
atives, pronouns, vague language, affirmations/positive backchannels and
directives. A qualitative examination of items in these categories in the
phone call transcripts showed that many of them performed interpersonal
functions which were important in eliciting symptoms from the callers
and giving them advice. Moreover, they often related to particular phases of
the interaction.
At the beginning of the phone call, the personal pronouns you and your
are frequently used to secure the callers involvement. The use of backchannel
responses, such as okay, and right is significantly higher in the corpus
compared to a reference corpus of general spoken English (CANCODE),
signalling active listenership on the part of the health professionals. Nurses
and advisors often use modal items, such as may and can as politeness
markers, introducing optionality into the conversation and thus give the
appearance of allowing the patient to make their own decision as to whether
or not to follow the advice (ibid., p. 18). The vague expression or anything
occurs frequently, and seems to have the function of inviting patients to add
their own description to the proposed symptoms, for example:
Example 3.7
N: And so theres no swelling anywhere to your face or anything?

(Adolphs et al. 2004, p. 19)
Once symptoms have been elicited, the interaction moves to the advice-giving
stage, and here the health professionals tend to depersonalize the advice
by referring to external sources of authority, such as the British Medical
Associations guidelines. The words advise, advice, suggest are key, and
one reason for this seems to be their use at this stage of the interaction for
impersonal constructions such as theyll be able to advise/suggest . . .. The
phone calls usually finish with a convergence coda, in which the advisors
or nurses summarize the discussion and try to secure assent from the caller
to adopt a suggested course of action. Adolphs et al. (ibid.) conclude that
this small-scale study illustrates ways in which corpus linguistic methods, which
have had little application in studies of health care communication, can com-
plement and enhance findings arrived at through discourse analysis and
conversation analysis.
Both Chengs (2004) and Adolphs et al.s (2004) study are excellent examples
of combining quantitative with qualitative methods to analyse the characteristics
of workplace discourse in a way that is corpus-driven. That is, the initial
quantitative findings, obtained using corpus methods (such as keywords and
concordancing), reveal features of the data which are then further explored
using qualitative methods. Another feature both studies share is that the find-
ings have clear applications to the training of professional staff in the respective
domains of work examined: the hotel industry and health care. The question of
practical applications of research, such as staff training, is returned to in the
final chapter.
3.4.1 Specific pragmatic features

A number of studies of HKCSE-bus have examined some specific pragmatic
features, including a range of speech acts (e.g. agreeing/disagreeing, express-
ing opinions), and language used for interrupting and checking understanding
(Cheng and Warren 2005, Cheng and Warren 2006, Cheng 2007, Cheng and
Warren 2007). In examining such specific pragmatic features in a corpus, it is
not possible to rely solely on corpus methods to identify the items under
investigation, as pragmatic functions can usually be expressed in a variety of
ways. Nevertheless, quantitative and qualitative methods can still be usefully
combined for such studies.
Identifying speech acts, such as agreeing and disagreeing, might initially

appear fairly straightforward, as corpus software can search for lemmas of
lexical items like agree (agrees, agreeing, agreed, agreement). However,
in naturally occurring data, speech acts are in fact performed indirectly much
more frequently than directly. Corpus searches for such direct speech acts tend
to yield fairly sparse results, for example the item I disagree only occurs eight
times in the 5-million-word CANCODE Corpus (McCarthy 1998). A small-scale
study of speech acts in corpus of office talk (Koester 2002) showed that direct
speech acts are not only rare, but tend to be restricted to some quite specific
communicative functions, such as framing stretches of speech and clarifying
points, and are frequent only in conflictual, argumentative discourse. Cheng
and Warren (2005) came up against the same problem in trying to identify
markers of disagreement in HKCSE-bus. In their study, they compare the
language presented in English language textbooks for disagreement with the
way disagreement is actually performed in the corpus. Searching for the phrases
the textbooks listed was also not a fruitful strategy, as very few of these were
actually found in the corpus. A qualitative analysis was therefore carried out,
and six strategies for expressing disagreement were identified. The strategies
used tended to be much more indirect than those found in the textbooks, and
Cheng and Warren conclude that they do not provide realistic models for
students learning English for their professional careers.
In a similar study, opine markers (ways of expressing opinions) in textbooks
were compared with their actual realizations in the corpus (Cheng and Warren
2006). Again, the opine markers used in the corpus were initially identified
qualitatively, and then corpus software was used to determine the frequency
of the markers, as well as the relative frequencies of their use by Hong Kong
Chinese and native English speakers. Although the items investigated were
not derived from corpus analysis (that is the study was corpus-based, rather
than corpus-driven), corpus methods were still used to support the study. Both
studies found a great discrepancy between the language taught for disagreeing
and expressing opinions in English language textbooks, and the linguistic
strategies used to express these functions in the corpus. This clearly has
pedagogical implications for the teaching of English in Hong Kong, which is
of central concern in the studies (see Chapter 7).
All the studies discussed in this section on pragmatic features in workplace
corpora demonstrate that interactive and interpersonal aspects of language,
such as backchannel responses, politeness markers and vague language, are
integral to the language used in workplace interactions. They can perform
key functions within particular workplace practices; for example, in the NHS
Direct phone calls, we saw that backchannels were used to secure the callers
involvement, and modal items to introduce an element of optionality. Such
interpersonal features characterize workplace discourse as much as lexical
items and collocations more typically associated with particular domains
of work.
3.5 Corpus and genre

Corpus analysis and genre analysis have until recently been quite distinct
methods of analysis. But, as already noted several times in this chapter, corpus
findings regarding for example keywords and chunks can be quite revealing of
key characteristics of a genre. The main lexico-grammatical features can be
identified, and these can also provide clues to the discourse structure of the
genre. Certain keywords may cluster in particular parts of an interaction or text,
and can thus be indicative of the staging of the genre, as found for example by
Adolphs et al. (2004) in NHS Direct telephone interactions. Another example
is the positioning of the word minibar at the beginning of checking out
encounters in Hong Kong hotels (Cheng 2004). This section reviews some of
the studies that have used corpus methods to investigate workplace genres in
terms of both lexico-grammatical patterning and genre or discourse structure.
3.5.1 Lexico-grammar and genre

Farr (2007) examined a small corpus (of approximately 80,000 words) of
post-observation feedback between tutors and student teachers (the POTTI
Corpus). Her aim was to establish the generic fingerprint of the genre through
an analysis of the most frequent and key words, as well as the most frequent
chunks. The analysis showed a high frequency of tokens of listenership (e.g.
mm, mmhm, okay), as well as hedging words (e.g. sort [of], mean, bit,
maybe), which suggest that tutors give feedback in a sensitive way. There was
also a high incidence of metadiscourse related to teaching, such as, activity,
questions, correction and of cognitive and cathartic lexis relating to the
process of self-reflection, for example aware, felt, challenging. Farr (ibid.,
p. 254) argues that such corpus findings can provide documented evidence
for teacher educators which display their professional strengths as well as short-
comings, and thereby contribute to professional development.
Corpus analysis can also be used to compare different workplace genres, for
example, ones used within the same organization, or recurring across different
workplace contexts. Such a comparison was carried out using the Corpus of
American and British Office Talk (ABOT), which is described in Chapter 2.
The focus of the study was on interpersonal meaning, and therefore a range of
interpersonal markers frequently used to express such meanings were com-
pared across the different genres in the corpus: modal verbs, vague language,
hedges, intensifiers and idioms. Their frequency and function in the different
genres was compared using frequency lists and concordances. A summary of
the results comparing the three macro-genres is shown in Figure 3.2 (see also
Koester 2006, pp. 72107).
As shown in Figure 3.2, modals and idioms were most frequent in collabora-
tive genres largely due to their evaluative function in expressing judgments and
least frequent most frequent

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
modal verbs Non-transactional ---- Unidirectional ---- Collaborative
vague language Non-transactional ---- Collaborative ---- Unidirectional
hedges Non-transactional ---- Collaborative ---- Unidirectional
intensiers Collaborative
----------------------------------------------- Non-transactional
Unidirectional
idioms Non-transactional ---- Unidirectional ---- Collaborative
Figure 3.2 Comparison of interpersonal markers in the ABOT Corpus (Source:

from Koester 2006, p. 104)
opinions in decision-making, which was by far the most frequently occurring

collaborative genre. Furthermore, the discursively equal roles of the partici-
pants in these genres licenses the use of more direct deontic modals (e.g. have
to, need). Example 3.8, an extract from a meeting between an editor and her
assistant, illustrates both these features of decision-making:
Example 3.8
(1) Beth Ill update this. I dont need to keep this as it is now
(2) Carol You need to update this too.
(3) Beth Right.
(4) Carol However, . . . its its complex.
(5) Beth You know Im wondering whether we should have
new columns
(6) Carol We have to- we have to sit down and think about how we can
(7) Beth Yeah. Id like to sit down and . . .
(8) Carol turn it into a something that could be updated every-
(from the Cambridge International Corpus, Cambridge University Press)
Vague language and hedges were most frequent in unidirectional genres,

where they are used to refer vaguely or implicitly to facts and information
(e.g. things, stuff), which is the focus of these genres, and in exemplifying or
elaborating on explanations (e.g. like, sort of, or something), for example:
z I dont know if I already explained this or not, but . . . the stuff thats already
been paid . . .
z You can give a reason for the free, you know, like gratis copy or something
They also perform a politeness function, in allowing speakers to mitigate or

minimize the unequal discursive relationship in these genres.
Finally, intensifiers were used most frequently in non-transactional encounters,
reflecting an orientation towards relationship-building through convergence
and heightened involvement. They often modify or occur in the vicinity of

evaluative adjectives (e.g. just dreadful, really great), which contributes to
the sense of involvement, as illustrated in Example 3.9 below, where the speaker
describes a motorway accident she witnessed to her colleagues:
Example 3.9
Vicky You could actually smell all the smoke coming up, <Susan>:
Yeah, /??/ was just being blown, It was horrible =
Liz = O:h glo:ry!
The differences in the use and frequency of the interpersonal markers across
the different genres indicates that genre, and by extension the discursive roles
played within the genres, has a significant impact on linguistic choice, and is
thus a central factor accounting for language variation within workplace talk
(Koester 2006). An interesting, and somewhat unexpected finding from the
study is that most interpersonal markers (all except intensifiers) occurred less
frequently in the non-transactional genres, than in genres where participants
focused on workplace tasks. One of the main reasons for this seems to be that
many of these markers were frequently used for politeness functions, which
play a greater role in transactional than relational talk. It may also have some-
thing to do with the types of markers investigated, but it highlights once more
the importance of interpersonal aspects of workplace interaction.
3.5.2 Move and discourse-structure

Identifying lexico-grammatical patterning in corpora can be a means not only
to obtain a fingerprint or snapshot of a genre, but can also provide an entry
point to the data in order to explore further features of the genre, including
rhetorical structure. Moreover, keywords and concordance analysis can be
combined with an analysis of the phases or moves of the genre, for example
using a move structure analysis (Swales 1990).
In the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific
Purposes (ESP), a number of recent studies have combined corpus linguistic
methods with text or genre analysis to examine written academic or profes-
sional genres (Flowerdew 1998, 2003; Upton and Connor 2001; Connor and
Gladkov 2004; Connor and Upton 2004b, Hyland 2000, 2002; Tribble 2002).
Tribble (ibid.) proposes a framework for analysing a text from a specific genre
(e.g. a report or an article) which explicitly incorporates genre analytical pro-
cesses, such as identifying the social context and the communicative purposes,
in combination with corpus methods, including keywords, frequency lists and
concordances. A number of studies of written genres have combined corpus
methods with move structure analysis. These include Connor and Uptons
(2004b) analysis of grant proposals and Connor and Gladkovs (2004) study of
rhetorical appeals in fundraising direct mail letters.
A study of particular relevance for workplace discourse is Upton and

Connors (2001) analysis of a corpus of job-application letters, as letters of
application are obviously an important written genre in all areas of work. The
corpus used, the Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus (IBLC), is composed
of 200 job application letters and rsums written by business communication
students from five different countries as part of a writing course. For this study,
153 letters from the corpus written by students from three countries (Belgium,
Finland and the USA) were analysed. A manual analysis of the rhetorical move
structure of the genre (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993) was carried out, and then
positive and negative politeness strategies (Brown and Levinson 1978/87) were
identified using corpus methods. The linguistic strategies used for politeness
were first identified qualitatively so that corpus software could then be used to
search automatically for politeness features. The study reports the use of polite-
ness features in two of the moves: Move 4 indicating a desire for an interview
or further contact, and Move 5 expressing politeness (pleasantries) or appre-
ciation at the end of the letter. The results showed a number of differences in
the politeness features used by the writers from the three countries, but their
were no clear differences in the frequency of either positive or negative polite-
ness strategies used by any of the groups . There was, however, a tendency for
the American writers to use more patterned, formulaic language than the
Belgians or the Finns. The study, therefore, is interesting not only in the way it
combines corpus analysis and genre analysis, but also in terms of its findings
concerning cross-cultural writing.
As we have seen, Chengs (2004) and Adolphs et al.s (2004) studies showed that
keywords can be revealing of discourse or genre structure. The final examples in
this section show how just one keyword can be the starting point for exploring
discourse structure. As we saw in section 3.3.2 above, in examining keywords in
CANBEC, the largest of the workplace corpora examined here, the lexical items
problem and issue are unusually frequent in the corpus, and point to problem-
solving as a central activity in workplace and business discourse (Handford 2007,
forthcoming). This is similar in the ABOT Corpus, where the word problem
and its lemmas (problems, problematic) occurred 26 times, which is quite
frequent for a lexical item in a corpus of this size. As a measure of comparison:
this is slightly more frequent than the grammatical items might, much and
still. Problem-solving was also a frequent activity in many of the interactions, in
particular those involving decision-making (Koester 2000, 2006). A qualitative
analysis of encounters involving problem-solving showed that they frequently
followed a problem-solution pattern, as identified by Hoey (1983, 1994), and that
certain lexical items, which according to Hoey are signal words for the pattern,
often occurred as markers of its three phases, for example:
z Problem phase: problem, difficult

z Response/ Solution phase: response, result, figure out
z Evaluation phase: work, good
Example 3.10 illustrates how such signal words can be used by speakers to
initiate a problem-solution pattern. It shows the beginning of a meeting between
Chris, the president of a family-run North American business, with his sales
manager, Joe. The genre is reporting, which, like decision-making, also fre-
quently followed a problem-solution pattern. Lexical items used as lexical
signals of the pattern are in underlined.
Example 3.10 Discussing Computer Problems
(1) Chris Havent seen much in the way of sales the last half of the week.
(2) Joe .hh Well, a lot of the media, the- the orders have been very
difficult getting out. Stuff is is jammed.
(3) Chris Oh they didnt go out?
(4) Joe Yeah. Annes orders are clogged. And . . . trying to get out heheh
(5) Chris Heheh clogged orders!
(6) Joe Clogged orders! .hh they cant get out o the system.
(7) Chris Oh no!
(8) Chris Well, hh Okay-
(9) Joe Ive got uh . . .
(10) Chris Johns- (Well)
(11) Joe Well, uh hes been working on em to get em out,
but shes been
(12) Chris /Really/
(13) Joe goin crazy trying to get shes- shes written . . . four or five orders
this week. An uh they havent gone out, .hh I had problems
too [. . .]
There is a clustering of lexical items signalling the presence of a problem at

the beginning of the encounter: difficult, jammed, clogged. A little later,
from turn 11 onwards, Joe begins to talk about what his response to the
problem has been, signalled by working and goin crazy trying, but this is
evaluated negatively (they havent gone out), and then further problems are
mentioned (turn 13). These signal items are often spoken with emphatic stress
(indicated by italics), which is a further indication that they are key items in the
discourse. The word problem occurs four times in this encounter, which is
quite frequent, considering there are only 26 instances in the whole corpus.
The rest of the conversation (not shown here) then goes through the phases of
the problem-solution pattern, using some of the following lexical signals:
z Response: good response, result, handled

z Positive Evaluation: look pretty good, thats good, hoping
Interestingly, a number of the signal items are metaphorical or idiomatic

(jammed, clogged, goin crazy), which was fairly typical of most problem-solving
encounters (Koester 2000). OKeeffe et al. (2007, pp. 214215) also found that
idioms and metaphors were frequently used to discuss problems in CANBEC,
and remark that they frame the problems discussed in a particular way. In
discussing the computer problems (example 3.10), the creative metaphor
clogged orders is treated humorously, incurring laughter and repetition,
which goes some way in lightening the tone of the meeting, which began in an
almost threatening manner: Havent seen much in the way of sales the last half
of the week. As discussing problems may be quite face-threatening, especially
if someone is being made responsible for a problem, idioms and metaphors are
useful interpersonal devices which can mitigate such threats to face.6
A study from quite a different area of professional discourse which examines
problem-solution patterns from a corpus perspective is Flowerdews (2003)
comparison of a student and professional corpus of technical writing, each
consisting of 250,000 words. Flowerdew combines corpus analysis with a systemic-
functional analysis using the appraisal system (Martin 2000, 2004). Keyword
lists were first generated to discover keywords associated with the problem-
solution pattern. The keywords were then categorized, following the appraisal
system, as inscribed (explicitly signalled for example problem) or evoked
(signalling through connotation, e.g. pollution), and then collocational
preferences and grammatical patterns were examined through concordancing.
This analysis revealed a number of differences between the professional and
the student reports, for example the students used more evoked signals, and
fewer inscribed ones, than the professionals.
The studies discussed here show how combining corpus methods, such as
keyword analysis and concordancing, with more qualitative lexical and/or
grammatical analysis can result in a description which is at the same time dis-
cursively rich and quantitatively robust. It means, for example, that lexical items
which are semantically related to keywords, but not themselves very frequent,
can be included in the analysis, for example the idiomatic and metaphorical
expressions used in spoken workplace interactions as signals of problems. The
clustering of semantically related lexical items in certain parts of the text or
interaction creates a network of lexical cohesion, which contributes to the
structuring of the discourse into the different phases of a text pattern or moves
of a generic pattern. A more delicate analysis of move structure is also possible
through quantitative analysis of linguistic features of individual moves, as
in Upton and Connors (2001) study of politeness features in two moves of
job-application letters.
3.6 Discussion and conclusion

This chapter set out to answer the question: What are the distinctive
characteristics of workplace discourse? McCarthy and Handfords (2004)
comparison of spoken business English (SBE) with everyday conversation had
a similar goal: to discover to what extent SBE is like or unlike everyday informal
conversation, and their findings are therefore relevant in answering this
question. McCarthy and Handford conclude that SBE is indeed different
from everyday conversation, and that it is an institutional form of talk (ibid.,
p. 187). Nevertheless, they also found that SBE shares many features with
conversation in terms of its orientation towards comity, convergence, and
satisfactory and non-threatening relationships (ibid.).
The findings in this chapter confirm McCarthy and Handfords conclusions.
Furthermore, the broader scope, both in terms of the discourse type (spoken
and written workplace discourse), and the different corpora examined, allows
us to expand on them. The insights gained from applying corpus analysis
to different levels of discourse (lexis, chunks and genre) all contribute to
confirming that workplace discourse is indeed institutional and exhibits
the three distinctive characteristics of institutional discourse that Drew and
Heritage (1992, p. 22) stipulated (see Chapter 1):
1. goal orientation
2. special and particular constraints
3. special inferential frameworks and procedures
By drawing on quantitatively-based corpus findings, it is possible to be much more

specific about what this actually means in terms of specific discourse characteristics.
The focus on institutional goals is reflected first of all in the fact that partici-
pants orient less to personal and subjective issues than in everyday conversation,
as Nelson (2000b) demonstrates in showing that emotive language is negatively
key in the BEC corpus. Frequent keywords in BEC and CANBEC also reflect
this focus, for example through the unusually high frequency of the personal
pronoun we, and with entities (products and companies) being talked and
written about more than people. Goal orientation is also reflected in Nelsons
finding from keyword analysis that business language is action-oriented. As we
have seen, this is also true of workplace discourse in general, and this is reflected
at all levels of discourse. In particular, we find much talk of necessary or desirable
actions through the use of deontic modals, for example in the highly frequent
chunks we need/we need to/we need to do. Deontic modals were highly
frequent in both CANBEC and ABOT; and in both corpora, decision-making and
problem-solving, along with evaluating, were found to be key activities. Further-
more, the analysis of a number of workplace genres (for example the NHS Direct
telephone calls) showed that these are staged and goal-oriented activities.
The second characteristic of institutional discourse, special and particular
constraints, was also confirmed through corpus analysis. Nelson (2006) found
that collocations in the business corpus were more restricted than in the
general corpus, and that business lexis is largely formed from a limited num-
ber of semantic groups (ibid., p. 225). Such constraints may also mean that
the available linguistic and interactional choices are limited on the basis of the
institutional or discursive roles of participants. For example, in data from the

business sub-corpus of HKCSE, the word minibar was only used by hotel staff,
and in job placement interviews, interviewers used the chunk so I think to
perform a greater range of functions than interviewees.
Corpus analysis seems to be particularly useful in revealing the special infer-
ential frameworks in operation in some workplace contexts, in enabling
the discovery of specific lexis, collocations, prosodies and chunks and their
respective functions. As we have seen, the function of the same chunk can be
quite different from one workplace context to another (e.g. so I think), and
such chunks can therefore have very specific pragmatic functions within a
particular genre.
While corpus analysis, on the one hand, confirms the institutional character
of workplace discourse, the high frequency of interactive and interpersonal
features, such as backchannel responses, vague language, idioms and various
politeness markers, also clearly highlights the importance of interpersonal
aspects of both spoken and written workplace interaction. However, the inter-
personal dimension here is actually distinct in a number of ways from social or
intimate interactions. This is largely due to the asymmetry we often find in
workplace discourse, and which is another key characteristic of institutional
discourse in general (Heritage 1997). Because of the power difference and
special role relationships in many workplace interactions, politeness strategies
involving, for example, hedging, vague language and idioms play an extremely
important role in maintaining and reinforcing workplace relationships. This
phenomenon is in evidence in a number of the studies and examples presented
in this chapter, for instance:
z in the advice given to callers in the NHS Direct data,

z the use of politeness strategies in letters of application (from the IBLC Corpus),
z the use of hedges and vague language in unidirectional genres in the ABOT
Corpus,
z the use of idioms to discuss problems, in the ABOT Corpus.
An example of not using such strategies appropriately was found in the check-
ing out discourse of hotel staff in Hong Kong. Corpus methods also reveal very
clearly that such politeness strategies are not evenly distributed in all workplace
interactions, but vary according to the particular role relationships and the
genre being performed. So, for example, strategies showing listenership (e.g.
mmhm, okay) were particularly prominent in the NHS direct calls and in
feedback given to trainee teachers (in data from the POTTI Corpus).
The corpus linguistic studies reviewed here, which have examined spoken
and written discourse in a wide range of professional and organizational set-
tings, have highlighted a number of characteristics that are common to most
workplace discourse. At the same time, the findings of corpus studies across
these different communities of practice reveal a great variability (e.g. the differ-
ence in frequency of common chunks in CANBEC and HKCSE-bus), which
make it difficult to generalize across all the different workplace contexts. The
linguistic and discursive patterns identified in specific workplace contexts pro-
vide evidence of the practices developed within these workplace communities.
As Handford (forthcoming) argues, the corpus as an objective, quantifiable
record of what comes naturally, can enable us to make inferences about the
linguistic manifestations of these practices (ibid.).
Perhaps the most important lesson from corpus analysis is that workplace
discourse varies in line with the goals, role relationships and activities of the
participants. But this variation is not random: by combining quantitative and
qualitative methods, it can be traced to the specific practices within each work-
place community. As demonstrated amply in this chapter, it is a combination of
quantitative corpus methods with more qualitative methods, such as discourse
and genre analysis, which can provide the most rich and differentiated account
of workplace interactions.
Chapter 4
Working Together and Getting People to

Do Things: Directives, Procedural
Discourse and Training
4.1 Introduction
Among the many activities that people engage in at work, getting others to carry
out tasks is a key workplace concern. If decision-making is the most important
collaborative task, as evidence from both corpus-based and discourse-based
studies strongly suggests (see Chapters 2 and 3), procedural discourse, involving
instructions and explanations, is the most prominent unidirectional activity
across most workplace contexts. In the ABOT corpus of office talk, procedural
discourse is the second most frequently occurring genre after decision-making
(see Chapter 2), accounting for 15 per cent of the corpus.
Decision-making has already been examined in some detail in the previous
two chapters, but procedural discourse has as yet only been mentioned in passing.
Procedural discourse involves a discursively dominant speaker telling an
addressee how to do something or what to do (Koester, 2006, p. 43). In the
ABOT Corpus, two procedural sub-genres were identified: (1) general instruc-
tions or explanations of procedures, for example in training a new employee,
and (2) directives or instructions relating to a specific instance, involving
present, future or even past activities (e.g. in the case of a reprimand). Such
specific instructions were frequently prompted by queries from subordinates
to managers. Another sub-genre, which shares some properties of both proce-
dural discourse and decision-making discourse, and can thus be considered a
hybrid genre, is advice-giving (see Koester 2006, pp. 4350). As mentioned in
Chapter 2.3.2, procedural discourse is typically an action-based genre, where
speakers interact with artefacts in their environment.
Directives play an important role within encounters involving instructions
or procedures. Numerous studies have examined directives and requests in
institutional and workplace settings (e.g. Ervin-Tripp 1976, Puhfal-Bax 1986,
Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004), and these studies are reviewed at the
beginning of the chapter. However, procedural discourse as a genre involves
much more than only directive speech acts: they are just some of the elements
that shape the genre, alongside others, such as the roles of the participants and
Working Together and Getting People to Do Things 71
the turn-taking structure. Furthermore, as we shall see, directives also occur

within other genres, such as decision-making, in which the main goal of the
encounter is not to convey instructions or explanations. The chapter therefore
examines procedural discourse more broadly, drawing on both corpus analysis
and discourse analysis to explore the characteristics of the genre and the role
of directives within it. First, the results of some corpus-based investigations of a
range of linguistic devices used in procedural discourse are reviewed. Then the
focus narrows to directives in particular, to compare their deployment in proce-
dural discourse to other workplace genres. In the final part of the chapter,
individual procedural encounters are examined in more detail, and the focus
will be on some of the interpersonal discursive devices which are particularly
prevalent in procedural encounters in which a new employee is being trained.
Of course learning about a job does not take place exclusively in formal train-
ing sessions, therefore the chapter finishes with a more general look at training,
apprenticeship and workplace learning.
4.2 Previous studies of directives

Directives have been examined in a variety of face to face workplace and insti-
tutional situations, including interactions between migrant farm workers and
their supervisors (Weigel and Weigel 1985), university office talk (Pufahl Bax
1986), doctor-patient encounters (West 1990, Harris 2003), police stations
and magistrates courts (Harris 2003) and workplace meetings (Bilbow 1997,
Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004). These studies show that directives can
have a variety of realizations, from imperatives, to modals of obligation, such as
have to or need to, through to more indirect requests, for example using
epistemic modals, such as would and could, as the following examples from
different procedural encounters in the ABOT Corpus illustrate:
z so whenever I get in: a new one, go to the: corresponding pile, an see if . . .

z but what you need to do is set your dates . . .
z I would have quick word with Paul . . .
This variety in the form of directives probably accounts for the considerable
attention directives have received, especially within pragmatics, where the focus
has been on explaining how indirect speech acts are interpreted (Searle 1975,
Levinson 1983). As previous studies have shown, a range of factors can influ-
ence the form of a directive or request. An early study of directives in a range of
everyday and workplace contexts, including family, offices, service encounters
(Ervin-Tripp 1976), established that indirect directives are interpreted without
recourse to the literal meaning of the utterance, but are routinely interpreted
as such on the basis of certain contextual factors, in particular the setting, the
ongoing activity and the relationship between the speakers. Subsequent studies
have identified a range of factors influencing the form of directives.
The institutional context is one key variable: in blue collar contexts, such as
factories, imperatives seem to dominate (Weigel and Weigel 1985, Bernsten
1998, Holmes and Stubbe 2003); whereas in white collar office settings, more
indirect, modalized forms seem to be preferred (Pufahl Bax 1986, Holmes
and Stubbe 2003, Koester 2006). Pufahl Bax, who examined directives in an
American university office, also found that most spoken directives were pre-
ceded by a pre-sequence, checking the addressees availability, which further
served to mitigate the imposition of the request or order. A particularly striking
example of the importance of workplace settings in relation to the form of
directives is from a study of in-flight directives by air crew members (Linde
1988). The study found that in emergency situations, mitigated directives
were more likely to lead to failure than direct ones, as they were more likely to
be misinterpreted.
In Pufahl Baxs study of university offices, mode was also found to be a crucial
factor influencing the form of the directive: over 70 per cent of the written direc-
tives were imperatives, compared with less than 50 per cent of the spoken ones,
and were thus much more direct. Whether or not the task is routine also seems to
influence the form of the directive. Routine directives are less face-threatening
(see below) and do not need to be mitigated as much as non-routine ones
(Harris 2003, p. 43). Thus Holmes and Stubbe 2003 (p. 33) attribute the preva-
lence of the imperative form for directives in factories to the fact that they tended
to involve routine tasks and clear, uncontested power relationships.
Social, ethnic and cultural factors can also play a role in inter-ethnic or inter-
cultural interactions (Weigel and Weigel 1985, Blum-Kulka et al. 1989, Bilbow
1997). Bilbow found there were differences in the form of directives used by
Chinese and Western participants in cross-cultural business meetings, and that
the impressions created by these directives on their recipients were also filtered
through cultural perceptions. Gender differences in giving directives have also
been examined (Goodwin, 1990, West 1990). In an analysis of doctor-patient
encounters, West found that male doctors employed more bald, or even aggra-
vated forms of directives, while female doctors used more mitigated directives,
which tended to minimize status difference.
Institutional rank and power would seem to be an obvious variable to take
into account when analysing the form of a directive, but most studies show that
there is no one-to-one relationship between the form of a directive and the
power of the speakers. That is to say, most studies, at least of white-collar set-
tings, found that higher-ranking speakers also use indirect forms (Puhfahl Bax
1986, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Vine 2004, Koester 2006); for example Harris
(2003) concludes that relatively powerful institutional members also make
extensive use of mitigating forms and other politeness strategies (pp. 3637).
Nevertheless, more powerful members do have the option of using more direct
forms, as indicated by Holmes and Stubbes (2003) finding that imperatives
and other direct forms were used more frequently by managers talking to a
subordinates than the other way round.
Holmes and Stubbe (ibid.) see power (the institutional relationship) and
politeness (concern for relational goals) as two major factors which influence
speakers choice of strategy in all types of workplace interactions. Harris (2003)
notes that politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1978/87) has not been applied
much to institutional contexts, but argues that it can be a powerful analytical tool.
According to politeness theory, certain communicative acts can threaten the
positive or negative face of a speaker or their interlocutor:positive face being
an individuals positive self-image and feeling of self-worth, and negative face
the claim to self-determination and freedom of action (ibid.). Speakers therefore
may choose to use politeness strategies to mitigate the force of a face-threatening
act. According to Brown and Levinson, the seriousness or weightiness of a face-
threatening act, and therefore the need to mitigate, depends on three factors:
power, social distance and imposition of task. Harris suggests that politeness
theory can be applied to workplace contexts, but that, in addition to Brown and
Levinsons three factors, institutional norms must also be taken into account in
determining the weightiness of a face-threatening act.
Most studies agree that the reason more powerful speakers use politeness
strategies is because they want to foster a good relationship with subordinates;
as Pufahl Bax (1986, p. 689) notes although the interlocutors are aware of rank
differences, they are also interested in building and cementing a social relation-
ship as individuals who share common goals. In her study of directives and
other control acts (see below) in white-collar offices, Vine (2004, p. 199) con-
cludes that even when there is a power/status difference, the joint effort and
cooperation/negotiation may be more striking than the displays of power and
acquiescence. The sharing of common goals seems to be key. In Harriss (2003)
study, in which three institutional settings were examined (magistrates courts,
doctors surgeries and a police station), very direct and even face-threatening
directives were used in two interactions from the magistrates courts. Harris
concludes that this is because the interlocutors (the judge and the defendant)
have conflicting goals. A similar conclusion is reached in Weigel and Weigels
(1985) study of migrant farm workers, which found that imperatives were used
exclusively for directives, regardless of factors such as rank, familiarity or nature
of the task. In addition to possible factors, such as social class and ethnicity, the
most compelling explanation was the antagonistic relationships that existed
between the migrant farm workers and their bosses.
The discursive context in which a directive occurs also influences its form
and the way it is interpreted. Vines (2004) study of control acts (directives,
requests and advice) in interactions collected from government offices (part
of the Wellington, New Zealand Language in the Workplace Project) is one of
the few studies that analyses directives in their extended context. According to
Vine, control acts can be mitigated either internally or externally. Internal
modification (or mitigation) occurs through the actual form chosen for the
directive, for example by using a modal verb, rather than an imperative (ibid.,
pp. 93120). However, a control act may also be mitigated externally through
discourse moves that occur before or after the directive or request. When
a directive is preceded by extensive related discussion or negotiation, less
internal modification may be required (ibid., p. 145).
4.3 A corpus-informed study of procedural

workplace discourse
Most of the studies reviewed above (with the exception of Vine 2004) have
tended to examine directives in minimal contexts, rather than in the context of
extended instruction-giving discourse. However, as already noted in the intro-
duction to this chapter, spoken procedural discourse involves much more than
simply issuing directives: it is an interactive accomplishment between two or
more interlocutors. As Vine points out, utterances related to a control act may
occur over an extended period or they may be separated by discussion of other
topics (ibid., p. 145). This section reviews the results of a corpus linguistic
analysis of a range of lexico-grammatical devices in procedural discourse
compared to other genres in the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2006). The findings
indicate that genre has a significant impact on speakers lexico-grammatical
choices, such as modal verbs or adverbial hedges, which play a central role in
giving directives. As described in Chapter 3.5.1, the following interpersonal
markers were compared across all the genres in the corpus:
z modal verbs
z vague language
z hedges and intensifiers
z idioms
The analysis of the interpersonal markers used in procedural discourse

did not focus exclusively on directives, but all discourse produced by both
instruction-givers and instruction-receivers, was included.
The results of the corpus analysis for procedural discourse were quite revealing.
While, as one would expect in discourse involving instructions and directives,
deontic modal verbs (expressing obligation and necessity) occurred with above-
average frequency in procedural discourse in the corpus, the frequency of the
modals analysed varied inversely with the degree of directness with which they
express obligation:
< least frequent most frequent >

need (to) have (got) to should want (to)
< most direct least direct >
Figure 4.1 Frequency of deontic modals in procedural discourse

The modal verbs expressing a stronger obligation or necessity, need to and

have to, were least frequent; whereas want to, which taken at face value, actu-
ally expresses desire or inclination, rather than obligation, occurred the most
frequently. The only direct way of expressing obligation with want to (I want
you to . . .) did not occur at all in procedural discourse; in fact, you want . . . was
more than twice as frequent as I want . . . in the corpus as a whole. About half of
these second person collocations occurred in giving or receiving instructions:
Example 4.1
(a) Instruction-giving:
z so you wanna make sure you got one through six here,
(b) Instruction-receiving:
z so what do you want over here for these
A want statement (you wanna), as shown in example 4.1a above, is a fairly

routine form of directive, but avoids the potential face-threat of I want you to.
In some instances want (to) in instructions was used to indicate real choices,
as in:
Example 4.2
z If you want to, you can . . . separate them
With the other (stronger) deontic modals, unmitigated directives using the
second person pronoun (you need, you have to, you should) hardly
occurred. Over half of the uses of should were with the first person pronoun I,
and involved queries from instruction-receivers, such as:
Example 4.3
z What should I do. Just get the estimate. . .
It is also striking that besides the four deontic modals analysed (have to,
should, need to and want to) only three others were used in procedural
discourse in the corpus (mustnt, ought to and be supposed to) and each
was used only once, while must did not occur at all.1 |A number of epistemic
modal verbs, expressing possibility or degrees of commitment to the truth of an
utterance (see Koester 2006, pp. 72107), also occurred with above-average fre-
quency in procedural discourse: can, could will, would. These were used
in a number of ways by both instruction-givers and receivers, for example can
was frequently used by instruction-givers to indicate choices, as in example 4.2
above. They were also used for mitigated directives, for example:
Example 4.4
So . . . I would do this . . . staple that bill of lading onto that invoice

Other interpersonal markers which occurred more frequently in procedural

discourse compared to the corpus average were hedges (e.g. just, like) and
vague language (e.g. things, stuff, or something). Instructions were
frequently hedged using just, for instance:
Example 4.5
z But . . . you can just say you do . . . uhm . . . white- sheet size is one twenty
by one eighty,. . .
Overall then, in interactions in the corpus involving directives and instructions,

direct forms seem to be avoided and more indirect or mitigated alternatives
preferred. The following example shows a clustering of such devices, including
adverbial hedges, modal verbs and vague language:
Example 4.6
Beth Oh its really- its really easy to do it. I mean :hh actually, I think if you
just wanna send them to a friend or something, you could order them
through the gratis order form.
(From Cambridge International Corpus Cambridge University Press)
4.4 Directives in transactional and collaborative talk

The results from the ABOT corpus converge with findings from other studies of
office environments, indicating that more indirect forms are used for directives
in such workplace settings (see 4.2 above). But, as already mentioned, previous
studies have mostly looked at directives within minimal interactional contexts,
rather than in the context of genre. Directives are central speech acts in proce-
dural discourse, but they do occur in other genres as well. If genre has a signifi-
cant impact on speakers lexico-grammatical choices, as the findings from the
ABOT corpus indicate, then it is likely that the form and function of directives
will be affected by genre as well.
Building on the original study of the ABOT Corpus (Koester 2006), this
section examines directives and requests in procedural discourse compared
with other workplace genres. The question to be addressed is whether direc-
tives which are part of a procedural encounter, for example training a
new member of staff, are similar in form and function to directives which
occur in the course of other generic activity, such as a collaborative decision-
making encounter. It will be argued that the extended interactive context
plays a key role in the interpretation of directives. Furthermore, as is shown
with examples from the corpus, directives are only some of the elements
which constitute procedural talk.
As decision-making (with a total data count of 8,782 words) and procedural
discourse (with 5,195 words) are the two most frequently occurring genres in
the corpus, it makes sense to compare directives in these two genres. Further-
more, both the participants goals and the discursive relationship in these
genres contrast. Procedural discourse involves asking or enabling others
to carry out particular actions, while in decision-making the goal is to collab-
oratively agree on actions. Procedural discourse is therefore a unidirectional
genre, where one of the speakers is discursively dominant, whereas decision-
making is collaborative, with participants playing more or less equal roles (see
Chapter 2.2).
If we examine the same lexico-grammatical items reviewed above for procedural
discourse (modal verbs, hedges and vague language) in decision-making
discourse in general, the differences are striking. As in procedural discourse,
deontic modals all occurred with above-average frequency, but the more force-
ful modals (have to, need to, should) were all used comparatively more
frequently in decision-making than in procedural discourse, while want to was
used less frequently. Hedges and vague language, on the other hand, were very
infrequent compared both with their occurrence in procedural discourse and
in the corpus as a whole (see Koester 2006).
For the investigation of directives and requests, another unidirectional genre,
requesting action or favour-seeking (comprising 1,250 words), was examined
together with procedural discourse. Like procedural discourse, this genre
involves a discursively dominant speaker getting the addressee to perform some
action or actions. However it is distinct from procedural discourse, in that
the communicative purpose of the interaction is not to instruct or enable the
addressee to perform a task, but to obtain or secure a service or favour from
the addressee. For example, one requesting episode (which is part of a longer
meeting) involves a junior editor requesting a signature from a senior editor
for some documentation she is working on. This is followed, in the same
meeting, by a procedural episode, in which the junior editor explains to the
senior editor how to order free books. As this example shows, the discursively
dominant speaker (the one obtaining the service or giving the instructions) is
not necessarily the institutional superior.
In both these genres, directives and/or requests occur frequently, and the
two genres also share a number of lexico-grammatical features, as revealed by
the corpus analysis. Forceful deontic modals (have to, should) are even less
frequent in requesting than in procedural discourse (but still have above-
average frequencies), and most epistemic modals (will, would, could) are
even more frequent, and also occur with above-average frequency. The two
genres together thus comprise a data set that contrasts both in communicative
purpose and lexico-grammatical characteristics with decision-making.
Directives and requests in procedural and requesting discourse were there-
fore examined together, and compared to directives and requests in decision-
making. Directives and requests both have the purpose of getting the addressee
to perform an action; that is they are both contral acts, according to Vine 2004
(pp. 2627). However, these two speech acts are not always distinguished clearly
in the literature (see ibid., pp. 1537). The most compelling distinguishing
factors to have been suggested relate to expectation of compliance and right
of refusal (ibid., pp, 2931). With directives, compliance is usually expected,
whereas the addressee has the right to refuse requests. This is usually linked
to the power relationship between the speaker and addressee; as Pufahl Bax
(1986, p. 675) points out, someone who orders rather than requests is neces-
sarily in a position of power. However, whether or not the requested action
falls within the addressees regular workplace duties is also an important
factor. While most requests in the ABOT corpus are addressed to people of a
higher or equal status, there are some examples of requests to someone of
a lower status, if the request or favour goes beyond what the addressee is nor-
mally expected to do. Requests, not surprisingly, typically occur in requesting
encounters and directives in procedural encounters, but they can occur in
either genre, as genres are defined by the overall communicative purpose of
the encounter or generic episode, not by the specific speech acts which occur
within them.
A total of 159 instances of directives and requests were identified, 94 of these
in procedural discourse and requesting, and 65 in decision-making. Directives
and requests took a range of forms from imperatives to various modals, as
shown below (from most to least forceful):
z Imperatives:
Bald imperative + you imperative
just + imperative
z Modals:
mustnt
have (got) to
need (to)
should
ought to
supposed to
want to
can
could
would
might
z Lets, Let me
The modal verb can was the most frequent form chosen for directives and
requests (with a total of 33 occurrences), followed by both types of imperative
(29 occurrences in total), and then the modals have (got) to, want to, need
(to) and would (with frequencies ranging from 24 to 11). Vine (2004,
pp. 106108) found similar frequencies for modal verbs used for directives and
Density of directives and requests

3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5 Procedural and
requesting:14.58
1
Decision-making: 7.4
0.5
0
n to ) p. s ) ld ld ld e ht to to 't
ca ot) t (to ' im tive d (to ou ou ou t m ig ht ed ustn
c sh /le m ug s m
(g wan you era ee w
' s o o
ve /' p n le
t pp
ha es ' im su
a tiv just
r '
pe
im
Figure 4.2 Density of directives and requests
requests in her data from the Wellington Corpus, with can being the most
frequent, and need to, have to and would all having high frequencies.
Figure 4.2 shows how frequently each item was used for directives or requests
in the two sub-corpora. As the decision-making sub-corpus (with 8,782 words)
is larger than the procedural and requesting discourse sub-corpora put
together (totalling 6,445 words), the density (that is frequency per 1,000 words)
of the directives/requests in each data set, rather than absolute frequencies,
are shown.
A range of linguistic forms are used for directives in both sub-corpora exam-
ined, but there are some noticeable differences in frequency. As one would expect,
directives and request are much more frequent in procedural/requesting genres
than in decision-making, occurring about twice as frequently here, with a
density of 14.58 (per thousand words) compared with 7.4 in decision-making.
Not surprisingly, therefore, imperatives occur much more frequently in the two
unidirectional genres. However, the majority of these are hedged with just;
bald imperatives and you imperatives are less frequent in procedural discourse
and requesting, while the reverse is the case in decision-making. Some
examples of each type of imperative from the sample are given below:
bald imperative (Decision-making):

z Ask her to stick it in
you imperative (Procedural discourse):
z Basically what you do, you get you get a piece of self-adhesive, right?
just imperative (Requesting):
z Just e-mail me the names
Less forceful, indirect modals, can, want to, would are used much more
frequently in procedural/requesting discourse than in decision-making. On the
other hand, the stronger modals, have to (got) to, need (to), should are used
more frequently in decision-making. A number of examples of speakers using a
range of modals in the different genres are shown below:
Procedural Discourse:
z this has to go to the committee
z then . . . we wanna keep the two cover sheets
z you can go ahead an put it back in here
z I would have a quick word with Paul an just say look this is what Zenith
are after
Requesting:
z Oh you know what. While youre here, can you sign off on the reprint card?
z A:nd uh the pack. I need you to sign off on the pack too
z You couldnt do the documentation, fo- fo:r . . . Double U, could you?
Decision-making:
z Yeah. I mean you have to have this cut-off date
z First of all you gotta speak to Trevor . . . . And find out what hes pla
prepared to do . . . .
z You need to update this too
z Do you wanna chat to her
z But it may need- need to be modified, so if you could take a look at it
and see. . .
While more direct as well as more mitigated forms are used in all three genres,
it is noteworthy that the potentially more face-threatening use of second person
pronoun with have (got) to (you have to, you gotta) only occurs in decision-
making. This is all the more noteworthy in light of Handfords (2007) finding
that you have to is a highly frequent cluster in CANBEC. Of course, you have
to may not carry any face-threat at all if the you is general, rather than refer-
ring to the addressee; But it seems that even when the addressee is meant with
you, this cluster carries less potential face threat in decision-making encoun-
ters than in procedural or requesting discourse, as discussed below.
The use of lets is interesting, as such a call for joint action is typically a sug-
gestion. Suggestions or advice can be distinguished from directives or requests,
in that they benefit the hearer, rather than the speaker (Vine 2004, pp. 3031).
Some of the instances counted in decision-making are on the borderline
between requests and suggestions, as in example 4.7, where two co-workers are
inspecting a label:
Example 4.7
z Lets have a look at that one then

However, as the colleague then takes the label from her co-worker, this can be
interpreted as a request to be given the label. The discursive context in proce-
dural encounters, makes the interpretation of lets as a directive more straight-
forward, as in example 4.8:
Example 4.8
Meg Thi::s. . . . Uh is this just a d do I just treat this

Ann Hmmm. . . . Lets treat that as an invoice. for one case at twenty-seven
bucks. an thats it,
Meg, a new employee, is asking her manager, Ann, various questions about
accounting procedures, and lets is clearly used to instruct Meg about the
correct procedure to follow. Let me is also used in a few instances as a directive
or request, as here, in another procedural encounter, where the speaker hands
the addressee some forms:
z So let me give you that
To sum up, then, a quantitative comparison of directives and requests in the

two sub-corpora shows that, although these speech acts are more frequent
in procedural and requesting discourse than in decision-making, they tend
to be more indirect and hedged. The question is, why should this be the case?
As previous research suggests, the most obvious reason to use more indirect
forms is negative politeness, that is to mitigate the threat to the addressees
negative face (the freedom from interference) which such a speech act implies.
But, why should directives be less polite when they occur in the context of
decision-making?
In order to have a complete picture of directives in the different genres, it is
essential to examine the more extended discourse context. In particular, it is
important to consider how directives are taken up and responded to by the
addressee, and their role in the genre as a whole. Two extracts, one from a pro-
cedural encounter, and one from decision-making, are examined to explore
these issues.2
Example 4.9 shows a longer extract from the encounter in which the
adjacency pair in example 4.8 above occurred. The two co-workers, Ann and
Meg, work in the back office of a food retailer (a North American co-operative).
Ann is the bookkeeper, and is training Meg, her new assistant. They are going
over procedures to do with invoices (directives are underlined).
Example 4.9 Procedural Discourse: Sorting Invoices
(39) Ann Theres tha:t, The question i:s. . .

(40) Meg Is whether they actually match?
(41) Ann Yeah. Whether they . . . yeah. Then the next thing you
do: is . . . There should also be a packing slip for this one here.
So . . . I would do this . . . staple that bill of lading onto that invoice,
cause we know those two go together,
[9]
(42) Meg So theyre all in /this ?/
[8]
(43) Ann Okay, a:nd . . .
Just- assuming that our packing slips gonna from upstairs,
you can go ahead an put it back in here. An then at like at
the end
o the month . . . well look through here an say wait a second.
what happened to that packing slip an figure it out then.
(44) Meg Okay.
. . . Alright. An the:n: . . . other things I/had ? on totally/Thi::s. . . .
Uh- is this just a d do I just treat this-
(45) Ann Hmmm. . . . Lets treat that as an invoice. for one case
at twenty-seven bucks. an thats it,
(46) Meg Okay,
The discursive roles of instruction-giver and instruction-receiver are quite

clear-cut in the encounter shown in example 4.9. The interaction is obviously uni-
directional, in that there an asymmetry in the roles and the expert knowledge of
the participants, which results in a one-way transfer of information. Ann gives
instructions using a variety of forms, while Meg either acknowledges that she has
understood the instructions (e.g. okay) or asks questions, e.g.: So theyre all in
this? Ann uses mostly modalized directives: there should be, I would do this,
you can go ahead. There is only one imperative, but this is a you imperative
(the next thing you do), not a bald imperative. Interestingly, two of the directives
are framed as joint action: well look through here, Lets treat that as. The find-
ings from the corpus analysis, that directives in procedural discourse take a range
of forms, but are mostly quite indirect, is confirmed in this data extract.
Example 4.10 shows the use of directives in a decision-making encounter. This
is from a meeting in the editorial office of a North American publishing com-
pany, and the two speakers, Carol and Beth, are discussing how they can improve
a particular procedure. Beth is an assistant editor, and Carol is her boss.
Example 4.10 Decision-making: Updating reprints
(26) Carol .hh Yeah. .hh Anyway. I mean a we we have to . . . I want you to take
a look at this. and see how you could use this, a:s a daily update.
So that whenever you have a reprint, you just put the information in,
(27) Beth Mhm,
(28) Carol and uh. . .
(29) Beth Right so I never have to pull out all the folders at once.
again, and go through it as a whole . . . humongous project.
(30) Carol Exactly. So that you would have a a running uh . . .
(31) Beth Yeah. Like a running . . .
(32) Carol a record of . . .
(33) Beth record of exactly whats happening at any one time.
(34) Carol Exactly.
(35) Carol Mhm,
(36) Beth Mhm,
(37) Beth Yeah. I was looking at that yesterday, an I can put in, . . . um . . .
I dont have to put in when a reprint comes in, but every time a
reprint comes in, or a reprint goes . . . into production, starts.
(38) Carol Mhm,
(39) Beth Then I can check this and make sure that the date is correct,
Um and when I get a unit cost, when I get a bound cost back,
after a reprint. Then I can put that in, as a last printing.
(40) Carol Mhm Right.
The extract shown in example 4.10 (which starts in the middle of the meet-
ing) begins with a very direct, and potentially face-threatening directive (I want
you to), which is then elaborated with the epistemic modals could and would
(turns 26 and 30), which are used for hypothesizing, rather than for mitigating.
This use of I want you to is striking, as there are no occurrences of this in pro-
cedural discourse and requesting; in fact this is the only example in the whole
corpus. It is possible that the force of the directive is mitigated to some extent
by the preceding false start (we-we have to . . .), but Carol nevertheless
chooses a fairly bald directive from among the range of possible choices.
Another noticeable difference between this extract and the previous one is the
way the addressee, Beth, responds. Unlike, Meg in example 4.9, she does not
simply acknowledge or check understanding, but takes an active role in making
suggestions. This impacts on the turn-taking structure in two ways. First, as both
speakers actively contribute suggestions, there are a large number of overlap-
ping and collaboratively constructed turns, for example:
(29) Carol Exactly. So that you would have a a running uh . . .

(30) Beth Yeah. Like a running . . .
(31) Carol a record of . . .
(32) Beth record of exactly whats happening at any one time.
(33) Carol Exactly.
From turns 37 to 40, Beth makes another suggestion, and Carol simply listens
and provides back-channels (mhm). There is thus, secondly, a kind of reversal
of the roles of superior and subordinate observed in example 4.9, where Meg,
the subordinate is the one who listens and acknowledges understanding.

Although the institutional relationship is the same in both encounters (manager-
subordinate), the discursive relationship is quite different. As Beths manager,
Carol has the authority to tell her to do something, but it is clear from the way
Beth responds to the directive, and how the interaction develops, that the
participants play a collaborative role in this encounter; that is they are trying
jointly to solve a particular problem. Vine (2004, p. 145 ), who also investigated
directives in the context of interactions between managers and subordinates,
observes that managers acknowledge and respect the domain of responsibility of
their staff (especially senior staff), by supporting their plans of action, as Carol
does in this encounter. In terms of the goal of the encounter (problem-solving
or decision-making), there is no clear division and asymmetry of roles, unlike in
the instruction-giving encounter (example 4.9).
This extract is illustrative of the general tendency revealed by the corpus
analysis that more direct forms are used (e.g. emphatic deontic modals) and
that there is less mitigation (e.g. vague language and hedges) in decision-mak-
ing conversations than in procedural encounters. The explanation for this
would seem to be in the different discursive roles of the participants in each of
these genres. In decision-making discourse, as in other collaborative genres
(see Chapter 2.2), the more equal roles of the participants seems to reduce the
risk of performing face-threatening acts, thereby lessening the need for mitiga-
tion. In procedural discourse and requesting, on the other hand, the opposite
is true, and participants attempt to minimize, through politeness strategies, the
interactional asymmetry which results from the role allocation in the genre.
These findings are based on a relatively small data set, but they are supported
by a study of hedges in CANBEC (Handford, forthcoming), which found that
hedges were more frequent in meetings with a procedural focus, than in those
involving decision-making.3
The analysis of directives in two different genre sets has shown that the form
and discourse context of directives is influenced by the genre in which it occurs.
Not only were there marked differences in the frequencies of different forms of
directive in the genres compared, but the sequential placement and interactive
treatment of directives by the participants differed markedly. Genre is thus a
key factor influencing the realization of directives, in addition to other factors
identified by previous studies, such as institutional context, nature of the task
and power.
4.5 Solidarity and involvement strategies in procedural

talk involving training
The importance of politeness to mitigate potential face-threats in procedural
discourse has been emphasized in the previous section. But, the interpersonal
features found in workplace discourse include strategies that go beyond
politeness, and include what I describe as solidarity: the affective dimension

of interpersonal relations involving the expression of mutuality and common
ground (Koester 2006, p. 62). For example, in example 4.9 above, the book-
keeper (Ann), in training her new assistant (Meg), formulates a number of
directives in a way that projects them as her own action or as joint action, when
in fact it is Meg who will be carrying out the task:
z I would do this (turn 41)

z well look through here (turn 43)
z Lets treat that as an invoice (turn 45)
Here, and in other procedural encounters (see Koester 2006, pp. 115118)
there seems to be an effort on the instruction-givers part to make the one-way
process of instruction-giving more interactive and interpersonal. The high
density of solidarity strategies in this encounter may be linked to the fact it
does not involve routine directives (which require less mitigation), but training
a new employee, a situation in which establishing a good relationship is particu-
larly important.
One particular procedural encounter from the ABOT Corpus, in which a
new employee is trained, stands out as being the only one to use extensively
a combination of particular strategies, which, according to Tannen (1989)
create involvement:
an internal, even emotional connection individuals feel which binds them

to other people as well as to place, things, activities, ideas, memories, and
words (p. 12).
Tannen (ibid., p. 17) describes a range of involvement strategies, such as

rhythm, repetition, tropes, dialogue, narrative, imagery and detail. The ones
that are particularly salient in this encounter are narrative, constructed dia-
logue and detail.
The encounter (Adhesive labels, see Appendix I) takes place in the branch
office of a British paper supplier between the branch manager, Ben, and a new,
very young sales rep, Sam. Sam has approached Ben with a problem regarding
a particular type of label he needs to get for a customer, and Ben launches into
a lengthy explanation of the process involved in printing on labels and some of
the problems that could occur.
What is striking about the explanation is that it is done via the setting up of a
hypothetical scenario which is structured as a narrative, going through all the
phases of narrative structure identified by Labov (1972): abstract, orientation,
complicating action, resolution, coda. The encounter begins with Sam explaining
what his problem is. There is then a clear switch to narrative genre in Bens next
turn, marked by a number of prosodic and turn-constructional features: pausing,
a discourse marker (alright), false starts and a step up in pitch (). Here Ben sets
up a hypothetical situation, which functions as a kind of abstract to (or summary)

of the story, as it states the problem the narrative is designed to solve:
Example 4.11
(6) Sam Cause if we can get hold of em I mean he he said he can get
em from Merchants Paper . . . So I dont- know if they actually . . . stock
them themselves or theyre getting hold of em somehow, but they he
said he doesnt like them, so he doesnt wanna go through them,
[2]
(7) Ben (Alright) What does happen, if . . . If you look at . . . uhm . . . [4]
Somebody comes on to you an says . . . we want some twenty
millimetre . . . circular labels. right?
This story opener in turn 7 (somebody comes on to you an says) is

recognizable as a kind of framing device used to set up a hypothetical example.
There is some evidence in the corpus that this is a semi-lexicalized phrase
with a pragmatic specialization for projecting hypothetical scenarios. Other
variations of the pattern found in the corpus are:
z if somebody else comes along . . .

z if somebody like yourself go along . . .
Bens next turn functions as the orientation of the narrative, providing rele-
vant background information to the imaginary situation:
Example 4.12
(9) Ben An he might have already done the job before, . . . So what they do:,
is they if theyve done the job before:, they . . . print onto these
onto these labels, Sam: Yeah wi with a printing plate yeah?
From turns 1123 Ben then describes a series of hypothetical events linked
with the discourse marker so, which make up the complicating action, that is
the main events of the narrative:
Example 4.13
(13) Ben So. . . what they do, is /they then say/ right okay, right,. . .
[3 sec: Ben drawing a diagram] Heres our heres our sheet, of
labels Sam: Yeah, an theyre twenty millimetre circular labels.
[8 sec: Ben drawing and making some noises] You got the got the
drift. There Thats thats your sheet o labels right, where
the circular /holes/ are,
(14) Sam Mm
[2]
(15) Ben /So . . ./ we say hm! Done the job before, you wanna print em
again, . . .
We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . . Alright?
(16) Sam (Yeah)
The narrative is animated with hypothetical reported speech (turn 15:

so . . . we say . . .) and visual aids which Ben creates as he goes along (this
accounts for several fairly long pauses in which he draws some diagrams). This
builds up to a narrative peak in turn 23, where the imaginary printing process
runs into serious problems, and here the narrative build-up is highlighted by
the use of sound effects and expletives:
Example 4.14
(23) [. . .] an here comes our labels. [whistles and draws] Oh fuck! Where
are all those little peanuts gonna go, theyre gonna go nowhere near his
fucking labels,
In turn 25 the narrative moves into the resolution phase, with Ben proposing
two possible solutions to this problem:
Example 4.15
(25) So, . . . the thing is, hes got two options. He can either use, exactly the
same . . . labels . . . again, [. . .] Or, . . . he says well I dont wanna use those
people anymore, . . . plates a bit knackered anyway. So I have to:, get another
plate made up, that m- matches that format that /lay down of/ labels.
The end of the narrative is signalled by a coda, which makes an overall com-
ment on the story, and marks a return from the hypothetical situation to the
here and now (Labov 1972, Eggins and Slade 1997):
Example 4.16
(40) Ben Which is quite an expensive . . . (way of uh you know,)

So what you really need to do, is is to say to him, we can supply
you, cir twenty millimetre circular labels, Sam: Yeah, A:nd . . .
we can do JDS, and say . . . tell him that our maximum size, . . . [. . .]
Besides serving as a link from the story world back to the real world, the coda
elucidates the point of the narrative, in this case telling Sam what he needs to
do about his current problem. This provides the justification for the story: the
point of the lengthy, detailed explanation was of course to enable Sam to under-
stand how to solve his problem. The rest of the encounter from turns 4059
resembles other procedural encounters, with Ben proposing various courses of
action using a variety of modal verbs (need, want (to), can, might,
would).
The question is, why does Ben use these involvement strategies, structuring
his explanation as a narrative, and going into such elaborate detail in describ-
ing the process, when there might have been more efficient ways of structuring
this explanation? Tannen (1989, p. 104) sees storytelling as a key element in the
establishment of interpersonal involvement in conversation: it heightens the
active participation of listeners. By structuring his explanation as a narrative,
Ben attempts to engage Sams attention and make the explanation more inter-
esting and memorable. As noted in Chapter 2.3.2, where a brief extract from
this encounter is shown (example 2.9), this narrative is part of a virtual world
created by Ben on the spur of the moment to serve the pedagogical goal of the
encounter.
His use of constructed dialogue, using hypothetical reported speech, is a fur-
ther device that makes the explanation more lively, e.g. (example 4.13 above):
(15) Ben /So . . . / we say hm! Done the job before, you wanna print
emagain, . . . We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . .
A number of researchers have observed that speech reporting is used by sto-

rytellers as a narrative device. For Labov (1972), reported speech constitutes
embedded evaluation, which comments on the events of the narrative, and
Baynham (1991) observes that direct speech is used especially during the com-
plicating action and narrative peak to heighten the drama of the story. Tannen
(1989, p. 133) also sees constructed dialogue as a dramatic device which casts
the listeners into the role of active interpreting audience.
Constructed dialogue is also used in some other procedural encounters in
order to exemplify an aspect of the procedure:
Example 4.17
Well I order things free mostly, Like if somebody . . . calls up

and says like even a friend of Carol will say you know, can I have this book. an
Carolll e-mail me, an say could you just send them this. and I send it free.
Like in example 4.11 above, the speaker frames the upcoming discourse as a
hypothetical situation: like if somebody calls up and says . . ., similar to the frame
used by Ben (somebody comes on to you an says . . .). This hypothetical situa-
tion is then exemplified with reported speech, and, as in the Adhesive Labels
encounter, has the effect of making the explanation more vivid and lively.
However, in no other procedural encounter is hypothetical reported speech

embedded in such an extended narrative as in Bens explanation to Sam.
Finally Tannen (1989, p. 135) notes that the use of detail evokes images and
scenes (which are often linked to emotions). Ben goes into minute detail, creat-
ing a situation where labels for peanuts are to be printed, all accompanied with
an illustration:
Example 4.18
(19) Ben [drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks]

so on each one o those, . . . theyre just white labels, and in the
middle o that you might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a
couple o legs and a couple o arms an /?/ an put peanuts
under it right? Alright?
(20) Sam Yeah . . . [chuckles]
Sams chuckle as a reaction to this is an indication that Ben is successful in

creating involvement with these details. He not only tells a story, but puts on a
whole show, using visual aids (the diagrams which he draws), gestures, to
describe the printing process, and various exclamations and sound effects:
Example 4.19
(21) Ben So all youve got on here, . . . is loads o little peanuts, with arms an
legs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going round
an round a cylinder, . . . thats /flat/ wrapped round a cylinder
like that right, . . . an here comes all the labels yeah? . . . So here
comes these labels, . . . an all those little . . . peanuts, land, right in
the middle of all those . . . labels, right?
(22) Sam Yeah,
(23) Ben Bonzai! Alright so we come along, an we go yeah! . . . We do labels,
These involvement strategies used by Ben have a similar effect to some of the
solidarity strategies used in other procedural encounters: they serve to make
the discourse more interactive and interpersonal. The situation here is of
course quite different from an encounter between intimates or friends (such as
those examined by Tannen), in which creating interpersonal rapport is the
main goal. Throughout this encounter the participants remain task-focused,
and Bens narrative is clearly not an off-task relational episode of some kind
(see Chapter 5). In fact it serves a very important task goal: instructing a new
employee in a procedure he needs to be familiar with. The virtual world cre-
ated by Ben through involvement strategies thus clearly serves a purpose in
terms of the transactional goal: these strategies are designed to make the expla-
nations more understandable, meaningful and memorable.
An interview I conducted with Ben after this encounter provides evidence

that he used these strategies deliberately. In the interview, Ben spoke about the
importance of training new sales reps and expressed his dissatisfaction with
some of the trainers they had employed, who used what he called textbook
methods, rather than adapting the training to the particular needs of the
company. In addition to serving as training tools that are specifically adapted
to the needs of the trainee and the situation, the involvement strategies used
by Ben are also important in building a relationship with a new employee: as
well as constructing an identity of himself as raconteur and entertainer,
he establishes the working relationship as a friendly and informal one. Both
the training encounters examined so far in this chapter (Sorting Invoices,
examples 4.94.10, and Adhesive Labels, examples 4.114.19) show trainers
making extensive use of solidarity and involvement strategies, and these seem
to be particularly important in situations in which new recruits are being
trained. Having considered training as a specific kind of procedural genre, the
final section of this chapter considers training, apprenticeship and workplace
learning more generally.
4.6 Training, apprenticeship and workplace learning
Learning at work takes place in a range of contexts, from targeted training

to learning by doing in the course of carrying out workplace duties. At the
formal training end of the continuum, outside trainers might be called in
to run in-house training sessions for staff. Also, more senior members of
staff may formally induct new recruits, as in the Sorting Invoices encounter
(Example 4.94.10) between Ann and Meg, or opportunities for instruction
may arise spontaneously in dealing with new employees, as in the conversation
between Ben and Sam about adhesive labels (Example 4.114.19).
Learning also takes place outside such procedural encounters which explicitly
focus on instruction. Apprenticeship into a trade or profession frequently
involves a more senior member of staff observing and evaluating a new employee
in how they perform their duties. In the medical profession, for example,
newly qualified doctors work as residents in hospitals in the United States
of America, where they are supervised by experienced doctors. Erickson (1999)
describes supervisory sessions in which residents or interns have to make
medical case presentations to an experienced doctor as part of their
apprenticeship.
The case presentation is a distinct professional speech genre, consisting of
both narrative segments, where an intern presents the medical case of a patient
they have just examined to a senior physician (a preceptor), and interactive
segments, where the preceptor asks the intern questions. In this pedagogical
situation, interns learn through modelling, rather than direct instruction.
These sessions are underpinned by an implicit educational contract (ibid.,
p. 121), whereby the interns are treated like real doctors, and therefore
feedback given by the preceptors tends to be indirect. Rather than being
given explicit instruction, the interns learn the genre of case presentation by
gradually appropriating the voice of the genre (ibid., p. 137), which includes,
for example, learning to switch between formal style (using professional termi-
nology) and informal style (quasi-lay terminology).
Discussions of workplace learning have been much influenced by Wengers
(1998) notion of communities of practice (see Chapter 1), where learning is
seen as ever-increasing social participation in the community of practice (Lave
and Wenger 1991); and numerous studies have adopted this social view of
learning at work (e.g. Schulz 2005, Lee and Roth 2006, Lundin and Nuldn
2007). Erickson (1999) notes that the characteristics of the precepting session
fufill the conditions of Laves conception of apprenticeship as progressively more
and more complete participation in a community of practice (p. 137). Before the
novices become fully fluent in the community of practice, they engage in what
Lave and Wenger (1991) call legitimate peripheral participation.
Learning the genres of the professions need not always take place in situations,
like the precepting sessions discussed above, which have the explicit purpose of
training, but may also occur in the course of performing regular workplace
tasks. In a study of learning at work in police practice in Sweden, Lundin and
Nuldn (2007) discuss a range of situations from the everyday practice of the
police which provide opportunities for learning for new recruits. They focus
specifically on ways in which tools are used and talked about in the work of
the police. According to Wenger (1998), tools are part of the shared reper-
toire of a discourse community, along with routines, genres, symbols and other
linguistic and non-linguistic elements. The tools used by the police include the
artefacts they carry on their person, such as gun, stick, radio and phone, as
well as the police car. Opportunities for learning seem to arise specifically
in talking about how the tools are deployed in policing work. However, the
situations described do not involve formal training, but frequently some kind
of informal debriefing after carrying out a job. In one instance, this involved
discussing the way in which a police car was used in arriving at a suspicious
scene. In their analysis, Lundin and Nuldn (2007) stress the social and inter-
active dimension of workplace learning:
the opportunities to use the tools of the practice, and to reflect collectively
on the experiences gained from doing this, shape the learning among the
participants. (p. 236)
Learning involves not only learning how to use tools and perform genres, but
also what the values of the professional community are. For instance, the genre
of the medical case presentation, which newly qualified doctors learn to
perform in supervisory sessions (Erickson 1999), is not only a report, but also
an opportunity for self-presentation of the physician. Erikson remarks that
medical conditions which allow a clear diagnosis and treatment are valued
because they give the doctor the opportunity for positive self-presentation. On
the other hand, medical conditions with vague, puzzling symptoms, which do
not allow such a diagnosis, are aesthetically, intellectually, and morally unsatis-
fying for physicians (ibid., p. 113). In the precepting session analysed, the
senior doctor models how to talk about the patients medical condition, which
falls into the difficult-to-diagnose category. After the intern has presented the
case and proposed a diagnosis, the preceptor says:
Example 4.20
(86) P: Yeah it seems that its you know its a

(87) funny enough story that
(88) because its a crazy story it doesnt fit
(89) anything . . .
(Erickson 1999, p. 119)
By distancing himself from and denigrating the patients condition in

this way (its a crazy story), the senior doctor models the way in which such
medical conditions, which are medically uninteresting and unsatisfying (ibid.,
p. 135) are perceived and talked about in the profession.
The values of a community are perhaps articulated most clearly when they
are not appropriated by new recruits. An example of this can be seen in a
meeting from the ABOT corpus between a sales manager and his boss, where
the sales manager describes problems he is having with one of his new sales
reps. Some extracts from this meeting are shown in example 4.21 below (see
also Koester 2004, pp. 2027):
Example 4.21
Yeah this morning. I . . . took him to Amys office an talked to him. .hh That
he has: . . . I says youve got . . . the work ethic, you got the
personality, and you got the:: . . . u:h . . . ability the to do very well. And
you: are supposed to have some knowledge that youre coming with us. And
that . . . since you been here. In monitoring you, have I weve had
several conversations, and weve had a spat . . . back and forth, of things
about . . . .hh whats happening, and where are you are, an hh uh t . . . then
I says I as your. . . supervisor, I have to tell you, that your performance is not
what it should be.
[. . .]
Yeah. I says so I know I understand you receive what I say. but youve not . . .
applied what I say. An youre assuming that you know, more than I do. An I
says if that were true, you would be producing sales. An . . . so . . . I says now
I want you to come in Monday, an tell me one way or another. Are you ready
to really go after it, an make a change?
There are echoes of previous procedural encounters between the sales

manager and rep in this report: I understand you receive what I say but youve
not . . . applied what I say. As previous instruction seems to have failed, the
sales manager apparently feels it is necessary to be explicit about what is
expected of the rep in his job. We must remember, of course, that this is a
reported conversation, and that the sales managers language may not have
been quite as direct in the actual encounter with the rep. However, what comes
out quite clearly in his report to his superior is what is expected of a good sales
rep. First of all, there is a list of positive characteristics needed for the job,
which the sales rep is said to possess: the work ethic, the personality, the
ability to do well. But, as becomes evident in the sales managers talk, simply
possessing these characteristics is not enough; what ultimately counts and is
valued in this community of practice is performance, which, as is spelled out
later in the encounter, means producing sales.
4.7 Conclusion
This chapter has explored, from a number of different angles, communication
at work which has the aim of getting others to perform certain tasks. While
most previous studies have focused on directives in isolation or in their immedi-
ate communicative context, I have argued in this chapter that directives should
be examined in the wider communicative context of genre. The focus has been
on procedural discourse, where the overall communicative goal is to instruct,
or explain actions or procedures. Directives are frequent in this genre, but it is
also characterized by other features, such as the discourse roles and the turn-
taking structure. Some of the key characteristics of this genre, identified
through corpus methods as well as discourse analysis in a corpus of office con-
versations, were reviewed. To further explore the role of genre, directives and
requests were compared in two different genre sets, procedural discourse/
requesting and decision-making, revealing striking differences in the form and
interactive treatment of directives in the different genres. These results indicate
that genre is a key factor that should be taken into account in interpreting
directives, in addition to others, such as institutional context and speaker rela-
tionship, identified in previous studies.
Much procedural discourse takes place in the context of training, and there-
fore the final section of this chapter has dealt specifically with interactions
involving training. It seems that solidarity strategies are used especially fre-
quently by trainers, as they are trying to build a positive relationship with the
new colleague. One particular training encounter which was analysed in detail
showed the extensive use of involvement strategies to heighten the engagement
and receptiveness to learning on the part of the new recruit, as well as to foster
a positive relationship. The chapter finished with a more general look at
apprenticeship and workplace learning, and ways in which genres, tools and
values of the professional community are conveyed to new members.
The procedural encounters analysed and discussed in this chapter show
that politeness and solidarity strategies are used extensively, indicating that
building relationships between co-workers is a key concern, even when the
focus is on accomplishing a workplace task. The following chapter will explore
the topic of relationship-building at work in more detail, examining small talk
and the use of humour in workplace interactions.
Part II
Issues and Applications in

Workplace Discourse
Chapter 5
Relationships at Work: Relational

Talk and Humour
5.1 Introduction
The important role played by relational talk and interpersonal elements of
language in workplace discourse, despite its overall focus on transactional goals,
has already been highlighted throughout this book. This chapter focuses spe-
cifically on relational talk in the workplace, paying particular attention to small
talk and the use of humour.
The traditional dichotomy between transactional or task-oriented talk and
relational talk (or phatic communion) has been challenged by a number of
recent studies into the use of small talk in workplace and institutional settings
(Holmes 2000a, McCarthy 2000, Ragan 2000, Koester 2006). While Malinowski
(1923/1972) contrasts phatic communion used in free, aimless, social inter-
course (1972, p. 149) to more purposeful types of interaction, these studies
have shown that relational talk is far too prevalent to be considered marginal in
the workplace. Moreover, it is not possible neatly to separate talk that is purely
instrumental from talk that has a relational or social purpose. Holmes identifies
a continuum of task-orientation in interactions from the Wellington Language
in the Workplace Project, with core business talk and phatic communion at
opposite ends of the continuum, and work-related talk and social talk in
between. In my own work investigating the ABOT corpus, I have proposed
that relational talk can be found at various levels of discourse from extended
non-transactional conversations to shorter exchanges or sequences occurring
during transactional talk: (see Koester 2004b and 2006):
1. non-transactional conversations: office gossip and small talk (see Chapter 2,

pp. 2425)
2. phatic communion: small talk at the beginning or end of transactional
encounters
3. relational episodes: small talk or office gossip occurring during the
performance of a transactional task
4. relational sequences and turns: non-obligatory task-related talk with a
relational focus
In some encounters at work, participants do not orient to any workplace

concerns, and such interactions are referred to as non-transactional conversa-
tions. The term phatic communion is used here to refer not to relational
talk in general (as Malinowski does), but in a more restricted sense, following
Laver (1975), to ritual exchanges and small talk at the beginning and end of
encounters. But in addition to taking place at the edges of an encounters
(where it most typically occurs), relational talk can also occur as a relational
episode, which interrupts the performance of a transactional task. Non-
transactional conversations and relational episodes can involve either office
gossip or small talk. Office gossip is not task-oriented, but consists of talk
about some aspect of the workplace, for example colleagues and events at work.
Small talk addresses topics outside the workplace, such as the weekend and
holidays, or family and friends. In this chapter, however, the term small talk
is mainly used in its broader meaning as a synonym for relational talk, in keep-
ing with its general usage in much of the literature on relational talk.
Relational sequences and turns are woven into task-oriented talk, and, as
corpus analysis reveals (see Chapter 3), are used in ways specifically adapted to
the workplace context. Even relational talk which may seem quite extraneous
to the business at hand, may ultimately serve transactional goals, as found for
example by Coupland (2000) and Ragan (2000) in two different health care con-
texts (geriatric and womens health respectively). In interactions between health
care providers and patients, small talk and humour were found to facilitate treat-
ment and patient compliance, and therefore ultimately to serve a medical goal.
Further support for seeing relational talk as central, rather than peripheral,
to workplace interactions comes from outside discourse analytical research.
In Wengers (1998) community of practice framework, relational aspects are
considered to be an integral part of the practice. In describing the job of claims
processors in a health insurance company, Wenger asserts:
Their practice . . . makes the job habitable by creating an atmosphere

in which the monotonous and meaningless aspects of the job are woven into
the rituals, customs, stories, events, dramas, and rhythms of community life.
(1998, p. 46)
His ethnographic work in this workplace setting revealed the importance of the
employees relationships with one another: they were aware of their inter-
dependence in getting the job done efficiently and making it more meaningful
and enjoyable (ibid., p. 47).
Moreover, among the list of indicators which provide evidence of the
existence of a community of practice, Wenger (ibid., p. 125) highlights both
workplace relationships and relational talk and humour:
z sustained mutual relationships harmonious or conflictual

z local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter
Relationships at Work 99
Holmes and Marra (2002) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003, pp. 122133) use
a community of practice framework to investigate humour and workplace
culture. Holmes and Marra (ibid.) list two more of Wengers indicators as
particularly relevant for examining spoken interaction in general, and humour
in particular:
z shared ways of engaging in doing things together(Wenger 1998,125)

z certain styles recognized as displaying membership (ibid., 126)
By comparing humour across a number of dimensions in four different

workplace settings from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project,
Holmes and Marra identify differences in workplace culture in the four com-
munities of practice. Their study indicates that examining key components
of discursive practice, such as humour, can reveal ways in which communities of
practice can differ from one another and develop their own distinctive cultures.
Comparing relational talk across different workplace settings can also give
an indication of differences in workplace culture between communities of
practice, as explored in this chapter by examining relational talk in the ABOT
corpus.
Far from being purposeless, then, relational talk performs important
functions in the workplace, and the chapter begins by discussing and exempli-
fying some of the different work that such talk performs. A comparative
overview of relational talk in different office settings in the ABOT Corpus then
provides an indication of some of the ways in which discursive practices and
workplace culture can differ.
The second part of the chapter looks more closely at humour in the work-
place, reviewing studies of humour in a number of organizational settings.
Holmes and Marras (2002) comparison of the way humour is used in four
different workplaces is reviewed in some detail, and the chapter concludes
with an analysis of the types and functions of workplace humour found in the
ABOT Corpus.
5.2 Work done through relational talk

Most studies agree that small talk is used in workplace contexts to perform a
range of types of face work (Coupland and Ylnne-McEwen 2000, Holmes
2000a, Holmes and Stubbe 2003). In my work on data from the ABOT Corpus
(Koester 2004b and 2006), I distinguish between solidarity and politeness
functions performed by the various types of relationally oriented talk listed
above (see Chapter 4). Holmes and (2000a) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003)
find that small talk is frequently used to do collegiality, but that it can also be
used to do power. Thus, while managers may use small talk as a way of reduc-
ing the social distance between themselves and their subordinates, they can also
exercise their power by deciding when and for how long small talk takes place.
Relational talk also contributes to forging a sense of group identity and

building social cohesion (Eggins and Slade 1997, Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin
Stark 2007). This function of small talk is particularly foregrounded in multi-
national work groups or business interactions, where there is no pre-existing group
allegiance, and a group identity must first be built, as illustrated in Poncinis work
(See Chapter 6). Eggins and Slade (1997) show that there is also a darker, coer-
cive side of small talk, as it can be used to negotiate group alignments around
difference as well as solidarity, including out-groups as well as in-groups. They
analyse interactions of male factory supervisors in Australia during their lunch
break, and show how, through small talk, group alignment is negotiated around
cultural values, such as ethnicity and gender. The dominant members of the
group are able to set the agenda for the values of the group, which include, in this
instance, misogyny, machismo and a particular view of what it means to be
Australian (ibid., pp. 116168). Two specific functions of relational talk are
discussed in more detail here: relationship-building and identity work.
5.2.1 Relationship-building
Small talk of course contributes to relationship-building between co-workers,
business partners and service providers and recipients, as already discussed in
relation to service encounters in Chapter 2.2.3. In the ABOT Corpus, small talk
was particularly frequent between colleagues who had developed a close rela-
tionship (Koester 2006), and the few encounters between complete strangers
contained little relational talk. 1
Relationship-building in action can be seen particularly clearly in the
occurrence of phatic communion the ritual exchanges and small talk at the
beginning and end of encounters. Far from being trivial, Laver (1975, p. 233.)
asserts that phatic communion reveals the cumulative consensus about a
relationship reached as the result of repeated encounters between the two par-
ticipants and that it constitutes the essence of that relationship (see Koester
2006, pp. 5758). This is illustrated nicely in some encounter-final phatic com-
munion that occurred in the office of a printer between the office manager,
Val, and a visiting platemaker, Gary, who does regular work for the company.
Example 5.1 below shows the end of a discussion about a printing job and a
fairly abrupt switch to relational talk occasioned by Val patting Garys stomach
(he is standing near her chair):
Example 5.1
(1) Val Well from our point of view, we need to get it mo:ving,
because . . . he wants delivery . . . by a certain da:y. an hes not
approved the artwork, so . . .
(2) Gary Pa:r for the course. isnt it.
(3) [Val pats Garys stomach]
(4) Gary Leave my stomach alone!

(5) Val (Heheheh)
(6) Gary Took a lot of time, . . . cultivating that,
(7) Val to build that up,
(8) Gary Longest pregnancy in history. Ive got,
(9) Ally [chuckles]
[3]
(10) Val Is it the beer,
[5]
(11) Gary No comment.
(12) Val No comment. Okay.
[2]
(13) Gary On the grounds it might incriminate me.
This good-natured teasing seems surprisingly intimate for a workplace rela-

tionship, particularly as it involves physical contact; but it seems clear that for
the participants no boundaries are over-stepped. What this phatic communion
seems to be doing is signalling that the relationship is so well-established that
such intimacy is permitted.
Phatic communion occurring at the boundaries of interactions is the most
typical kind of small talk at work (Holmes and Stubbe 2003, p. 90); however, it is
not present in every encounter. Colleagues who work together closely can often
dispense with opening and closing routines, especially if they work in the same
physical space. According to Laver (1975), speakers do engage in phatic com-
munion when the roles they will play in the encounter are not clearly defined in
advance. Evidence from the ABOT Corpus suggests that what is also important
is whether or not the speakers relational roles are well-established. In the few
encounters between strangers (all service encounters), there are few phatic
exchanges, with participants simply enacting their pre-established transactional
roles of server and servee (see Chapter 2.2.3).2 Close colleagues, on the other
hand, do not need to preface all encounters with small talk, as they already have
an established relationship. However, when people do not work together on a
regular basis, they need to spend more time on building their relationship when
they do meet up; and it is in encounters between people in this group that phatic
communion occurs most in the corpus. One striking example of this is a service
encounter involving a meeting between a supplier and customer, where the
small talk at the beginning and end of the meeting takes up 18 and 8 turns
respectively. In contrast, phatic communion between co-workers frequently
consists of quite short sequences, sometimes just a single adjacency pair.
5.2.2 Identity negotiation

Relational talk can also be seen as a site for identity negotiation. In workplace
interactions, speakers frequently make relevant other identities besides their
institutional identities (Schenkein 1978, Greatbatch and Dingwall 1998,

Benwell and Stokoe 2006), and both longer and shorter stretches of relational
talk provide an opportunity for negotiating alternative identities. Gary, the
platemaker, from example 5.1 above, makes such an alternative identity partic-
ularly clear when he introduces a joke by saying:
Example 5.2
Anyway, . . . Im not really a plate supplier, Im a joke supplier.
By contrasting his institutional identity (plate supplier) with a jocular alter-

native identity of joke supplier, he simultaneously provides an account for
introducing a longer small talk sequence in which jokes are exchanged, and
legitimates a relationship with his interlocutors which goes well beyond that of
a purely transactional one.
Shorter relational sequences are frequently used during transactional talk to
negotiate particular identities in relation to a task at hand. For example, in
interactions where the institutional relationship is asymmetrical (e.g. manager-
subordinate), more symmetrical identities may be negotiated (see Koester
2006, pp. 155157). This may be a useful way of dealing with a problematic situ-
ation, as in example 5.3 below (see Chapter 3, example 3.10 for a more detailed
analysis of this encounter). Here Chris, the head of a small American advertis-
ing company, is having a meeting with his sales manager, Joe:
Example 5.3
1. Chris Havent seen much in the way of sales the last half of the week.
2. Joe .hh Well, a lot of the media, the the orders have been very difficult
getting out. Stuff is is jammed.
3. Chris Oh they didnt go out?
4. Joe Yeah. Janes orders are clogged. And . . . trying to get out heheh
5. Chris Heheh clogged orders!
6. Joe Clogged orders! .hh they cant get out o the system.
7. Chris Oh no!
Chris begins by invoking his institutional identity as Joes boss, and therefore
as someone who is in a position to criticize the performance of Joes sales team.
However, Joe then slips into a joking frame by talking about clogged orders in
order to provide an account for the low level of sales, and Chris affiliates with
him and joins in the joking. In doing this, he sets himself on a more equal
footing with Joe, enabling him to back down from the authoritarian identity
just invoked, thus perhaps mitigating any face-threat implied in turn 1 with the
direct reference to problems for which Joe is responsible.3 Relational sequences
can also reinforce, rather than downplay, institutional roles, for example when
a manager, Ben, checks whether the new employee he is training is coping (see
Chapter 4, examples 4.114.19):
Example 5.4:
Ben Alright, but youre sort of getting the . . . getting the drift of it yeah,
By expressing concern for the employee, Ben invokes an identity as a respon-

sible manager who cares about his staff.
Identity negotiation of course also takes place as part of transactional talk
(see Cook-Gumperz and Messerman 1999). In fact, Tracy and Naughton (2000)
suggest that both transactional and relational talk can be analysed in terms
of identity work, and that this is a more fruitful endeavour than trying to
distinguish between the two kinds of talk. Such an approach brings into focus
the key group and professional identities that can be negotiated through seem-
ingly marginal non-task chat or comments. For example, in analysing meetings
of hospice workers, Tracy and Naughton (ibid.) found that third-party com-
ments about patients, such as shes a dear soul (p. 77), are used to construct
an identity of staff as caring and concerned professionals.
5.3 The role of relational talk within a community

of practice
In addition to examining the functions relational talk performs, it is also inter-
esting to consider the role it plays within a community of practice. As discussed
at the beginning of this chapter, relational talk is seen by Wenger (1998) as an
important aspect of a community of practice. This section compares relational
talk across the different workplace settings which provided the data for the
ABOT Corpus (see Chapter 2, pp. 2425), drawing on transcribed data, inter-
views and ethnographic observation. The aim of this comparison is to ascertain
whether differences in the nature and frequency of relational talk, as well as
participants views about small talk, can provide any insights into the practices
of the different workplace communities.
The composition of the ABOT Corpus is described in more detail in Chapter 2,
but here it is useful to review the various workplace settings from which the data
were collected, in order to contextualize the discussion of the different commu-
nities of practice. The following workplaces in Britain and the North America
were included in the study (see also Koester 2006, pp. 2930):
1. Universities:
z British: departmental office for undergraduate administration and teaching
z American: graduate school office for postgraduate administration and
teaching
2. Publishing:
z British: editorial office for English Language Teaching (ELT)
z American: editorial office for ELT
3. Private commercial sector:
British:
z Paper supplier: branch office selling (mainly on the telephone) to whole-
salers and printers
z Printer: small printing company specialized in printing labels. Recordings
made in the office, which dealt with orders for printing jobs.
American:
Advertising: a small family business selling specialist advertising to businesses
(mainly on the telephone) in the form of postcards. Recordings made
mainly in the office of the president
Food retailer: the back office of a co-operative selling organic food
In comparing relational talk across these settings, I consider the various types
of relational talk detailed above, from more extended office gossip and small
talk to shorter relational episodes. In addition, I draw on interviews with at least
one main participant in the interactions recorded in each setting. Two of the
interview questions related to small talk:
1. How often do you engage in small talk?

2. What role do you think small talk has in your work?
This is supplemented with my own participants observation based on one to

several days spent in each of the workplace settings.
While relational talk occurred in all the office settings, there were substantial
differences in the amount and nature of the small talk and other relational
talk that occurred. The differences observed in the data and from participant
observation seem to correlate with what interviewees said about small talk.
In some of the workplaces, participants engaged in quite extended small talk
and office gossip, whereas in others there were few extended episodes, but
frequent short relational sequences, for example in the form of banter and
teasing. Overall, there was more extended relational talk in the university
and publishing offices than in the workplaces in the private commercial sector
(with the exception of the food cooperative). It is likely that this is linked to
the nature of the work in commercial settings, where people are working to
short-term targets, involving, for example, selling on the telephone, as in two of
the settings. This is confirmed by comments made during the interviews, for
example the office manager of the printing firm acknowledged the role that
small talk plays in creating bonds, but said there wasnt much time for it. In
contrast, one of the two secretaries working in the British university office, in which
the most extended relational talk was recorded, said that up to 100 per cent of
all talk might be relational, when they were not busy (whereas at busy times it
would only be 010 per cent).
However, the lack of extended small talk did not mean that there was little
relational talk. In the sales office of the British paper supplier (in which most
recordings were made in the main open plan office where reps were selling over
the phone) no extended small talk between reps was recorded, but there was very
frequent banter and teasing, which seemed to form an integral part of the work-
place culture. In fact, a number of the workplaces seem to have incorporated
such humorous banter into their workplace practice. This cut right across work-
place sectors, as, in addition to the paper supplier, the American editorial office,
the British university office and the food retailer all exhibited such a teasing, jocu-
lar culture to a greater or lesser extent. This is nicely illustrated in the following
exchange from the British university office, where one of the secretaries, Liz,
interrupts a conversation Susan is having with a colleague, Fiona, to announce
that she is going to take some money to the finance office. This leads her col-
league, Susan, to tease her about getting mugged because she is carrying so much
cash on her, and Liz to joke about making off to the airport with the money:
Example 5.5
(1) Liz Excuse me please . . . I ha Im going to Finance.

(2) Susan Right.
(3) Liz If Im /going today/
(4) Susan Do you want a big envelope to put all that in.
(5) Fiona /???/
(6) Susan So you dont get mugged on the way up
(7) Liz Am I going to get mugged on the way to Finance?
Will anybody mess
(8) Susan Wont if you do that. But you might do if you dont.
(9) Liz Nobodyll mess with me.
[]
(10) Liz Im going to Finance the time is now . . . ten . . . twenty:::
(11) Susan six
(12) Liz six seven eightish
(13) Susan If you are not back by . . . ten . . . forty =
(14) Liz = Im at the airport. Cause thats where Ill be.
[Fiona and Susan laugh]
(15) Susan You wont get very far on that. Its Stoke on Trent again,
(16) Liz [leaving office] Isnt that /another/ country?
(17) Susan Right. Ill come with you then hehe!
(18) Liz Hehehe!
In offices where there were interactions with customer or visitors, as well as

with colleagues, it is interesting to compare the amount of small talk that
occurred with each type of interlocutor. The only extended small talk or office
gossip in both British companies (the paper supplier and the printer) occurred
with visitors to the office. This was also the case for the American university office,
in contrast to the British one, where small talk was frequent between close col-
leagues as well as with students, academic staff or other visitors coming into the
office. This may have been due to the very close relationship the two secretaries,
Liz and Susan, sharing the departmental office in the United Kingdom university
seemed to have developed. However, the overall greater amount of relational
talk with visitors and customers compared to that between colleagues in many
of the settings confirms the importance of phatic communion for relationship-
building when the relationship is not so well-established, as discussed above.
That this was also recognized by the participants themselves was apparent in
some of the interviews. The main speaker recorded in the American university
office had the job of staff assistant, and was the first point of contact for
anyone coming into the office with an enquiry. He remarked that students
who came in were often worried about something, and that small talk was
important to help put them at ease. Both the branch manager and his deputy,
the office manager, of the paper supplier commented in their interviews on
the importance of small talk with customers, saying that it was important for
relationship-building and to get to know customers. They both seemed to
see relational talk as an essential part of their workplace practice, and the
branch manager elaborated on this in some detail in relation to a phone call
he had just had with a customer on the phone:
Example 5.6
I mean that was [name], I mean Ive known the guy twenty years, I know hes
just come back off holiday, I know hes been to Scotland, you know; and Ill
rib him, I mean I probably would have done . . . more with him today than
I did today, but normally I just Hey what you doing up in Scotland, its cold
up there! Uhm . . . But I mean I know about him, I know his his kids and,
I mean thats the sort of relationship we and quite often I can phone him up
and go We are dead quiet down here, uhm . . . Do your old mate a favour,
any orders that youd normally give to, you know, Fred Bloggs and Joe Soap,
sling them my way this week cause were . . . And you get that close to your
customers . . .
The interviews showed that relational talk is seen as integral to the speakers
workplace practice to varying degrees: Some saw it as an important component
of their work practice, for example the managers of the paper supplier, as
shown above. Others considered it more as ancillary to the main business of
work, saying, for example, that it made work more enjoyable or humanized it.
Again, there did seem to be a link between the frequency of relational talk and
how important it was considered to be. In the British university office, in which
there was a great deal of relational talk, one of the secretaries remarked in her
interview that not only was small talk important to get to know the people she
worked with, but that something might come up during small talk which was
relevant for a workplace task, such as finding the solution to a problem. In the
back office of the food co-operative, where people worked in a cramped open
plan office, there was a great deal of office gossip and small talk between
co-workers from desk to desk, often across partitions. The two people who
were interviewed (the finance manager and the bookkeeper) both accorded
considerable importance to relational talk. The bookkeeper said that it was
one reason people stayed a long time: you can make friends and have a good
time; and the finance manager felt that it helped people function in a tightly
cramped space.
The combined evidence from the recorded data, the interviews and partici-
pant observation point to a clear link between the frequency and nature of
relational talk and workplace culture. Individual relationships of course also
play a role, and relational talk seems to occur particularly frequently between
colleagues who have developed a close working relationship, such as the
departmental secretaries. A particularly striking example of this occured in the
American editorial office, between an editor, Paula, and her assistant, Rob.
These two kept up a constant banter, typically involving good-natured teasing
and mock confrontation, even when fully engaged in a workplace task, as
illustrated in example 5.7, where they argue about who should deal with the
payment of a research fee for a book:4
Example 5.7
(1) Rob Why dont you do it.

(2) Paula Honey . . .
(3) Rob Its your book. [1] Hehehe
(4) Paula Its . . . your project.
(5) Rob [Name of book] is my project? One eight hundred. . . alive and
well Im living in . . . dream land.
(6) Paula Hehhehe
(7) Paula Oh, just do it.=
(8) Rob =Ill give you the name and number. You deal with it.
[. . .]
(9) Paula Pa:y it and be done with it.
(10) Rob I have to call her I guess anyway and tell her
but I mean you call her and tell her were paying it.
(11) Paula No you.=
(12) Rob =Ill call and tell her were paying it.
(13) Paula Um . . .
(14) Rob [laughing] Professionalism at work. No you you you.
Their joint practice is distinct from that of their colleagues, but it seems to
flourish as a result of a general fostering of relational talk and humour in this
community of practice. That this was the case is corroborated by a comment
made by another editor during her interview: she remarked that the editor-
in-chief took time to make small talk with the people who worked for her.
5.4 Humour
As the discussion so far has shown, much relational talk in the workplace
involves the use of humour. Humour clearly plays a role in workplace interaction
and has been examined in a number of studies both within organizational
studies (Collinson 1988, Ackroyd and Thompson 1999, Taylor and Bain 2003)
and sociolinguistics/pragmatics (Holmes 2000b and 2006, Holmes and Marra
2002, Pullin Stark 2007 and 2009). This section reviews some key finding from
studies of workplace humour, focusing in particular on the functions it per-
forms in workplace contexts and what it can reveal about workplace culture.
Interactive humour in social and workplace settings can include a wide range
of linguistic and discursive activities, including personal anecdotes, jointly
produced narratives, word-play and punning, teasing, joking about an absent
other and self-denigration (Norrick 1993 and 2003, Boxer and Corts-Conde
1997, Ackroyd and Thompson 1999, Norrick and Chiaro 2009). What counts as
humorous is obviously dependent on contextual factors, such as setting, partici-
pants and culture (Norrick 1993), but a key characteristic is that humorous
contributions are intended to be amusing or perceived as amusing by at least
one of the participants (Holmes 2000b).5 Holmes (ibid.) points out that the
role of the analyst in interpreting an utterance as humorous is also important,
and that laughter may be an important clue to humour, although it is not
essential, and may have other functions as well.
Looking at humour as collaboratively constructed, Holmes and Marra 2002 (and
Holmes 2006) distinguish between two different types and styles of humour:
1. Type of humour: supportive versus contestive

2. Style of humour: collaboratively constructed humour versus competitive (or
minimally collaborative) humour
The distinction between supportive and contestive humour is based on the

pragmatic orientation of its content: supportive humour agrees with or elabo-
rates on previous contributions, whereas contestive humour disagrees with or
challenges earlier propositions (Holmes and Marra 2002, pp. 16871688). The
style of the humour refers to the way humour is discursively constructed, thus
collaboratively constructed humour displays tightly integrated contributions
(e.g. using echoing and utterance completion); competitive humour is charac-
terized by loosely linked one-off quips (ibid, pp. 16881690).
Humour has also been found to perform a range of functions, which over-
lap to a great extent with those of relational talk in general: solidarity
and relationship-building (Boxer and Corts-Conde 1997, Hay 2000,
Holmes 2000b), identity functions (Boxer and Corts-Conde 1997, Hay
2000) and power (Hay 2000, Holmes 2000b). The role of humour in gender
construction in both social and workplace settings has also been the topic
of research (Hay 2000, Kotthoff 2000, Holmes et al. 2001, Holmes 2006,
Schnurr and Holmes 2009), and some differences in the way humour
is used by men and women have been identified. Looking beyond the
immediate discourse at the broader social context, Eggins and Slade (1997,
p. 159) assert that humour and teasing are used too convey the norms and
values of the group.
Turning specifically to humour in the workplace, there seems to be a general
consensus that humour may be broadly supportive or broadly contestive (e.g.
Holmes 2000b, Holmes and Marra 2002, Pullin Stark 2009). Within organiza-
tional studies, the consensual role of humour has been emphasized, often being
viewed as a safety valve as a way for employees to let off steam and as a tool
for reinforcing corporate culture (Rodrigues and Collinson 1995, p. 739). Simi-
larly, humour in health-care contexts has been also found to have a positive
effect in interactions between health-care professionals and their patients as
well as among medical staff (Ragan 2000, stedt-Kurki and Isola 2001). Humour
can facilitate difficult or unpleasant medical procedures or examinations, for
example by helping patients to relax, thus contributing to the achievement of
medical goals (Ragan 2000). Rodrigues and Collinson (1995) challenge this
view of organizational humour as primarily promoting harmony, arguing that
workplace humour can also be oppositional and function as a tool for employee
resistance. In a similar vein, Taylor and Bain (2003) examine subversive humour
in call centres, showing how humour was used instrumentally in one call centre
as a deliberate strategy to undermine management authority and campaign for
unionization. Holmes (2000b) and Holmes and Stubbe (2003) found that
humour is used both to do collegiality and to do power, and as a subversive
strategy to mask risky negative messages (Holmes and Stubbe 2003, p. 117)
which challenge authority.
Here the focus is on the role of humour within a workplace community
of practice. I first review Holmes and Marras (2002) study on humour and
workplace culture in different types of organizations in the Wellington
Language in the Workplace Corpus; and then examine the types and functions
of humour found in the ABOT Corpus.
5.5 Humour and workplace culture
Holmes and Marra (2002) use a communities of practice framework to explore

differences in workplace culture in four organizations from the Language in
the Workplace Database. The data consist of at least two larger meetings from
four contrasting workplaces:
z a factory (FAC)
z a private commercial organization (PRI)
z an organization from the voluntary semi-public sector (SPU)
z a government department (GOV)
Holmes and Marra (ibid.) compared the amount of humour occurring in

each of the meetings, as well as the type and style of humour (see section 5.4
above). Instances of humour were most frequent in the factory and least
frequent in the semi-public organization as shown below in Figure 5.1:
MOST Least
FAC, PRI, GOV, SPU
Figure 5.1 Amount of humour by workplace (Source: adapted from Holmes and
Marra 2002, p. 1694)
The results for humour type (supportive versus contestive) showed that
supportive humour was more frequent in all the settings except the PRI
organization, where more contestive than supportive humour was used. The
most supportive humour occurred in the SPU organization, where supportive
humour was three times as frequent as contestive humour.
Two aspects of humorous contributions were examined when comparing
style of humour: (1) whether it consisted of single quips or comments or
extended sequences and (2) whether it was more collaborative or competitive.
In the white-collar settings (PRI, GOV and SPU), extended sequences were
more frequent than in the factory. This was largely due to the structure of the
FAC meetings, where the manager was the main speaker, and any contributions
from the floor were limited. Collaborative humour was more frequent than
competitive humour in all the settings, but competitive humour occurred more
frequently in PRI and FAC organizations than in the other two. A difference
can be observed, therefore, between the private and public or semi-public orga-
nizations, where there is considerably less competitive humour.
Holmes and Marra (2002) conclude that the combined effect of the patterns
identified for the use of humour provide insights into the workplace culture of
each community of practice. Moreover the findings from the comparative
analysis of humour correlate with other aspects of workplace practice
identified, for example, through ethnographic observation. The way in which
each team does humour is indicative of how the participants construct their
collegial relations within each of the workplaces. The factory team, for example,
was a very cohesive group, which was mirrored in its use mostly supportive
humour. In contrast, in the commercial team (PRI), members worked more
independently from one another, which seemed to correlate with their more
contestive use of humour. Holmes and Marra speculate that the contestive
nature and competitive style of humour in PRI may well be a reflection of the
more individualistic values of this organization, in contrast to the public (GOV)
and semi-public (SPU) organizations, where humour was predominantly
supportive and collaborative. The SPU meetings contained the fewest instances
of humour of the four data sets, which was probably due to the fact that this
team, which consisted of regional managers, did not meet very frequently, and
therefore the participants did not know each other as well as in the other teams.
However, these meetings contained three times as many supportively and col-
laboratively constructed sequences as competitive and contestive ones, which
reflected the overall harmonious nature of the interactions, and clearly contrib-
uted to cementing relationships.
5.6 Humour in the ABOT Corpus

Holmes and Marras (2002) study illustrates the kind of insight that can be
gained into workplace communities of practice by comparing humour across
different organizational settings. In this section, we continue exploring the use
of humour across different workplaces by examining the different types and
functions of humour found in the ABOT corpus. The focus is on the functions
that humour performs as part of workplace practices, and findings from a
comparative analysis of humour according to variety (British and American),
gender and speaker relationship (manager or subordinate) is also reviewed.
The analysis comprises all instances of humour identified in transactional as
well as relational encounters, but particular attention is paid to the role of
humour in transactional talk.
As the discussion above of relational talk in the ABOT corpus has shown,
much relational talk involves the use of humour, but humour also occurs
during transactional talk. I examined 60 instances of humour in the corpus:
30 from British and 30 from American data, which includes the majority of all
instances I was able to identify in the fully transcribed corpus. These instances
of humour were from 38 conversations involving 27 different speakers, and
included the following types of humour:
1. situational humour
2. teasing
3. self-deprecation
4. word play and punning
5. amusing narratives or funny anecdotes
6. joke-telling
Situational humour is a play frame created by the participants, with a backdrop

of in-group knowledge (Boxer and Corts-Conde 1997, p. 277). It is thus
different from telling an amusing narrative or a joke, which are quite conven-
tionalized forms of verbal performance. Teasing and self-deprecating (or self-
denigrating) humour are both forms of situational humour. However, whereas
teasing and self-deprecating (or self-denigrating) humour require the butt of
the joke to be present, other types of situational humour do not. Teasing
is humour directed at other participants, whereas self-deprecating humour
directed at the speaker. Besides teasing and self-denigrating humour, Boxer
and Corts-Conde (1997) identify a third type of situational humour: joking
about absent others. This involves not only joking about people who are not
present, but any joking that does not make any of the participants the subject
of the play frame. This form of humour is often used to bond with other partici-
pants as part of an in-group, over against a joked-about out-group; and Boxer
and Corts-Conde therefore include word play and punning in this category.
I have retained the label situational humour for this type of joking, and
identify word play and punning as a separate category. Situational humour is
thus the most general category, involving quips or comments arising out of the
situation; whereas teasing, self-deprecation and word play and punning are all
more specific sub-types of situational humour.
These types of humour all performed a variety of functions, which can be
grouped into the following five categories:
1. identity: building a positive identity

2. defending: defending own positive face
3. solidarity: showing convergence
4. mitigating : negative politeness
5. criticizing: showing divergence
According to Boxer and Corts-Conde (1997, p. 282) identity display and

relational identity display are the two most important functions of humour.
Identity display involves the performance or display of individual identities,
whereas relational identity display involves the negotiation of identity in relation
to others. In my categorization, the identity function (category 1) is restricted to
humour which presents a positive self-image, and this is frequently performed
through funny one-liners, jokes or humorous anecdotes. While defending
also involves identity negotiation (see ibid., pp. 284286), it is considered
as a separate function here, as it was extremely frequent (the second-most
frequent after solidarity). This function is most typically performed through
self-deprecation. Categories 3 to 5 all involve relational identity display, that is
they involve some kind of relational work vis vis other participants. Solidarity
is often shown through agreement, appreciative laughter, but also through
teasing, as this is a way of displaying the closeness of a relationship. Humour
can also have a negative politeness function as a device for mitigating an
imposition, such as a request or a question. Finally, criticizing is the functional

label used for humour which shows divergence by exercising power, contesting
power or simply disagreeing. This category includes all instances which, based
on the situation, could be covert criticism: sometimes it is obvious that criticism
is intended, but other instances could simply involve good-natured teasing.
Teasing can involve bonding or biting, as Boxer and Corts-Cond (ibid.)
point out. There is thus a fine line between humour that is aggressive and
humour that mitigates or projects solidarity, and it is not always possible to dis-
ambiguate these two functions. Moreover, humour may be multi-functional, and
a humorous comment can perform more than one of the above functions simul-
taneously. Mitigation can also be considered to be a more general function of
humour, for example criticisms are frequently couched in humour in order to
mitigate their force. Here, mitigating refers to a more restricted function, and
only includes instances of humour used for negative politeness, for instance in
mitigating the imposition of a sales visit to a customer (see example 5.17).
The different types and functions of humour in the corpus are illustrated
with some selected examples below.
5.6.1 Situational humour

In example 5.8, the secretaries of two different departments in a UK university
discuss how to resolve a mix-up with the phone bills of their respective
departments. In the context of this discussion, one of them quips:
Example 5.8
Jane: Now which ones the less, cause well have the lesser one [chuckles]
This is an example of a funny one-liner (the humour is not taken up, or

even acknowledged, by Janes counterpart), and it seems to perform an identity
function of self-presentation, whereby Jane projects a positive identity of herself
as a person with a sense of humour.
5.6.2 Teasing and self-deprecation

In some sense all humour is situational, but more specific categories (as listed
above) are also found. A common adjacency pair found in the corpus is teasing
self-deprecation (or vice versa), for example in another interaction between
the two secretaries, Liz and Susan, already encountered in example 5.5 above:
Example 5.9
(1) Liz Is that your stomach again.

(2) Susan Ha! . . . (Hehe) .hh Im gonna go chirp . . . chirp cheep cheep
cheep in a minute.
Here Liz teases Susan about her grumbling stomach, which considering the
close nature of their relationship, is most likely to be a sign of solidarity, and
Susan responds with self-deprecating humour, as a way of defending her posi-
tive face.
Teasing in this example is a good-natured bonding device, but teasing
can also have the opposite function (divergence) and show a critical stance.
In example 5.10, Paul, the office manager of the British paper supplier repri-
mands a sales rep for getting the amount of an order wrong, but uses humour
in doing so:
Example 5.10
Paul: Yeah. Your ten and a half thousand sheet order for um . . . /Phoenix./
It was two and a half thousand sheet.
[. . .]
Sam: No? He said ten ten an half. Thats what he said to me.
Paul: An I Ill find you some cotton buds soon, all right,
Pauls joking comment, that he will get some cotton buds for his sales rep
so he can clean his ears, is clearly meant as a criticism of the rep, indicating
that he did not hear the order correctly (ten and a half instead of two and a
half thousand) and made a mistake. As Holmes (2000b) notes, humour is a
way of doing power less explicitly, and therefore of performing off-record
evaluations or criticisms.
5.6.3 Word play

There were fewer examples of word play than of the other forms of humour
(only joke-telling occurred less frequently). Word play involved not just puns
(there were in fact no examples of these), but any kind of humour based on
lexical, stylistic or phonological choice. In example 5.11 from the American
advertising firm, the humour revolves around the pronunciation of the word
book:
Example 5.11
Chris: Okay I dont have my/bu:k/ with me.

Amy: Go get your /bu:k/.[2] And Ill find mine
Chris and Amy are in trying to arrange a time for a meeting, and book here
refers to their diaries. In order to understand why speakers are pronouncing
book in this way, and why this is funny, some knowledge of local accents is
necessary. The company is located in the state of Minnesota, and one of the
distinctive features of this accent is the way the sound // is pronounced. So

humour here involves making fun of the local accent. Chris seems to initiate
the phonological word play here as a defensive strategy for not having his diary
with him in a situation (they are in a meeting) where he would normally be
expected to have brought it along. By echoing his pronunciation, Amy affiliates
with him and thus shows solidarity. An example of word play involving lexical
choice was seen in example 5.3 above (which is from the same American
company), where the speakers joke and laugh about describing an order as
clogged.
5.6.4 Comparative findings

The frequencies of both type and function of humour were very similar in the
American and British data. Situational humour and teasing were the most
frequent types in both varieties, and solidarity was by far the most frequent
function, which is consistent with Holmes and Marras (2002) finding that
supportive humour was more frequent overall across the different workplaces
examined than contestive humour. There were no instances of humour with a
mitigating function in the American sub-corpus, but there were also not many
in the British data; therefore, this is not a significant difference (no statistical
comparisons were made due to the small number of instances). This is not
to say that there are no differences in the humour of the two varieties. What
people find funny and the way humour is done may differ, but humour
performs similar functions in both varieties, in particular in relation to the
workplace tasks carried out.
The differences are greater when comparing type and function of humour
according to gender, although, again the numbers are relatively small, making
generalization difficult. But the results do correlate to a large extent with the
findings of other studies of humour and gender. There were 34 instances of
women and 26 of men initiating humour in single-sex as well as mixed gender
groups.6 Figure 5.2 shows the types of humour used by women and men respec-
tively as a percentage of the total uses of humour by each gender. Women used
situational humour most frequently, whereas men used teasing the most. Almost
40 per cent of all instances of humour initiated by men involved teasing, whereas
women used teasing in just over 25 per cent of instances, which was still the
second most frequent type of humour initiated by women. Self-deprecation
and narrative were used much more frequently by women than men. Similarly,
Boxer and Corts-Conde (1997) found that men used more teasing than
women, whereas women used more self-denigration. Women used humour to
enact solidarity functions much more frequently than any other function,
whereas men used humour for solidarity and criticizing equally frequently.
The relationship between the participants (whether the humour was between
a manager and a subordinate or between peers) and the direction of humour,
Type of humour by gender
women men
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
0
Situational Teasing Self- Narrative Word play Joke-telling
deprecation
Figure 5.2 Types of humour by gender in the ABOT Corpus
that is who initiated it, was also examined quantitatively. Managers and subordi-
nates initiated humour about equally, subordinates even slightly more, which
may be due to the fact that self-deprecating humour (the second most frequent
type) was used more by subordinates (see example 5.13). It is also important to
remember that in many instances of humour, particularly if they occur during
small talk, the institutional relationship may not be relevant, regardless of
whether or not it is asymmetrical.
Interestingly, subordinates used humour to perform a criticizing function
as frequently as managers. This highlights the subversive role humour can
play (see Holmes 2000b, Holmes and Stubbe 2003, Taylor and Bain 2003), as
shown in the following extract which occurs later in the meeting between Chris
and his sales manager Joe (shown in Example 5.3):
Example 5.12
(1) Chris No actually the problem is, that we tried to send out to many of
them at once. (Thats all)
(2) Joe Oh! So its your fault!
(3) Chris /Oh no/ No no no no!
(4) Joe Heheheheheheh
(5) Chris It wasnt my idea,
(6) Joe Wait till I wait till I tell em! Heheheheheh
(7) Chris Heheheheheheh
Here Joe gets his own back for being criticized for the low level of sales in
his department, by jokingly accusing Chris of being responsible for the prob-
lem and threatening to tell his sales team (wait till I tell em!).
5.6.5 Humour in transactional talk

Although humour occurs most frequently in relational talk, it is also prevalent
in task-oriented talk where it often serves a particular purpose in relation to the
task at hand. As the above examples show, humour is a very useful device for
performing certain actions which would otherwise be face-threatening, such as
criticizing (example 5.12) and defending oneself against criticism (example 5.14).
Self-deprecation is also often used as a defensive strategy in situations where
speakers may feel they are not living up to the expectations of their job, as
shown in example 5.13, which involves Ann training a new employee, Meg (see
also example 5.11 above):
Example 5.13
Meg: Yeah. an I immediately forgot everything you told me about

Ann: Thats okay.
Humour also occurs in problematic or difficult situations to defuse tension

or awkwardness. An interesting example of this occurs in the American adver-
tising company during a meeting where two senior managers, Amy and Chris,
discuss how to solve some problems with the accounts, for which Amy is respon-
sible. An interruption by Amys assistant, Becky, occasions a relational episode
in which Amy comments on a seemingly unrelated non-workplace issue: the
fact that Becky has been experiencing problems trying to buy a house:
Example 5.14
(1) Amy Will you close on your freakin house? I think thats
(2) Chris Heheh
(3) Amy hangin over all of our heads.
(4) Becky Maybe thats it. Heheheheh
(5) Amy Heheheheh
Here Amy humorously implies that Beckys problems with the purchase of
her new house is somehow responsible for the current problems they are expe-
riencing at work; thereby relativizing these problems and temporarily detracting
attention from her own predicament (see also Koester 2006, pp. 142144).
Such attempts to defuse difficult situations through the use of humour
are, however, not always successful, as example 5.15 from the British printing
company shows. In this example, Sid, the owner, and his office manager, Val,
have been talking about how to resolve a dispute with a customer, with the
discussion having become increasingly heated, as Sid rejects each of Vals
suggestions of how to deal with the problem. At this point in the discussion,
Val attempts to lighten the tone with a humorous comment, which however
falls flat, as Sid becomes even angrier, and the conflict escalates as a result:
Example 5.15
(1) Val Mmm . . . Shes only she she-youre probably both the same star sign
Sid, =
(2) Sid = How can how can I jump into What?
(3) Val I said youre both probably the same star sign.
(4) Sid Oh God help us.
(5) Val You youre not Taurus, are you?
(6) Sid Why w well why do you put me No.
(7) Val: (Oh)
(8) Sid Why do you put me Why is it every time we have a conflict
(9) Val No but
(10) Sid here, that Im partly responsible for it.
(11) Val No because youre both standing your ground!
(12) Sid Im an innocent party in this, totally Ive done what I was asked to do.
(13) Val No
(14) Val Im just saying that youre both youre both standing your ground.
So where do you go. other to other than to arbitration!
Here Val teases Sid that his dispute with the customer is due to their being the
same star sign. In addition to being an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, this
constitutes an indirect criticism of her boss for being so inflexible. Sid, however,
does not join in the humorous frame, but challenges her, forcing Val into
voicing her criticism directly:
(11) Val No because youre both standing your ground!
Holmes and Marras (2002) study indicates that humour is used most fre-
quently between colleagues who work together closely (see section 5.5 above),
but humour can also contribute to building a relationship which is not yet well-
established, for example with new customers or between people who do not
work together on a regular basis. Boxer and Corts-Cond (1997) note that
humour for social bonding often takes place between interlocutors of medial
social distance, in contrast to high-risk teasing, which typically occurs between
intimates. A meeting between the office manager of a British paper seller and
one of his suppliers, who do not have regular contact, provides a good example
of how the nature of the humour develops in the course of the interaction, thus
showing relationship-building in action. First, solidarity is established through
banter in the initial small talk, as Angus, the supplier visiting the company,
jokes about the difficulty he had finding the branch, as the building is very
anonymous (it is in an old farm building in a rural area):
Example 5.16
(1) Angus: Youre very anonymous arent you.

(2) Paul: Uh I like to be. yeah.
(3) Angus: Heheheh
(4) Paul: You been here before?
(5) Angus: Yea:h. Luckily, Paul: Yeah You wouldnt know though would you.
Humour occurs again when Angus explains the purpose of his visit:
Example 5.17
(60) Angus: An I was saying well how can I: you know, get more business
out of um:
[name of company], cause its been growing, its been doing
very well Paul: Mm. So he said well first thing is to get off your
back side an go round an see the see the branches, so Im
doing a grand tour of the: [name of company] branches
(61) Paul: The worl thatll keep you busy for a week or two
Here Angus uses self-deprecating humour as a way of mitigating the imposi-

tion of his visit:
z get off your back side (referring to himself)

z Im doing a grand tour
and Paul reciprocates with good-natured teasing, thus showing solidarity:
z thatll keep you busy for a week or two
Thus the function of humour in the early part of the meeting is clearly one
of establishing solidarity. However, later in the conversation, the humour has a
more biting edge when Paul mentions a competitor, whom Angus then refers
to as an enemy:
Example 5.18
(102) Angus: Ah. Yes. Well we see them as an enemy as well

(103) Paul: Yes yes I thought you
might yeah
(104) Angus: Yes heheheh Thank you. Anything else you wanted to
mention.
(105) Paul: No no no no. I mean we you we you know were not
proud [. . .]
This teasing (describing a competitor as an enemy) is somewhat more risky

than that used at the beginning of the meeting, as it could imply criticism of
Paul doing business with a competitor. It is more typical of the type of ribbing
that takes place between close colleagues. The fact that Angus attempts this
kind of teasing, and that Paul teases him back, seems to indicate that both
speakers are trying to build a closer relationship. The way in which the type and
function of humour change in the course of one meeting provides a tangible
example of relationship-building as it occurs.
5.7 Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated that relational talk in general, and humour in
particular, are integral, rather than peripheral, to workplace discourse. Both
forms of talk are used by speakers to do important work in relationship-
building, identity negotiation, carrying out politeness functions and exerting
or resisting power. Humour was shown to be particularly useful strategy in
carrying out potentially face-threatening or risky discursive actions. While the
studies reviewed here show that the most important function of humour
is bonding and building or consolidating relationships, it can also perform
important work in difficult or sensitive areas of workplace interactions,
including defusing tension, performing indirect evaluation or criticism and
subverting authority.
It was suggested that, according to Wengers work, relational aspects of
interaction are central to a workplace community of practice. This is borne out
through a comparative analysis of relational talk across the workplaces from
which the ABOT Corpus was drawn, and of humour in four organizations
from the Language in the Workplace database (Holmes and Marra 2002). The
exploration of types and functions of humour found in the ABOT Corpus
further enriches the picture of the role of humour in the workplace. The
analysis shows that relational talk and humour are part of the practice of all
the workplace communities examined, but differences in the frequency and
nature of these forms of talk, as well as participants views of these, also revealed
differences in workplace culture. Such a comparative analysis across different
workplace environments lends further support to seeing small talk and humour
as key components of workplace practice, as already attested by many studies
of individual workplaces. By examining relational talk and humour across
a range of workplace settings, it is possible to gain a comprehensive and
differentiated picture of the role played by relational forms of talk in work-
place discourse.
This chapter has explored the link between relational talk, including humour,
and workplace culture. But relational talk is also an important site for invoking and
reinforcing other forms of culture, including regional and national culture (as
found, for instance in the word play involving regional accent in example 5.11).
What happens, however, when the participants do not share the same culture
or mother tongue? This is one of the topics explored in Chapter 6, which looks
at workplace and business encounters across cultures, where people from dif-
ferent cultural backgrounds and different countries interact using English as a
second language or lingua franca.
Chapter 6
Communicating across Cultures:

English as an International Language of Work
6.1 Introduction
This chapter examines a variety of ways in which English has been used to
communicate across cultures in professional and workplace settings. The
research carried out in this area can broadly be divided into two main areas:
(1) communication in English to do business internationally, where only some
or none of the participants have English as their mother tongue, and (2) com-
munication in an institutional or workplace setting within an English-speaking
country, where at least one of the participants is originally from another coun-
try, or member of an ethnic minority.
Numerous studies have examined cross-cultural or intercultural business
interactions (particularly meetings and negotiations), and have revealed
cultural differences in certain interactive practices (Yamada 1990, Garcez 1993,
Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1995 and 1997b, Marriott 1995, Bilbow 1997,
Spencer-Oatey 2000a). More recently, the growth of English as the most widely
used international language has prompted an interest in the way in which
language is used in lingua franca communication. Research in this area has
taken quite a different approach from most studies in intercultural communi-
cation, in that the focus tends to be not on differences, but on how successful
communication is achieved. Studies of interactions in which none of the
speakers use English as their mother tongue have consistently found such inter-
actions to be smooth and orderly, with few misunderstandings or repair (Firth
1996, Seidlhofer 2004, Rogerson-Revell 2008).
In contrast to this picture of largely harmonious and successful interactions
in lingua franca settings, studies of inter-ethnic communication in English-
speaking countries have found that ethnic minorities and immigrants have
frequently been disadvantaged in institutional encounters with gate-keepers,
such as job interviewers, due to misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of
cultural specific discursive practices and expectations (Roberts et al. 1992,
Roberts and Sarangi 1999, Roberts and Campbell 2006).
The aim of this chapter is to examine these two very different types of
communication across cultures. Particular attention is devoted to research on
Communicating across Cultures 123
English as a lingua franca (or ELF), as this is a relatively new area of enquiry,
which is currently producing some very interesting results. The chapter con-
cludes with a discussion of the differences in these two areas of research, and to
try to explain why the findings here contrast so starkly.
6.2 English as a lingua franca

Firth (1996, p. 240) defines English as a lingua franca as:
a contact language between persons who share neither a common native

tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the
chosen foreign language of communication.
To describe business interactions in lingua franca situations, the term Business

English as a Lingua Franca (or BELF) was coined by Louhiala-Salminen et al.
(2005). Firths and others (House 1999, Seidlhofer 2004) definition of ELF
does not cover interactions in which speakers of English as a mother tongue as
well as foreign language users are involved. As a substantial number of studies
in international business communication deal with such events, Rogerson-
Revell (2007, 2008) prefers the term English for International Business (EIB),
drawing on the broader terms English as an International Language and
International English. While this chapter also deals with international com-
municative events in which mother tongue or native speakers1 of English are
also involved, it is worth devoting some time to a discussion of ELF, as this term
brings with it a major reorientation of the perspective taken on the use of
English by non-native speakers.
A starting point for this reorientation can be seen in Firth and Wagners
seminal article (1997), calling for a reconceptualization of Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) research (p. 285), and criticizing the prevalent view in SLA
of the learner as a deficient communicator, as measured against an idealized
native speaker. They argue that research on communication strategies (e.g.
Faerch and Kaspar 1983) take an overly mentalistic perspective on learner
language, in which deviations from native speaker norms are explained in terms
of lack of competence. A more sociolinguistic, emic perspective, taking into
account the way in which learners jointly construct meaningful interaction with
their interlocutors, might arrive at quite different interpretations. Firth and
Wagner show how an interlanguage error, from a Communication Strategies
perspective, can in fact be seen as an example of successful communication
where meaning is conjointly negotiated and implicitly agreed upon in the talk
(p. 290). Indeed, non-native speakers of English regularly communicate
successfully in situations in which they are not conceptualized as learners,
namely in workplace and business situations. Using conversation analysis (CA)
methods, Firth (1996) shows that lingua franca business interactions seems to
operate on the assumption that the jointly constructed talk is normal, for
example in that grammatical infelicities and opaque formulations are not
oriented to.
This reorientation towards long-established conceptions of nativeness and
non-nativeness can be seen most clearly in the discussion in the past 15 years
calling into question the ownership of English by mother tongue speakers
(Widdowson 1994), and a concomitant positive reappraisal of non-native teach-
ers over against native speaker teachers, who were previously unquestioningly
upheld as models (Rampton 1990, Medgyes 1994, Braine 1999). Until recently,
this reorientation was not accompanied by any systematic investigation of the
linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of lingua franca interactions (Seidlhofer
2001), but in the past years, the establishment of two electronically stored ELF
corpora, the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE), based
at the University of Vienna, and The Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in
Academic Settings (ELFA), based at the University of Helsinki, have begun to yield
corpus-based studies into the nature of naturally occurring ELF encounters.
Seidlhofer (2004) summarizes empirical research carried out on ELF in three
main areas: phonology, pragmatics and lexico-grammar. For ELF phonology,
Jenkins (2000) has identified a lingua franca core of features of pronuncia-
tion and prosody that are (and are not) essential for mutual comprehension
among ELF speakers. Pragmatic studies of ELF interactions have also identified
a number of recurring features, although the findings here are less conclusive,
and sometimes contradictory (Seidlhofer 2004). The consensus-oriented and
co-operative nature (or at least appearance) of naturally occurring lingua
franca interactions identified by Firth (1996) is highlighted in a number of
studies (House 1999, Rogerson-Revell 2008). What Firth (1996) refers to as the
let it pass principle obtains, that is mutual understanding is assumed, unless
otherwise demonstrated, and there is little evidence of repair. Another typical
pragmatic feature of ELF interactions seems to be the frequent use of
accommodation strategies, such as repetition, paraphrase and code-switching
(Cogo and Dewey 2006, Cogo 2009, Kaur 2009). Preliminary findings from
lexico-grammatical studies (Seidlhofer 2004, Cogo and Dewey 2006) have
identified the systematic use of certain features which would be considered
errors from an English native speaker point of view, such as:
z dropping the third person s

z invariant question tags
z shift in the use of articles
z shift in prepositional patterns
Findings from such studies into linguistic and pragmatic patterns and
regularities found in ELF interactions raise the question of whether ELF, with
its many users widely dispersed geographically, and without a stable speech
community, is amenable to the same kind of systematic description as other
varieties of English. Entering into this discussion in any detail is beyond the
scope of this chapter, except to note that there is some disagreement among
researchers in ELF in this regard. Seidlhofers (2001) call for a systematic
empirical investigation of the characteristics of ELF seems to imply that such a
description is possible. Firth (2009, p. 162), on the other hand, contends that
codification of ELF is not possible, as at the heart of ELF encounters . . . is what
appears to be an inherent diversity of language proficiency, linguistic form,
and of sociocultural and pragmatic knowledge, and that ELF is therefore
ineluctably emergent and cannot be characterized outside specific interactions.
Similarly, Berns (2008, p. 331) sees English as an International Language (or
EIL a term she prefers to ELF) not as a code, but as a tool of communication
in international settings, arguing that this is more compatible with a notion
of world Englishes, which emphasizes the multiplicity and variability of the
different varieties of English2. Whether or not further empirical research will
result in a description of ELF as a variety in its own right, what is of interest to
us here is that there is now a growing body of corpus-based and discourse-
analytical research on naturally occurring ELF interactions which can contrib-
ute to our understanding of interactions in lingua franca and intercultural
settings, particularly in the business and workplace domain.
6.3 English as an international language in business

As English is frequently used as an international language or lingua franca in
international business communication, it is not surprising that a number of
recent studies have focused on this topic (Pitzl 2005, Planken 2005, Louhiala-
Salminen et al. 2005, Rogerson-Revell 2007 and 2008). But as this is still a
relatively new area of enquiry, conclusions from these studies must be seen as
preliminary. However, studies of cross-cultural and intercultural communication
in business have quite a long history (Graham 1983, Garcez 1993, Bargiela-
Chiappini and Harris 1995 and 1997a, Marriott 1995 and 1997, Bilbow 1997
and 2002, Yamada 1997, Rogerson-Revell 1999, Spencer-Oatey 2000a); and,
even if they do not focus specifically on English as a lingua franca, they are
relevant to the discussion here.
6.3.1 Intercultural communication

Of particular relevance here are intercultural studies examining contact situa-
tions between participants with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds,
and in which English is used as the common language; in contrast to cross-
cultural studies, which compare interactions within two cultures or speech
communities. The main thrust of the majority of such studies has been to identify
differences and potential communication problems between members of
different cultures coming into contact. Some have examined interactions

between people from different national cultures (Garcez 1993, Marriott 1995,
Miller 2000, Spencer-Oatey and Xing 2000); for example Marriott (1995) found
that in Australian-Japanese negotiations, the Japanese and the Australian par-
ticipant constructed quite different understandings of the same event based on
their different cultural backgrounds and experiences. Spencer-Oatey and Xing
(2000) describe a visit of a Chinese delegation to the United Kingdom which
went badly, due to mutual lack of awareness of cultural conventions,
particularly as regards issues of face.
Other studies have examined differences between cultural groups, for
example Bilbow (1997 and 2002) found differences in the performance of
certain speech acts between Westerners and Chinese in an international
corporation in Hong Kong. He explains some of these differences in terms of
underlying Western cultural and Confucianist values (Bilbow 1997). Rogerson-
Revell (1999) goes beyond differences between specific cultural groups, and
identifies different interactive strategies in intercultural business meetings,
which result from a combination of social, cultural and individual differences,
and which can influence the dynamic of the meetings in various ways. If
the same interactive strategies were shared by a number of participants in a
meeting, this resulted in a certain type of interactive style dominating to the
advantage of the in-group users and the detriment of other non-users
(ibid., pp. 63). Rogerson-Revells study highlights an important aspect of inter-
cultural encounters, which is also key for the analysis of ELF interactions,
namely that cultural identities and practices are not just brought to an encoun-
ter, but are also dynamically negotiated in the course of the interaction.
While the studies cited above do, on the whole, take a differentiated approach
to the notion of culture, they have nevertheless come under criticism for over-
emphasizing national culture and cultural differences, and therefore focussing
attention on miscommunication, rather than on what contributes to successful
intercultural communication (Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin Stark 2007).
Poncini (2002) sets out her research agenda as follows:
. . . rather than focusing on miscommunication, the focus will be on what

seems to work at the meetings. This could shed light on the features of inter-
actants language use that may contribute to overcoming or diminishing the
difficulties often associated with intercultural communication. This in turn
could allow a greater understanding of the characteristics of successful
business communication in multicultural settings . . . (p. 350)
Such a reorientation which focuses on what seems to work is very much at

the heart of recent studies of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF). As
Seidlhofer (2001) points out, ELF users primarily have a pragmatic orientation
towards English: They are not primarily concerned with emulating the way
native speakers use their mother tongue . . . Instead, the central concerns for
this domain are efficiency, relevance and economy (p. 141). Such a view is
echoed by researchers in BELF, who remark that the choice of English for
international communication is very much a pragmatic one (Louhiala-Salminen
et al. 2005, Charles 2008) and that English is seen as one tool in a business
toolkit (Charles 2008).
6.3.2 Characteristics of business English as a lingua franca (BELF)

Beyond a general pragmatic orientation towards the use of English in lingua
franca contexts, can any other features be identified that are common to lingua
franca business interactions? Studies carried out to date have yielded some
recurring themes.
One common feature of ELF interactions in social as well as business encoun-
ters seems to be the use of speech accommodation (Connor 1999). The key
strategy used in ELF encounters is convergence, which according to accom-
modation theory, involves adapting to an interlocutors behaviour in terms of
speech, gesture or posture (Giles et al. 1991). In lingua franca interactions, this
may involve converging in terms of pronunciation, repeating ones interlocutors
words, code-switching and simplifying ones English (Haegeman 2002, Cogo and
Dewey 2006, Cogo 2009, Pitzl 2005). An interesting phenomenon here is that
interlocutors accommodating down may well use non-standard pronunciation
or grammar, even if they are perfectly capable of producing the standard form
as well. This means that forms which would be judged as errors in a learning
context, are in fact employed strategically to aid communication.
Connor (1999) illustrates this phenomenon in the correspondence of a
Finnish broker in the fish importing/exporting business. Although he had a
high level of proficiency in English, he simplified his language when dealing
with less proficient business partners, for example an Estonian supplier, as illus-
trated in Figure 6.1, which shows a message giving instructions for delivery.
In this fax, the Finnish broker uses short, simple sentences and, notably, an
example of non-standard grammar in the avoidance of the passive voice in It
will send to Helsinki, instead of It will be sent to Helsinki. In contrast, in a fax
to a Japanese buyer (Figure 6.2), who clearly has a higher level of proficiency in
English, the language is more sophisticated, and the passive voice is used
correctly.
Connor shows that the broker not only accommodates to his business corre-
spondents in terms of language level, but also in terms of his relationship with
them and their cultural background. The fax to the Japanese buyer is more
polite than the instructions to the Estonian supplier. One reason for this is that,
in his role as seller, the Finnish broker takes on a more deferential tone, but
also, as he explained in an interview, he felt that the Japanese were very polite,
and therefore he accommodated to the perceived culture of his business

partner.
An example of downward accommodation in a spoken lingua franca busi-
ness encounter can be seen in example 6.1, which is an extract from a business
Figure 6.1 Message sent to an Estonian supplier (Source: Connor, 1999, p. 123)
Figure 6.2 Message sent to a Japanese buyer (Source: Connor, 1999, p. 126)
meeting involving Germans and Dutch participants (Pitzl 2005):
Exampe 6.1
S2(m)=Dutch; S3(m)=German (Germany)

(1) S2: this is more or less the well (.) the level of rates which
(2) is at the moment (1) <7> even (if) <7>
(3) S3: <7> are you <7> serving some some more destinations
(4) e:r in the middle east?
(5) S2: again?
(6) S3: do you have some more destinations in the middle east? or
(7) its purely dubai?
(8) S2: YES. I PROMISE(D) you actually ive sorry
(Pitzl 2005, p. 66, VOICE. 2009)3
Here S2 asks S3 to repeat his question (line 5), which results in S3 simplifying
his language in the reformulation. Instead of serving (line 3), he uses the
general purpose verb have (line 4), and he switches from present continuous
to present simple aspect. The use of semantically flexible verbs, such as do,
have, make, has been noted as one of the emerging lexico-grammatical
tendencies of ELF (Seidlhofer 2004). Haegeman (2002) observed the system-
atic use of such downward accommodation, which she calls foreigner talk,
in a corpus of ELF business telephone calls between more proficient Dutch
speakers and less proficient business partners from other countries. The
foreigner talk used by the more proficient speakers included article and
pronoun deletion, amplification, explanation of lexical items and substitution
of a lexical item by a simpler one.
Accommodation has been highlighted as a specific feature of ELF commu-
nication, but of course it is not restricted to interactions between lingua
franca speakers only. There is some evidence that native speakers of English
engaged in international business interactions also use convergence strate-
gies, although some strategies, such as code-switching may not be available
to them if they are monolingual. In a survey conducted by Rogerson-Revell
(2007) with a European business organization, respondents who were native
speakers of English claimed to modify their speech in international meet-
ings with their counterparts from the continent by avoiding jargon, idioms
and metaphor and by using paraphrase. Preliminary data analysis of the
meetings seemed to corroborate these claims, as there was some evidence
that native speakers did indeed accommodate in this way (Rogerson-
Revell 2008).
Another typical characteristic mentioned in most studies of ELF and BELF
interactions is what Firth (1996) coined the let it pass procedure. Firth found
that in telephone conversations of Danish cheese sellers with international
clients, interlocutors would regularly let pass items that could potentially
cause misunderstanding, and that mutual understanding was assumed, unless
otherwise demonstrated. Firth argues that this procedure is part and parcel of
a joint effort in lingua franca encounters of making it normal, which means
that the foreign language status of the participants English is rarely alluded to,
other repair is avoided and linguistic anomalies are ignored.
Rogerson-Revell (2008) found similar characteristics in meetings of a European
actuarial organisation, in which native speakers of English were also participants.
An exploratory discursive analysis of the meetings showed that they appear
generally meaningful, orderly and harmonious (p. 349), despite the fact that,
in a survey carried out previously by Rogerson-Revell (2007) on behalf of the
organization, some of the non-native speaker participants had reported a
number of difficulties in communicating in these meetings, such as expressing
an opinion or interrupting appropriately. Rogerson-Revell speculates that one
reason for this discrepancy could be the formality of the meeting, which ensured
an overall smooth, orderly structure, but did not allow much opportunity
for spontaneous, self-selected turns. Rogerson-Revells studies show that trian-
gulation of questionnaire and discourse analytical methods can be useful in
uncovering possible discrepancies between appearance and perception.
These findings should also remind us to exercise caution in interpreting ELF
data, in allowing the possibility that an appearance of normality may in fact
hide problems at a deeper level (House 1999, 2002). In a simulated meeting of
international students, House (1999) observes that while there was little repair,
participants did not efficiently manage turn-taking, and did not seem to be
interactionally aligned to one another. She concludes that these ELF speakers
lacked pragmatic fluency in English.
Not all studies of ELF and BELF confirm the lack of repair strategies in lingua
franca interactions. Cogo and Dewey (2006) explicitly challenge the view that
ELF encounters are typified by a tendency to let it pass, and show that negotiation
of meaning is frequent in the data they analysed, which, however, consists of social
rather than business encounters. Pitzl (2005) shows how non-understandings
are signalled, negotiated and resolved in lingua franca business meetings.
However, her findings concur with those of Firth (1996) and Rogerson-Revell
(2008) in that participants in the meeting show a high degree of cooperation
(Pitzl 2005). In keeping with this, Pitzl notes that repair of non-understandings is
mostly done in a non-interruptive way, using minimal queries, rather than explicit
metalinguistic procedures. Example 6.1 above shows such a minimal repair strat-
egy, where non-understanding is signalled with again? (line 5), which is explicit,
but does not narrow down the trouble source in the previous utterance. Although
Firth (1996) and Rogerson-Revell (2008) found that participants in their data
rarely orient to communication difficulties or make explicit their lingua franca
status, occasionally this does occur, and such cases may be dealt with through
code-switching or humour. For instance, example 6.3 below shows a lingua
franca speaker code-switching in requesting help (from a compatriot) with the
translation of a Spanish idiom; and in example 6.4 below, two lingua franca
speakers laugh about a marked (non-native) usage. Another strategy noted by

Firth (1996) that participants in lingua franca interactions use as part of making
it normal is the production of frequent upshots or formulations of the interlocu-
tors utterances which may be perceived as marked or opaque. This seems to
concur with Kaurs (2009) findings in (non-business) lingua franca interactions
that misunderstandings were pre-empted by participants through paraphrase
and repetition, which can also be seen as accommodation strategies.
As the studies discussed above show, findings regarding the occurrence
or non-occurrence of repair in lingua franca interactions are somewhat contra-
dictory, although there is general consensus that the lingua franca status of
participants, including limited linguistic proficiency and non-standard usages,
is not a barrier to generally smooth and successful communication in business
contexts. Of course, findings regarding the occurrence of repair and negotia-
tion of meaning strategies are very sensitive to the type of data investigated,
and variables, such as genre, formality and the linguistic proficiency of the
participants, will have an impact on the findings. More research involving a
variety of contexts and participants is therefore needed.
6.4 Relational language in lingua franca workplace

and business interactions
In the discussion so far of how mutual understanding is negotiated in lingua
franca encounters, the focus has been on transactional concerns, that is on
mutual intelligibility. But is ELF or BELF also used to perform relational func-
tions, such as those found in the workplace interactions explored in previous
chapters? Example 6.2 provides an illustration of some of the features of lingua
franca interactions discussed so far as well as of some of the relational features
of language to be addressed in this section.
Example 6.2
Ryan: managing director, Taiwanese
Ella: sales administrator, Turkish
Daniel: product manager, British
(1) Ryan: Ella, dont worry.
(2) Ella: Our price is near price, isnt it?
(3) Ryan: Let me know you know. The next week, you just give it a . . .
see theres a . . . try it as a . . .
(4) Ella: Ill try it, although I hate to try it.
(5) Ryan: Try it as a tool, (Ella: Yeah) right?
(6) Daniel: Eventually the US wont use it if it wasnt . . . any benefit.
(7) Ella: But how many sales people in the US?
(8) Ryan: But dont worry. You know, if he gives you extra work, you let
me know.
(9) Ella: I see.
(10) Ryan: OK? Not extra work. If its not helping you, eventually this is
not gonna to be helping you know the sales department. Not . . .
(11) Daniel: Helps the customer.
(12) Ryan: Ya, help the customer. Not . . . (Ella: But Ill try it.) not have one
extra tool, then its damage you know your sales department.
If . . . thats ok, well take it off you know. You know what I mean.
But I I I think you know you are a hard worker, you should
be . . . your justification will be right and tell me actually.
(Hsueh 2007, pp. 5152)
This interaction is from a small multicultural business based in the

United Kingdom, which employs British as well as non-British staff (the
majority of whom are from Taiwan or Mainland China). While this is a
somewhat different setting from the BELF examples discussed above, as all
the participants live in the United Kingdom and work together as colleagues,
the extract displays some of the features of ELF discussed in section 6.2.
The language produced by the participants, especially Ryan, displays a
number of marked, grammatically anomalous utterances, such as the use of
a negative (not) without a verb, and the use of a non-finite, instead of
finite verb:
(10) Ryan: . . . Not extra work

(12) Ryan: . . . not have one extra tool
He also drops the third person s in turn 12 (help the customer), which has
been identified as one of the typical features of ELF (Seidlhofer 2004). Interest-
ingly, the only native speaker in this interaction, Daniel, also uses non-standard
grammar in one instance: the mismatch of wont and wasnt in:
(6) Daniel: Eventually the US wont use it if it wasnt . . . any benefit.
Ellipsis also occurs on a number of occasions, and, again, not only in utterances
produced by non-native speakers, e.g.:
(7) Ella: But how many sales people [are there] in the US?
(11) Daniel: [It] Helps the customer.
This extract serves as a useful reminder that non-standard grammar is also

frequent in the informal speech of native speakers, although the nature of the
errors may be different. In any event, none of these grammatical anomalies
are oriented to by the speakers, nor do they trigger any misunderstanding or
repair, therefore we can see the let it pass procedure in operation here.
As far as the clear transmission of information is concerned, the interaction
is uneventful; however, there is evidence of much interactional work happening
on the relational level. In this encounter, Ryan and Daniel try to persuade Ella
to adopt a new customer service procedure, which creates more work for her
(Hsueh, 2007). Hsueh (ibid., p. 51) remarks how Ryan uses a combination of
positive and negative politeness strategies in showing he cares about Ellas
workload and trying to minimize the amount of work involved. For example, he
reassures her in turns 1 and 8 (dont worry), and praises her in turn 12 (you
are a hard worker). In this encounter, participants clearly orient to relational
goals, as well as transactional ones (see Chapter 5). This is an important obser-
vation, as the existence of precisely such relational goals in lingua franca
encounters has been questioned in some of the ELF literature.
6.4.1 Language for communication or language

for identification?
Hllens (1992) distinction between language for communication (Kommu-
nikationssprache) and language for identification (Identifikationssprache)
is one that is frequently invoked in discussions of ELF. According to Hllen,
English used for international trade, politics and science is a language for com-
munication it is an instrument for accomplishing transactional goals, and not
for expressing the full range of communicative functions, including emotional
and relational ones. House (2001) formulates this view as follows:
English as a lingua franca is nothing more than a useful tool: it is a language

for communication, a medium that is given substance with the different
national, regional, local and individual cultural identities its speakers bring
to it. English itself does not carry such identities, it is not a language for
identification.
It would seem logical to conclude that in international business in particular,

where English is used for pragmatic reasons (Louhiala-Salminen et al. 2005), and
is seen as one tool in a business toolkit (Charles 2008), English should be largely
limited to being a language for communication and not for identification. But is
this borne out in examining actual lingua franca business interactions?
Example 6.2 above clearly shows second language speakers using English for
relational as well as transactional purposes. But one could argue that this is
because the participants are close colleagues, and therefore need to maintain
good working relations, whereas in international lingua franca situations, long-
term relationships may not always exist. For example, House (1999) found a
palpable lack of mutual orientation (p. 82) in ELF interactions between inter-
national students, in which participants engage in non-aligned parallel talk
(p. 80), and do not really listen to each other.
However, a number of recent discourse studies of international lingua franca
interactions have found ELF being used to perform a wider range of functions
than only transactional ones. For example, Cogo and Dewey (2006) and
Kordon (2006) have observed the use of interactive strategies which contribute to
supportive co-operative discourse, such as latching and overlap, turn-completion
and back-channelling in ELF social and service encounters. In addition to simply
ensuring smooth interaction, such strategies, in particular strong agreement
tokens (such as of course, exactly) can also have an affective, function (Schneider
1988, McCarthy and Carter 2000, McCarthy 2003), and Kordon (2006) argues
that the use of agreement tokens in an Austrian-Vietnamese mini-corpus
provides evidence of rapport-building.
Turning to ELF used in a business environment, some recent studies of
international business meetings (Poncini 2002 and 2004, Pullin Stark 2007
and 2009, Victoria 2006) investigated linguistic and interactive strategies that
contribute to a sense of group identity and social cohesion in these multinational
groups. Poncini analysed meetings of an Italian company with its international
distributors and shows how personal pronouns (such as we), technical terms
and evaluative language are used to create a sense of group identity and build
a positive relationship between the company and its distributors. Pullin Stark
examines a range of devices used for building solidarity and rapport, including
interactional talk, stance markers, pronouns and humour, in meetings of an
international company based in Switzerland. Victoria (2007) shows that polite-
ness strategies used by chairpersons in ELF meetings address relational concerns
of negotiating power and building solidarity in a multinational company.
Two studies of simulated business negotiations by lingua franca speakers (Dow,
1999 and Planken, 2005) also yield some interesting results in this regard. Both
studies compared expert and aspiring student negotiators, and found that
the experts made far greater use of relational strategies, such as safe talk, ritual
interchanges and politeness strategies in the negotiations. This suggests that
experience of the relevant business genres may have a greater influence on the
use of relational strategies than whether speakers are using English as a lingua
franca or a native language. These studies, as well as Spencer-Oateys (2000b)
and Spencer-Oateys and Xings (1998) work on rapport management in
intercultural business encounters all provide evidence that English is indeed
used in BELF to express relational as well as transactional functions.
This is not really surprising, given that a number of recent studies have high-
lighted the importance of relationship-building in workplace and business
encounters (Charles 1996, Holmes 2000a and 2000b, Holmes and Stubbe 2003,
Koester 2006, Handford 2007 and forthcoming). Given the range of devices
performing relational functions identified in business and workplace talk,
including politeness and solidarity strategies, humour and small talk, it would
actually be more surprising if such devices were found to be completely lacking
in lingua franca business encounters. In fact, Planken (2005, p. 399) suggests
that creating and maintaining rapport are particularly important in situations
where a lingua franca is used, drawing on Astons (1993) idea of a benevolence
principle in non-native speaker discourse. Aston argues that the positive
rapport built through interactional speech may facilitate transactional speech

by rendering operative a benevolence principle, whereby eventual under-
standing failures are more likely to be interpreted as errors rather than offenses
(ibid., p. 229). Beyond simply defusing any possible misunderstanding, build-
ing rapport may also be particularly important in intercultural situations as
interactants cannot assume a shared culture or shared values on which they can
draw. The question of the role of culture is an interesting one, which we shall
return to in a moment.
If, as recent research seems to suggest, language is used for relational as well
as transactional purposes in lingua franca interactions, an interesting question
is whether the linguistic and interactional devices used are the same as in native
speaker discourse. Preliminary findings seem to suggest that the strategies are
similar, but that their realization may be somewhat different. In her study of
Austrian-Vietnamese social and service encounters Kordon (2006) found that a
fairly restricted set of strong agreement tokens, such as of course or sure, were
used, and that deviations from native speakers norms were not oriented to; that
is participants let it pass. Kordon notes that as long as speakers do use the
tokens, positive interpersonal relationships are maintained and the interaction
is communicatively successful (ibid., p. 75). Looking specifically at business
encounters, Handford (forthcoming) compared the use of phrasal clusters or
chunks in the CANBEC Corpus as a whole, which consists mainly of British
speakers of English (see Chapter 3, Section 3.3.3), with a sub-corpus of CANBEC
consisting of international meetings with at least one participant who was a
lingua franca speaker of English. The most frequent 20 three-word clusters in
the corpus as a whole all have pragmatic, interpersonal meanings (e.g. you
know the), and 13 of these were the same in the international meetings.
Furthermore, while seven of the actual clusters used most frequently in the inter-
national meetings were different from those used in the corpus as a whole, they
all fulfilled some kind of interpersonal function. For example, hedges, such as
a bit of and I mean I were most frequent in the corpus overall, whereas in
the international meetings summarizers + hedges, for example so I think,
featured among the most frequent chunks.
Linguistic devices such as hedges, intensifiers, vague language, idioms and
metaphors have all been found to perform important relational functions in
social as well as workplace and business situations (Koester 2000, 2006 and
2007a), for example the use of hedging and vague language in health-care
contexts (Prince et al. 1982, Adolphs et al. 2007). But it is precisely some of
these devices, in particular idioms and vague language, which are often claimed
to be absent from lingua franca discourse (Seidlhofer 2004, Charles 2008).
According to Seidlhofer (2001 and 2004) unilateral idiomaticity, the use (by
one of the speakers) of idioms which are unfamiliar to other participants,
can contribute to misunderstandings and communication problems in lingua
franca situations. Rogerson-Revells (2007 and 2008) finding that native speaker
participants in international meetings avoided the use of idioms and metaphor
indicates an awareness among these participants that the use of such linguistic
devices might cause problems of understanding. Furthermore, in her analysis
of the meetings (with native speakers as well as lingua franca participants)
Rogerson-Revell (2008) found very little highly contextualised language,
i.e. language which depends on references to shared knowledge (p. 355), such
as ellipsis, jargon and vague language, in addition to idioms and metaphor.
At the same time, there is some emerging evidence that devices such as vague
language, idioms and metaphor are not completely absent from lingua franca
communication, and can in fact be the object of some fascinating cross-cultural
negotiation. Also, it should be borne in mind that the meetings analysed by
Rogerson-Revell (2007 and 2008) were very formal, which may have contrib-
uted to the limited use of contextualized language; and even here some idioms
did occur.
Two corpus-based studies confirm the use of vague language in ELF across a
range of spoken genres. In a comparison of vague items across four genres
(academic, business, conversation and public discourse) in the Hong Kong
Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE), Cheng (2007) found that Hong Kong
speakers and native English speakers used vague language (VL) tokens with
equal frequency, and she concludes that discourse type, rather than speaker
group, seems to be the major determinant of both the forms of VL employed
by the speakers and the frequencies with which these forms occur (p. 178).
Mest-Ketel (2008) compared the use of vague markers by ELF speakers and
native English speakers in doctoral defence discussions in the ELFA Corpus,
and found that the ELF speakers actually used vague language more, and that
it was used for relational as well as information-oriented functions.
Pitzl (2009) examined the use of idioms and metaphor among ELF users
in the VOICE Corpus, and found that metaphorical idioms were indeed used,
but often wrongly, for example we should not wake up any dogs (a variation
on the idioms let sleeping dogs lie). One of the properties of idioms is that
they are fixed and invariant, at least to some degree, but Pitzls study seems
to indicate that in ELF settings, this rule does not apply; that is speakers
are able to exploit the metaphoric potential of an idiom.4 While the use of idi-
oms was different, the functions they performed were similar to the relational
functions that have been ascribed to idioms in native speaker interactions:
indirectness, emphasizing and humour. However, Pitzl (ibid., p. 302) notes
that in contrast to their use in interactions between native speakers, idioms
are not used as territorial markers of group membership in lingua franca
interactions.
Another way in which the use of idioms can be different in lingua franca
compared with monolingual encounters, is that idioms from a speakers L1 are
sometimes translated or explained. Although they do not focus on idioms
specifically in analysing informal ELF encounters, Cogo and Dewey (2006) give
an example of the translation into English of an idiom (fleur bleue) by a French
participant, giving rise to extended negotiation of meaning which seems to
contribute to building solidarity in this multicultural group. To my knowledge,

no systematic studies of idioms in ELF workplace or business encounters have
been carried out, but the data discussed in several studies provides some
evidence that idioms do occur and also perform relational functions in such
settings. Rogerson-Revell (2008) shows an example from her international
meetings of a Spanish participant trying to translate a Spanish metaphorical
idiom (patata caliente = hot potato) into English (p. 354)5:
Example 6.3
Angel (Spanish) ..I dont know how is in English/.. maybe.. Ramon/..

(Insurance meeting) Ramon/.. patata caliente/ .how is it/.. patata caliente/
..[laughs]. well..maybe hot poto.. ??is igual. igual..
in ??......
The use of this particular idiom (patata caliente), which Angel is keen to try to
translate, seems to serve an expressive (and therefore relational) function,
rather than conveying any precise informational content. A more creative use
of metaphor, where a speaker creates a novel coinage, is discussed by Firth
(1996) in an example of a business call between a Danish export manager and
his Hungarian client:
Example 6.4
[. . .]
(14) H how are sales going in Budapest=
(15) L =o:h I think now its-its a little bit middle h(H). hh. middle power
hu(h)
(16) H hu(h)h [h(h)u(h)
(17) L [(h)o:k(h)a(h)y::
(18) H its not-its not so ni::ce
[. . .]
(From Firth 1996, p. 254)6
Here, H coins the metaphorical expression middle power (turn 15), perhaps
a translation from a mother tongue idiom, to describe how sales are going, and
L shows he has understood what H means by glossing the expression in turn 18
(its not so nice). Firth notes that both participants laugh at this expression,
thereby displaying their orientation to this marked usage, and at the same time
framing it as non-fatal. The laughter may also signal appreciation of Hs cre-
ative coinage, and the mutual orientation of the speakers to this expression
seems to contribute to a sense of convergence and solidarity between them.
The use of idioms and metaphor in lingua franca encounters is particularly
interesting, as such items usually invoke cultural membership in interactions
between monolinguals (Moon 1992, 1998, Boers 2003). Pitzl (2009) concludes
that idioms are not markers of territoriality when used by lingua franca
speakers, but does this mean they are completely stripped of their cultural
content? As lingua franca encounters are intercultural, the role of culture is
complex. According to Meierkord, lingua franca communication is both a
linguistic masala and a language stripped bare of its cultural roots (2002,
p. 128), and is essentially characterized by hybridity. Plzl (2003, p. 5) also sees
ELF as native culture free, but not as a cultureless vacuum; rather:
ELF users have the freedom to either create their own temporary culture, to
partly export their individual primary culture into ELF or to reinvent their
cultural identities by blending into other linguacultural groups.
The use of idiom and metaphor in ELF can be associated with these kinds of
orientation towards culture. Example 6.3, the attempt to translate a Spanish
idiom, can be seen as an example of exporting the speakers own culture;
whereas example 6.4 involves the creation of a kind of temporary culture in
which both speakers participate.
Culture itself can be used in lingua franca encounters to build solidarity.
Aston (1993) proposes that as non-native speakers are not able to draw on their
shared culture to negotiate solidarity, they need to turn from their identities as
representative members of their cultures of origin to focus on their identities as
individuals, and to their relationships as individuals to those cultures (p. 237).
Aston suggest that one way in which non-native speakers can build solidarity is
by taking a critical attitude towards their own culture, and thus bonding as
fellow cultural outlaws. Planken (2005) observed this phenomenon in simu-
lated lingua franca negotiations, in which interculturalness occurred as a
rapport-building strategy among the professional negotiators:
It would seem that by pointing out and acknowledging cultural differences,

participants try to create a temporary in-group of (fellow) non-natives, whose
common ground is the fact that they differ culturally. (p. 397)
Is ELF then a language for identification as well as for communication? The

answer depends partly on how one defines these two terms: whether identifica-
tion refers to primary culture only, or also to other forms of identity around
which discourse participants can build solidarity (see Plzl 2003, p. 5). What
seems apparent, even from the limited research to date, is that participants in
lingua franca workplace and business encounters use English not only as a
restricted utilitarian tool, but also to fulfil a range of relational functions, such
as building solidarity and common ground. Further research is needed to
explore the linguistic devices used in such interactions, and the extent to which
they are similar or different from the devices employed by mother tongue
speakers of English.
6.5 English in the multi-ethnic workplace

So far we have been looking at international forms of communication across
cultures occurring mainly outside English speaking countries. Another site for
intercultural communication in English is workplaces in English-speaking
countries which employ foreign nationals or people from minority ethnic com-
munities. As we shall see, findings from studies on intercultural or inter-ethnic
communication in such contexts contrast quite sharply with those from interna-
tional business encounters discussed above.
While the study of English as a lingua franca is a fairly new field, studies of
communication in the multi-ethnic workplace have quite a long history
(Gumperz 1982, Gumperz and Roberts 1991, Roberts et al. 1992). These
studies have focused on two types of research sites: (1) workplaces with a high
percentage of employees from ethnic minorities and (2) gate-keeping encoun-
ters, for example in job centres and benefits offices, where ethnic minorities
are also over-represented. As Roberts et al. (1992) point out, migrants and
people from ethnic minorities have typically taken up unskilled and low-paid
jobs in factories and the service industry, which are also subject to fluctuations
in demand. Due to the precariousness of these positions, and with the rise of
mass unemployment in the 1ate 1970s and early 1980s resulting from the
decline in the manufacturing industries, people from these groups had to turn
to employment and welfare services. Here, they came into contact with societys
gatekeepers who control access to scarce resources in a modern urban world
(Roberts et al. 1992, p. 15).
Data collected from both types of research site as part of a project to provide
industrial language training (Roberts et al. 1992) revealed that ethnic minor-
ity workers and applicants were systematically disadvantaged. Erikson and
Schultzs (1982) found that in the gate-keeping encounter, those individuals
whose communication style and social background is most similar to those of
the interviewer (ibid., p. 193) were most likely to be successful, whereas those
with different linguistic behaviours and socio-cultural backgrounds were judged
less favourably (Roberts 2009). However, this was not usually the result of overt
discrimination, but due to much more subtle ways in which the interactions
themselves developed, and how the participants interpreted each others utter-
ances. Because the participants had different assumptions about the goals of
the interaction and what was expected, listeners were constantly drawing infer-
ences which were quite at odds with the speakers intent (Roberts et al. 1992,
p. 53). This, in turn, led to negative cultural stereotypes being reinforced, and
the disadvantaged position of ethnic-minority workers was constantly repro-
duced and reinforced (ibid, p. 54). Work in Interactional Sociolinguistics has
studied such inter-ethnic encounters extensively, and the ways in which contex-
tualization cues in the discourse are interpreted differently based on differing
cultural expectations or frames (Gumperz 1982 and 1999, Gumperz and
Roberts 1991, Tannen 1993).
While employment and migration patterns have changed since these early
studies, a recent study carried out in the United Kingdom for the Department
for Work and Pensions (Roberts and Campbell 2005 and 2006) on job inter-
views involving immigrant ethnic minority candidates shows that the findings
are still valid. The study found that first generation (born abroad) candidates did
less well in the interviews, although, again, there was no overt discrimination.
The problems such candidates had were not usually due to any lack of fluency
in English, but to the failure to meet hidden demands placed on candidates
to talk in institutionally credible ways and according to implicit cultural
expectations (Roberts and Campbell 2006, p. 1).
Analysis of the job interviews showed that these place a very high demand on
candidates in terms of the interactive skills required. Successful candidates
are able to align themselves to the expectations of interviewers in terms of
three types of discourse:
1. institutional discourses: dealing analytically with the qualities that the

candidate is expected to bring to the job,
2. occupational discourses: describing previous work experience,
3. personal discourses: a more informal mode, allowing the interviewers to
judge the candidates personality and values (ibid., p. 56).
In order to make a good impression, candidates need to achieve the right

balance between these three types of discourse, and be able to identify the kind
of a response, in terms of discourse type, required for a given question.
When the expectations are not met, misalignments occur, and cumulative
misalignments can lead to a negative dynamic in the interview, which reflects
badly on the candidate. Misalignments can relate to one of the three discourse
types outlined above, or to the topic or to aspects of the organization of talk,
such as expected stages of the interview. Roberts and Campbell (ibid.) found
that interviews with born-abroad candidates had more misunderstandings and
misalignments. Example 6.5 shows a discourse misalignment in an interview
with an Ethiopian born-abroad candidate, who was unsuccessful:
Example 6.5
I = Interviewer
C = Candidate
(1) I: Okay what would you then say the advantages are (.) by
(2) working as a team
(3) C: er:m the advantage wherev- wherever you go are the e-
(4) if you apply other jobs you wont find it difficult (.)
(5) you already integrate
(6) (nine seconds of talk deleted)
(7) C: then wh- wherever you go in say (.) in (xxxxxx) job

(8) (.) or in a community job (.) and you wont get hard you
(9) wont be a-feel ashamed or if y-you (wont feel) a shy
(10) person (.) you get more powerful a:nd (1)
(11) I: yeah (.) what more would you say
(12) C: e:r (1) you would be open minded you dont have [to
(13) I: okay yeah]
(14) C: be worried (4)
(Roberts and Campbell, 2006, p. 49)7
The candidate responds to the interviewers question about the advantages

of working in a team using personal discourse: he talks about the personal ben-
efits to himself. This question, however, requires a response using institutional
discourse: the candidate is expected to show that he understands how teamwork
benefits the organization, for example by improving efficiency.
Another study by Roberts and Sarangi (1999) shows that even skilled
professionals from minority cultural backgrounds can be disadvantaged in
gate-keeping encounters. In oral exams for the Royal College of General
Practitioners, candidates trained overseas performed less well than those who
had been trained in the United Kingdom. As in the job interviews discussed
above, candidates had to manipulate a hybrid type of discourse, using the
correct combination of professional, institutional and personal modes of talk in
order to be successful.
More generally, the conditions of employment of many migrants can create
barriers to acquiring the discourses of the dominant cultural group. Roberts
(forthcoming) remarks that migrants face the challenge of double socializa-
tion: first into the discourses of the workplace, like all newcomers to a
community of practice, and also into the linguistic and cultural practices of
the host country. Even if formal job training is received, this does not prepare
born-abroad workers and employees for the informal socialization which occurs
through interaction in the workplace (Duff, Wong and Early 2000, Li 2002).
Moreover, opportunities for such socialization may be limited through the
nature of the workplace environment. Many migrants enter low-paid, manual
jobs, in which talk is not central to carrying out the work, and frequently they
are organized into ethnic work units in which a minority language is spoken
(Roberts et al. 1992, Goldstein 1997, Gunnarsson 2009). Opportunities for
socialization into English and into more powerful discourses are therefore
limited (Roberts et al. 2008).
6.6 Discussion and conclusion

If we compare the lingua franca and the inter-ethnic encounters discussed in
this chapter, we find a striking contrast between the apparently unproblematic,
smooth nature of ELF discourse and problems encountered in inter-ethnic

workplace and institutional encounters, where job-seekers born abroad are sys-
tematically less successful at getting jobs. How can we explain this discrepancy
in these two types of communication across cultures which have in common the
fact that at least one speaker is using English as a second language? The most
obvious source of difficulty in such circumstances would be the language itself,
but in neither of these situations does linguistic proficiency as such (or lack
thereof) seem to pose a problem.
These two types of encounter differ fundamentally in a number of ways,
and the differences observed can probably be explained through a combina-
tion of factors. As much of the research on communication involving ethnic
minorities and immigrants has focused on gate-keeping encounters, such as
job interviews, the characteristics of this particular genre are likely to be a
major factor. Job interviews are particularly challenging speech situations,
requiring participants to handle a range of discourse modes, and there is less
opportunity for repair than in other types of talk (Button 1992, Roberts and
Campbell 2006).
Second, such encounters often involve people who are socially disadvantaged
due to low levels of skill and education, and therefore have little power. In many
of the interactions studied, in particular gate-keeping encounters, there is a
marked asymmetry in power and in the ability to control the discourse. In con-
trast, international lingua franca encounters often take place between equals,
whether they are buyers and sellers, colleagues in a multinational company or
professionals in the same field.
The cultural context is also quite distinct in these two types of encounter.
While immigrants or minorities are expected to conform to the host culture,
lingua franca encounters, as we have seen, often take place in a kind of culture-
neutral zone, where cultural norms are to some extent suspended. In inter-
ethnic encounters, members of the majority culture may not even be aware
that interactional problems could be a result of cultural differences, and the
practical aim of much of the research carried out has been to help raise
such awareness (Roberts et al. 1992, Roberts and Sarangi 1999, Roberts and
Campbell 2006). While cultural differences can also cause problems in inter-
national business encounters (Marriott 1995, Rogerson-Revell 1999, Spencer-
Oatey and Xing 2000), a number of studies show at least some awareness among
participants in ELF encounters of the need to accommodate to interlocutors
with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
In addition, we need to consider other levels of culture besides national
culture. Many international ELF encounters are between people who, although
they have different first languages and nationalities, nevertheless have much
in common in terms of education, profession and social background, as for
example in the case of international professional organizations. In their work
on intercultural communication, Scollon and Scollon (2001, p. 4) argue that
(national) cultural differences between people in professional communica-

tion tend to be less significant than differences between the groups or dis-
course systems they participate in. According to Scollon and Scollon (ibid.,
pp. 106134 and 183184), discourse systems are systems of communication
consisting of a number of elements: ideology, socialization (ways of becoming
a member), forms of discourse (including genre) and face systems. Two dis-
course systems discussed by Scollon and Scollon which are particularly relevant
for workplace communication are corporate and professional discourse sys-
tems. These are similar to the notions of discourse community and communi-
ties of practice discussed in Chapter 1. As previous chapters have shown, the
practices shared by workplace and professional communities, and the genres
they use, play a key role in shaping the expectations and interpretations of the
participants in professional and workplace encounters. Business professionals
with different mother tongues and national cultures interacting in a lingua
franca situation may actually share the same corporate and professional dis-
course systems, thereby greatly reducing the potential for misunderstanding.
On the other hand, there is often a much wider gap in terms of the discourse
systems (as example 6.5 above demonstrates) used by participants in many
gate-keeping encounters, such as job interviews, even if they all live in the
same country.
Finally, the research perspective taken in all the studies discussed also
has some influence on the findings. Much of the research involving ethnic
minorities and immigrants has the aim of investigating and trying to help rem-
edy real inequalities: the fact that members of these groups were systematically
disadvantaged in the workplace. The purpose of the research was to uncover
the causes of these problems, and therefore the focus was very much on
problematic, rather than successful communication. The analysis of job
interviews, for example, also discussed successful strategies, but this was not the
main concern of the research. On the other hand, research in ELF began with
a reaction to and reorientation away from a deficit view of the non-native
speaker to a positive view of the lingua franca speaker as someone who uses
English flexibly to accomplish his or her own communicative purposes. This
has brought with it a move away from focusing on cultural differences, and on
the communication problems they can cause, to looking at what contributes to
successful communication between cultures.
In terms of further research, there is much work to be done. The field
of lingua franca research is still in the early stages, particularly as regards
workplace and business encounters. Another site for research which has hardly
been looked at is located somewhere in-between the inter-ethnic and lingua
franca encounters examined here. With an increasingly flexible workforce on
a global scale, many foreign nationals come to work in English speaking
countries for shorter or longer periods of time. Many of these immigrants are
highly educated and take on relatively well-paid positions, but they nevertheless
face the challenge of adapting to the host culture and to new discourse com-
munities in the places of work that they enter. Do such encounters resemble
ELF interactions in being largely cooperative and smooth, or is there also
misalignment, as found in the inter-ethnic studies? There is much scope for
research into this kind of intercultural workplace, and into the many diverse
situations in which English is used as an international language and lingua
franca for business and work.
Chapter 7
Applying Research: Teaching

Workplace Discourse
7.1 Introduction
This chapter explores the practical relevance of research on workplace and
business discourse, and examines its possible applications, focusing in particu-
lar on the teaching of English for occupational, professional and business
purposes. Doing this also provides an opportunity to review many of the key
features of workplace discourse discussed in the various chapters of this book.
The chapter begins with a brief overview of different types of application from
research-based consultancy to training and teaching. It then goes on to show,
with illustrative examples, how insights from research can be used for teaching
and materials development.
7.2 Research-based consultancy

Research in workplace and business discourse frequently has a strong
pragmatic focus, and some practical workplace problem may often be what
motivates the research in the first place. For example, the study carried out
by Roberts and Campbell (2005 and 2006) for the UK Department of Work
and Pensions had the aim of investigating and remedying discrimination
of immigrant ethnic minority candidates. The Wellington Language in the
Workplace project has as its objectives to identify characteristics of effective
communication in New Zealand workplaces, to identify causes of miscommuni-
cation, and to disseminate the results of the analysis for the benefit of work-
place practitioners (Holmes and Stubbe, 2003, p. 12). Thus research in
workplace discourse is often seen as a collaborative enterprise between the
organization or group which is the subject of the study and the researcher(s),
with a view to benefiting the subjects of the study (Sarangi and Roberts 1999).
A number of studies in workplace and business discourse have as their stated
aim to provide such research-based consultancy.
Bargiela.Chiappini et al. (2007, pp. 110131) provide an excellent overview
of research-based consultancy work. They profile five examples from around
the world, a number of which investigated the use of English (and other
languages) in international contexts. For example, Charles and Marschan-
Piekkaris (2002) survey-based study of middle management at the Finish mul-
tinational company Kone Elevators examined the impact of the companys
language policy. English had been adopted as the company language, and
the study showed that employees who were proficient in English (or other
important languages within the organization) had more power than those who
did not. Another example of research-based consultancy in the area of English
as an international language is Rogerson-Revells (2007 and 2008) study of
meetings of a European actuarial organization discussed in Chapter 6, which
was initiated by the organization.
7.3 Training and teaching
7.3.1 English for specific purposes

A more focussed kind of application of research involves designing a training
course for specific professional or occupational groups based on research
(e.g. Shi et al. 2001, Boscher and Smalkoski 2002, Eggly 2002). For example, Shi
et al.s (2001) course for medical students was designed on the basis of
videotapes of the students performance in ward teaching. Such an approach is
at the heart of English for specific purposes (ESP), or languages for specific
purposes (LSP), which is predicated on the notion that the specific professional
and occupational needs of the learners should be the starting point for a train-
ing course (Hutchinson and Waters 1987, Dudley-Evans and St. John 1998).
Courses may be designed for specific group of learners, as in the case of
in-company training, or for learners in, or aspiring to join, a particular profes-
sion, occupation or academic discipline, as in the case of classes at a training
college or university. English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is one very promi-
nent branch of ESP which has seen widespread development at universities with
the aim of improving the skills of students, in particular international students,
in academic writing (Dudley-Evans 1995, Hyland 2000, Hewings 2001). In this
area, there is a very strong link between research and practice, with research,
particularly in the area of genre analysis, having informed the development of
teaching material (e.g. Swales and Feak 1994, Johns 1997, Jordan 1997). University-
based teaching has also had a more professional orientation, for example with
courses aimed at business or engineering students. For example Miller (2001)
reports on a course for engineering students at a Hong Kong university, and
Connor and her colleagues developed a course for international business writ-
ing (Connor et al. 1997, Upton and Connor 2001) which involved students in
writing rsums and letters of application (see Chapter 3, p. 64). Belcher (2004)
provides a useful overview of trends in teaching ESP, which includes discussions
of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) and English for Academic
Applying Research 147
Purposes. An interesting summary of research in ESP can be found in Hewings

(2002) history of ESP, seen through changes and developments in the journal
English for Specific Purposes in the last two decades.
7.3.2 Insights from business and workplace discourse research

Research in business and workplace discourse, whether or not it involves
consultancy, provides relevant insights into the nature of language and com-
munication at work which can be drawn on in devising courses, syllabi and
materials. Research in this area overlaps in many ways with LSP/ESP, for
example many of the methodologies, that is needs analysis, genre analysis
and (more recently) corpus analysis, are shared by both disciplines. However,
as Bargiela-Chiappini et al. (2007, p. 5) note, research in business discourse
has been less motivated by immediate pedagogical concerns. Zhang (2007)
finds that while ESP has focused on learners needs and how to best meet these,
it does not have much to offer concerning English in use in business (p. 402).
He therefore concludes that research in business discourse, which has concen-
trated on studying actual business interactions, can usefully complement ESP,
and he therefore calls for an integrated approach.
Despite the more loose connection between research and teaching practice
in business and workplace discourse research, many research projects do have
a pedagogical question or concern as their starting point (e.g. Williams 1988,
Dow 1999, Cheng and Warren 2006). A number of studies have pointed out
discrepancies between teaching material and actual business practice, and/or
conclude with recommendations for teaching the language or communication
skills area researched.
An early study comparing course books and business/workplace practice is
Williams (1988) study of the language used in real meetings compared with
how the language of meetings is taught in textbooks. The study focused specifi-
cally on the linguistic functions (i.e. speech acts) taught for meetings in
textbooks. The differences found were striking: ten of the seventeen functions
taught did not occur in the recorded meetings, and of the 135 exponents
mentioned in the textbooks, only seven were used in the meetings. Moreover,
the functions used in the meetings were not necessarily realized explicitly, but
were often inferred from presuppositions and context. Two more recent studies
(discussed in Chapter 3.4.1) compared agreeing and disagreeing and opine
markers in the business sub-corpus of the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken
English (HKCSE-bus) with the way these speech acts are dealt with in English
language textbooks in Hong Kong (Cheng and Warren 2005 and 2006). Both
studies found considerable discrepancies between the realization of these
speech acts in actual business/workplace interaction, as attested by the corpus,
and their treatment in textbooks. In line with Williams findings for the
language of meetings, Cheng and Warren 2005 found that the strategies used
for agreeing and disagreeing tended to be more indirect than those taught in
textbooks (see also Pearson 1986 and Koester 2002). The findings from Cheng
and Warrens (2006) study of opine markers (e.g. I think . . ., I like . . .) also
chimes with Williams pioneering study: only four of the top ten forms of
opine markers identified in the corpus occurred in the textbooks, and, of the
top 5, only one was described in the textbooks. Cheng and Warren (2006,
p. 55) conclude that greater attention needs to be given to real world language
use when exemplifying speech acts.
A number of studies dealing with specific business communication skills,
such as taking part in meetings and negotiating, include recommendations for
teaching based on insights from real meetings and negotiations. For example,
Charles and Charles (1999) conclude their study of bargaining in sales negotia-
tions with suggestions for teaching tactical summaries subtle strategies used
by negotiators to advance their own positions in the negotiation. Dow (1999)
compared simulated negotiations between business specialists and non-specialists,
and concludes with a list of recommendations for teaching based on his analysis
of successful strategies used by the experts, but not by the non-experts. For
example, he suggests that non-experts need help with moving in and out of
business talk in openings and closings, and with politeness strategies, such as
the use of hedges and downgraders. A study which makes some recommenda-
tions for teaching inter cultural skills is Rogerson-Revells (1999) analysis of
different interactive styles and strategies used in meetings of an in international
corporation in Hong Kong. She concludes that intercultural skills can be
developed both through awareness-raising activities, involving discussion of
cultural differences, and through skills development which focuses on the use
of appropriate styles and strategies.
7.3.3 English as an international language

Another gap between current research and teaching practice, which has been
the subject of considerable debate in recent years, is the continued reliance in
most teaching materials on native speaker models of English, despite the fact
that English is now widely used as a lingua franca in business interactions. The
long-held assumption that native speakers should be upheld as a model
for language teaching has come under much criticism over the last decade
(Rampton 1990, Cook 1999, Seidlhofer 1999). It is certainly the case that much
international business is conducted in English between lingua franca speakers.
However, the much quoted figure that 80 per cent of exchanges in English
do not involve a native speaker (Beneke 1991) is an estimate, and not based
on firm evidence. It also depends on which part of the business world one looks
at. In a survey involving more than 1,000 German users of English, respondents
said they communicated with native speakers about equally frequently as with
non-native speakers (McMaster 2008). Therefore, at least according to this
survey, the 80 per cent figure does not apply to Germany.
Handford (forthcoming) argues that the distinction between native speakers

and non-native speakers may not actually be a particularly useful one in decid-
ing what to teach on a course in English for business or occupational purposes.
He proposes instead the notion of expert user, and suggests that a corpus of
business interactions can be seen as a collection of expert performances, irre-
spective of the native language of the participants. There is mounting
evidence that a distinction between experts and non-experts is in fact much
more salient than that between native and non-native speakers in terms of lan-
guage performance in professional and business situations. Both Dows (1999)
and Plankens (2005) studies comparing expert and aspiring negotiators (see
Chapter 6, p. 134) suggest that experience of the relevant professional genres
is a more significant factor influencing performance of these genres than
whether speakers are using English as a lingua franca or a native language.
Evidence for this is also emerging from corpus studies of business and work-
place discourse (see Chapters 3 and 6), such as Cheng and Warren (2006) and
Cheng (2007), who compared Hong Kong speakers of English with native
speakers. Cheng (2007) found that Hong Kong speakers and native English
speakers used vague language tokens with equal frequency, and she concludes
that discourse type, rather than speaker group, seems to be the major determi-
nant of both the forms . . . and frequencies with which these forms occur (p. 178).
Similarly, Cheng and Warren (2006) found that the top ten opine markers used
by both groups of speakers were largely the same, although the rank order
was different.
7.4 Using insights from research for teaching and

teacher training1
The above discussion has highlighted a contradiction in the relationship
between research and teaching practice in workplace and professional dis-
course. On the one hand, there is a strong link between research and teaching
practice in this area to the extent that many studies aim to have some kind of
pedagogical or practical application, and that research has had an impact on
teaching in some areas; for example, research in genre analysis has influenced
the teaching of ESP, and in particular EAP. As discussed above, research in
workplace and business discourse provides important insights for teaching
English for professional, occupational or business purposes. Many studies of
workplace and business discourse include useful suggestions for how teaching
can be improved in a range of workplace practices and skills, such as taking part
in meetings and negotiations, or intercultural communication.
Nevertheless, the gap between real-life workplace/business discourse and what
is actually taught in classrooms and published in textbooks, first highlighted
by Williams as far back as 1988, has persisted to the present day, as attested
by more recent studies (e.g. Cheng and Warren 2005 and 2006, Chan 2009).
A survey carried out by Nickerson (2005) on teaching materials for English for
Specific Business Purposes (ESBP) found that few of the books surveyed made
reference to research into the field, and Bargiela-Chiappini et al.s (2007,
pp. 132147) more recent survey shows that the situation has not improved
greatly since then. This gap seems to be less pronounced as concerns the teach-
ing of written discourse. Genre analysis has had a key influence on the teaching
of written discourse, particularly in the tertiary sector in the area of academic
writing (see e.g. Swales and Feak 1994, Johns 2002,). The teaching of spoken
workplace discourse has not benefited to the same extent from research input,
perhaps due to the difficulty for language teachers of obtaining access to
authentic spoken material, in contrast to authentic written material, which is
more readily available. Hewings (2002) points to this relative neglect of research
on speaking in ESP, in showing that the vast majority of studies in the history of
the journal English for Specific Purposes have been concerned with the written
language. The focus in the remainder of this chapter is therefore on the rele-
vance of the research dealt with in this book for the teaching of the spoken
language for business and occupational purposes. This relative neglect of
authentic spoken material, also means that business English course books tend
to have a bias towards language about business, and do not always teach the
language actually needed for doing business (Nelson 2000b). In spoken busi-
ness and workplace interactions, the focus is not so much on talking about
business, but on collaboratively negotiating tasks, which means, for example
that words referring to business topics are not actually that frequent in spoken
business interactions (see Chapter 3.3.1).
I would suggest that one of the most important contributions that research
can make to teaching and teacher training is to develop an awareness in learn-
ers and teachers of the key characteristics of workplace discourse as described
particularly in Chapters 13. These characteristics are summarized below:
1. Workplace interactions are different from everyday interactions in terms of

their goal orientation, as well as other characteristics, such as asymmetry,
which influence the language and discourse structure in a number of ways.
2. There are important differences between the vocabulary and phraseology
used in workplace and business situations compared to social or intimate
situations, as demonstrated by the different relative frequencies of certain
lexical items and chunks in business compared to non-business corpora.
3. Because of its goal orientation, workplace discourse is structured, and
participants engage in a range of genres to accomplish workplace tasks.
4. Problem-solving is a key activity in the workplace, and a large proportion of
workplace discourse involves talking about problems, discussing solutions
and making evaluations.
5. People working together pay attention to relational as well as transactional
concerns, which results in the occurrence of various kinds of relational talk
and the use of interpersonal devices, such as hedges, vague language and
idioms.
While not wanting to deny the usefulness of teaching more specific features
of workplace discourse, such as the mastery of particular genres, a focus on
developing an awareness of these more general features of workplace discourse is
in keeping with a holistic, socially situated approach to learning which also pays
attention to interpersonal and social aspects of communication, and not only to
functional/transactional ones (Lave and Wenger 1991, Adam and Artemeva
2002). It thus avoids the cookie cutter approach to teaching (Freedman and
Adam, 2000, cited in Belcher 2004, p. 169), a criticism which some genre ana-
lysts in the social constructionist (New Rhetoric) school have levelled at genre
teaching that takes an overly formulaic, rule-based approach (see Belcher
2004). Such awareness-raising is also consistent with a critical approach to
teaching (Pennycook 1997), as learners and teachers are encouraged to develop
a broader understanding of the nature of workplace discourse and the factors
that shape the language. The next section makes some suggestions for dealing
with each of these aspects of workplace discourse. Both learners and teachers
can benefit from awareness-raising activities of this nature (though they may
need to be slightly different for each target group), but for the sake of simplic-
ity, the following discussion refers to learners only as addressees.
7.4.1 How is workplace discourse different from

everyday language?
As we saw in Chapter 3, recent corpus research on business corpora has
given us insights into the most frequently occurring words, collocations and
pragmatically specialized chunks (i.e. fixed phrases), and these findings can
be drawn on in devising teaching activities. As a starting point, even something
as basic as a list of frequent or key words derived from research on business
corpora is useful for raising awareness of the special characteristics of work-
place discourse (point 2 of the list above). For example, learners could be
given a list of words and asked to decide which ones they think are typical
for workplace conversations and everyday conversations (see Activity 1 in the
Appendix). This could lead to a discussion of what the key differences are
between workplace language and everyday language (e.g. formality, topic etc.).
A similar activity could be devised for frequent collocations or chunks found in
business compared with everyday corpora (see Chapter 3.3.3).
While vocabulary exercises like this are useful, perhaps the greatest contribu-
tion research has to make to materials development is in discovering the dis-
course characteristics of business and workplace language. Teaching materials
may frequently focus too much on language at the lexical and grammatical level,
and not enough on discourse, that is the structure and characteristics of longer
texts and spoken exchanges. In a previous publication (Koester 2002), I argue for
a discourse approach to teaching, and suggest that there are two ways in which natu-
rally occurring conversations can be drawn on to develop materials for teaching.
On the one hand, recordings or transcripts of actual encounters can be used as

part of the material, or alternatively, insights gained from the analysis of naturally
occurring encounters can inform the development of pedagogical tasks.
A discourse-based activity, which aims to raise awareness of the special
characteristics of workplace discourse (point 1 of the above list) and uses
transcripts of actual encounters is described below. Learners are shown two
brief extracts from a casual conversation and workplace conversation respec-
tively; as illustrated in examples 7.1 and 7.2 below:
Example 7.1: Conversation Extract (Talking about the running of the bulls in
Pamplona):
(1) Gina Thats not your thing. No, seems its kind of wild. Hehehe
(2) Kate Hehehe
(3) Ann Dangerous. Hehe
(4) Gina Dangerous exactly. Hehehe
(5) Kate Well
(6) Gina I had a feeling-
(7) Kate Some of those guy get killed every year.
( Cambridge University Press)
Example 7.2: Meeting Extract
(1) Amy So lets also schedule a meeting for that as well.

And we should do that this week.
(2) Chris This week! Uh, Okay.
(3) Amy Lets schedule the DP meeting right now.
Learners could then be given questions or prompts for discussion which

direct them to reflect on the specific characteristics of workplace (or institu-
tional) discourse as put forward by Drew and Heritage (1992): (1) goal orienta-
tion, (2) special and particular constraints and (3) special inferential frameworks
(see Chapter 1), for example:
Example 7.3
Look at the two extracts and think about how the following things are different:
z the topic of the conversation
z the goals of the speakers
z how and when speakers take turns
z who controls the conversation
z the language
The activity would aim to highlight the following differences between

the two extracts, and by extension between everyday conversation and
workplace talk in general:
z The meeting extract in example 7.2 is clearly focused on a workplace task

and a transactional goal (to arrange a meeting), whereas in the conversation
extract in example 7.1, there is no such focus, but rather the speakers
mutual interest in the topic which is the driving force.
z The meeting extract has a more orderly structure, with one person speaking
at a time, whereas the conversation extract seems messy with laughter,
overlaps and interruptions.
z Example 7.2 shows that workplace talk is often asymmetrical, with one
speaker (here Amy) having more control, whereas the everyday conversa-
tion (example 7.1) shows participants playing a more equal role, with speak-
ers contributing freely.
z The meeting extract contains some words which have a high frequency in a
business context (e.g. meeting, schedule).2
7.4.2 Developing competence in workplace discourse: discourse

structure, problem-solving and evaluation
Discourse structure
Recordings or transcripts of actual business encounters can also be used for
activities aimed at raising learners awareness of other characteristics of busi-
ness discourse, including discourse structure and the role of problem-solving
and evaluation (points 3 and 4 of the above list). Depending on the level of
the learners, naturally occurring recordings or transcripts can pose quite a
challenge, but as the examples above show, the excerpts need not be very long,
and can be carefully selected for ease of comprehension. Transcripts could also
be simplified and adapted, or even rerecorded with actors to ensure a good
recording quality (see Carter and McCarthy 1997). Altering transcripts in this
way of course means they are no longer entirely authentic, but such adapted
transcripts will nevertheless be much more realistic and representative of real
life discourse than entirely scripted dialogues.
A direct result of the goal orientation of task-oriented workplace interactions is
that they tend to be more structured than everyday conversations or off-task talk.
This is particularly visible in the opening and closing phases of an encounter, and
therefore it can be useful to focus learners attention on these particular phases
of workplace encounters. People often start off business interactions by stating
what it is they want to talk about (see Koester 2006, pp. 2728), for example:
Example 7.4
z I have a quick question for you.

z Uh . . . just wanted to tell you about my . . . conversation with Tony.
z I got a suggestion . . . by the way with this.
Learners could be shown such examples of advance topic summaries pro-

duced by speakers at the beginning of a workplace encounter, and asked to
guess what the conversation will be about.
Speakers also often summarize what has been discussed or agreed at the end
of the encounter, particularly in the case of a meeting, for example:
Example 7.5
Amy So those are my to dos for tomorrow, itll be the left side, and . . .
miscellaneous credits.
[2]
Chris Works for me. Thanks.
Work in conversation analysis (CA) on the structure of opening and closing

sequences can usefully be applied to raising learners awareness of the
characteristics of these phases of encounters (see Koester 2009). Furthermore,
as relational talk, or phatic communion, often occurs at the edges of
workplace encounters (see Chapter 5), focusing on the opening and closing
phases of encounters also provides an opportunity to sensitize learners to the
importance of relationship building in the workplace. Activity 2 in Appendix II.
shows a classroom activity which uses an entire (simplified) naturally occurring
workplace encounter from a university office. This is designed to raise learners
awareness of how transactional workplace conversations are structured as well
as to show how relational work is woven into transactional talk, particularly in
the opening and closing phases. Activity 3 (Appendix II) is a follow-up activity
which guides learners in creating their own interactive task-orientated dialogue
exhibiting a number of characteristics of workplace encounters: initial phatic
communion, conversation-initial and final topic summaries and positive
evaluation. This activity aims to develop learners ability not only to master the
structural characteristics of business talk resulting from its goal orientation, but
also the relational dimension (point 5 in the list above).
After having introduced learners to the general structural characteristics of
workplace discourse, the characteristics of specific genres can be dealt with,
depending on the particular needs of the group. Here research in genre analy-
sis (see Chapter 2) can be drawn on to teach the structures and other features
of particular genres, such as negotiations and meetings.
Problem-solving and evaluation

As discussed throughout this book, a great deal of spoken business communica-
tion involves problem-solving of some kind (see Chapters 2 and 3). In the ABOT
Corpus, over a quarter of all conversations involved decision-making aimed
at solving a work-related issue; thus the most frequently occurring genre was
decision-making (Koester 2006). As discussed in Chapter 3, decision-making
conversations are often structured according to a problem-solution pattern

(Hoey 1983, 1994). Another characteristic of decision-making conversations is
that modal verbs, especially verbs expressing obligation and necessity (have
to, need to, should) and idioms are highly frequent, and are used to express
judgements and evaluations of the problems and courses of action discussed.
Extracts from naturally occurring dialogues can again be used to introduce
learners to these features of decision-making encounters in workplace discourse.
For example, an extract from a meeting which follows a problem-solution
pattern (e.g. example 3.10 in Chapter 3) could be used together with reflection
and discussion questions which guide learners in discovering the elements of
the pattern. However, a fairly long extract may be needed to show a complete
problem-solution pattern, and moreover, the stages are not always clearly
separate in spoken discourse.3 Therefore it may be more fruitful to introduce
learners to general features of problem-solving discourse, including words
and expressions to talk about problems and solutions, modal verbs and other
evaluative devices.
Activity 4 in Appendix II uses an extract (slightly adapted from the original)
from a meeting between two editors, Beth and Carol, discussed in Chapter 3
(example 3.8). The questions in the first activity aim to raise learners aware-
ness of these features of problem-solving discourse; and in the second activity,
learners become more actively engaged by selecting modal verbs to complete
the gaps in the transcript of the next part of the meeting. This extract could
also be used to introduce learners to the idiom sit down and think/talk about
(used twice in this meeting) which is a frequently-used lexical signal for
problem-solving. Idioms tend to be taught as quaint, colourful expressions,
whereas they are actually used to express important evaluative and interper-
sonal meanings (McCarthy 1998, pp. 129149, Koester 2000).
Material which draws on research findings might also involve creating
simulated, but realistic dialogues or exchanges, which are based on real exam-
ples. This is one way of addressing the problem of how to exemplify discourse
patterns, such as problem-solution patterns, which may be spread over a lot of
text in real interactions.
7.4.3 Developing interpersonal skills

The important role played by various forms of relational talk has been empha-
sized throughout this book. This is not reflected adequately in most teaching
material, where small talk or socializing tends to be dealt with separately
from work-related language and skills. A recent survey of German users of
English (McMaster 2008) showed that conducting small talk is often perceived
by learners as being difficult, which is a further argument for giving it a more
prominent place on a course syllabus. As we saw in Chapter 5, relational talk is
often woven into task-oriented talk, in the form of relational sequences brief
comments or quips that are relevant to the task in some way, but not essential,
in addition to occurring as phatic communion at the beginning and end of

an encounter. Even in talk that is fully focused on getting a job done, people
interacting at work show their attention to relational concerns through the
use of interpersonal language, such as hedges, vague language or modal verbs
and idioms. In fact, these interpersonal devices were all more frequent in trans-
actional talk than in small talk in the ABOT Corpus. Handfords (2007 and
forthcoming) corpus research on CANBEC shows that many of the most
frequent chunks or clusters have interpersonal functions, and he finds that
hedging and indirect language makes up a considerable amount of CANBEC
(forthcoming). As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, the prevalence of interper-
sonal language reflects the increased use of politeness and solidarity strategies
in workplace discourse, which result from the institutional and discursive asym-
metries linked to particular workplace practices or genres.
Given this weight of evidence demonstrating the importance of interpersonal
language in the workplace, developing interpersonal skills should clearly be
given a prominent place on a syllabus for teaching English for occupational and
business purposes. The question, then, is what exactly should this interpersonal
syllabus contain? Corpus evidence is now available of what some of the most
frequent interpersonal devices in workplace interactions are, and Handfords
pioneering work on frequent chunks in CANBEC provides a useful basis for
compiling such a syllabus. Taking into account the range of interpersonal devices
found in workplace interactions, I would suggest that there are four broad areas
of interpersonal meaning which are relevant for workplace discourse:
1. expressing stance
2. hedging and politeness
3. referring to shared knowledge
4. showing solidarity
The most frequent linguistic devices used to express these meanings are listed
below together with illustrative examples from the ABOT Corpus (key language
is underlined):
1. Expressing stance: evaluating, making judgements, giving opinions:

language used: modal verbs,4 conditionals, idioms, evaluative adjectives
z Be nice if there was some place where you could print it out and the date
would show up every time.
z Win some you lose some. We coulda made seven hundred quid out of it,
couldnt we.
z I think it looks better without, but Id rather it was on.
z This is the one where the least little error will come back to haunt you.
In view of the evaluative nature of much workplace discourse, expressing

stance is a key interpersonal skill and can be used for both transactional and
relational purposes. Stance markers in the first example include an evaluative

adjective (nice), a conditional structure (if there was), modals (would and could),
which are used to evaluate an aspect of a task the speakers are engaged in. This
example shows that conditionals are often used not just to hypothesize or talk
about possibilities (which is how they are often taught), but also to evaluate a
situation and express opinions and preferences. These items perform an inter-
personal function as they express the speakers subjective views and opinions,
rather than ideational (informational) content (Halliday 1978).
2. Hedging and expressing politeness

language used: modal verbs and adverbs, vague language, past tense
z Uh just wanted to come and chat to you a little bit about the company.
z I mean :hh actually, I think if you just wanna send them to a friend or
something, you could order them through the gratis order form.
z An its an its kind of a you know you dont have to like write down the
minute that you got the request and the minute that you got it done,
an you just say well that took me about four hours to deliver it.
z I mean if you could sort of bring me up da:te.
The first example is from a customer-supplier meeting (see Chapter 2,

example 2.6), and shows the supplier moving to the business phase of the
meeting after the initial small talk. Instead of saying lets get down to business
(a phrase often found in course book dialogues), he performs this move in a
very indirect manner, using two adverbial hedges (just + a little bit), past tense
(wanted) and an informal lexical item (chat). This transitional move seems to
require a high degree of interpersonal skill, as getting down to business is a
potentially face-threatening act: the supplier, who is trying to get more busi-
ness, could be perceived as imposing himself on the customer. By using these
politeness strategies, the supplier tries to ensure a smooth transition that will
not threaten the solidarity that has just been established through the initial
phatic phase. All the other examples involves directives or requests, which often
require the use of politeness strategies, as discussed in Chapter 4.
3. Showing and building shared knowledge:

language used: Interactive expressions (you know, of course), vague language
(stuff, sort of, things like that)
z Because shes missing the servers and things like that

z Especially this stuff. This you know . . . this job [. . .]
z Theres a fair amount of sort of . . . standard stuff at Belvedere, we can
take it from there.
z So we take all the funny sizes . . . an all the you know the odd: . . . bits
an pieces an things
Referring to shared knowledge is one way in which speakers show that they
have a relationship with one another. The vague language and interactive
expressions used in these examples seem to be implying to the addressee you
and I both know what we are talking about, and thus signals a certain degree
of familiarity and informality between the speakers. Using vague language also
allows speakers to refer to shared information efficiently, and therefore it occurs
more frequently in unidirectional genres, such as procedural discourse and
briefing, where the focus is on facts and information (see Koester 2007a)
4. Showing empathy and solidarity: expressing agreement, positive evaluation

language used: evaluative adjectives and idioms, emotive verbs (like, love),
positive feedback signals (Great!), colloquialisms and idioms, humour
(i) You know what Debbie, thats a very good idea.

(ii) Angus Oh you know Ive got things like buff ninety-five gram, and um . . .
uh velum a hundred an four gram, an green, an grey, and . . .
Paul Yeah that sort o thing, yeah.
Angus Right! Well youre my man.
(iii) Amy So even if I see you at the marketing task force, and dont have
my things you wont . . . have to embarrass me.
Chris Forgive you anyway yes.
The above examples show the use of a range of devices that express solidarity
and empathy: positive evaluation and agreement (example i), the use of a collo-
quial expressions and idioms (example ii) and the use of humour (example iii).
Further solidarity strategies in the first example are the use of an interactive
expression (you know what) and the addressees name. While politeness strat-
egies have received some attention in teaching material, the same is not true of
solidarity strategies, which have largely been neglected.
Identifying the key linguistic devices used in each of these four areas in this
way is a first step to syllabus and materials design. On the one hand, teaching
such interpersonal strategies may seem challenging, as they involve indirect
and subtle uses of language which could be complex for learners to master.
On the other hand, they are frequently expressed through conventionalized
phrases and expressions, such as I just wanted to which can be easily learnt.
Many of the linguistic devices used in the above examples are among the
most frequent chunks identified by Handford in CANBEC (2007 and forth-
coming), for example: you know, I think, I mean, sort of, if you, and
things like that.
7.4.4 Teaching international English

One possible objection to teaching some of the linguistic devices used in the
above examples might be that they are produced by native speakers of English,
and are therefore not appropriate for learners who will be working in inter-
national contexts. As we saw in Chapter 6, there is some evidence that vague
language and idioms may be used less in international contexts where not all
participants are native speakers (Rogerson-Revell 2008); and Seidlhofer (2001
and 2004) claims that unilateral idiomaticity on the part of native speakers
can cause communication problems. However, as discussed earlier in this
chapter (and in Chapter 6), a number of recent studies have shown that inter-
personal devices, including vague language and idioms are used in lingua franca
contexts (e.g. Cheng 2007, Pitzl 2009). The actual tokens or phrases used by
lingua franca speakers may be different from those used by native speakers
(Kordon 2006), but nevertheless Handford (forthcoming) found that many of
the most frequent chunks used in international meetings and those with only
native speakers participants were the same in CANBEC.
There is certainly a case for teaching those idioms and expressions which, in
the words of Prodromou (2003, p. 47), travel lightly from culture to culture,
that is are most widely used, and not restricted to particular varieties of English.
This does not mean, however, that learners should not be made aware of idioms
they may not use. Corpus data need not be treated as a source of models of
English usage, but can be approached critically, with learners being encour-
aged to explore differences in usage between native speaker and lingua franca
varieties.5 Moreover, the increasing availability of lingua franca corpora (e.g.
VOICE and ELFA) and of research into lingua franca interactions means that
these can be drawn on as well in deciding what to include in a course syllabus.
Based on research on (Business) English as a lingua franca to date (see Chapter 6),
it seems that learners who will be using English in international situations would
benefit from awareness-raising and training in strategic communication skills,
such as accommodation strategies (Haegemann 2002, Cogo 2009), paraphrasing
and repetition (Kaur 2009) and providing upshots and formulations (i.e.
summaries) of the interlocutors utterances (Firth 1996).
7.5 Conclusion
The aim of this chapter has been to show the contribution that research in
workplace discourse can make to teaching, and to put forward some concrete
suggestions for teaching and materials development based on research insights.
I have outlined what I consider to be some of the most important elements to
be included in teaching spoken workplace discourse, which has also provided
the opportunity to review some of the main features of workplace discourse
discussed in this book. There are, of course, other areas to include in a teaching
syllabus which have not been dealt with here, such as specific workplace genres,
and the skills and sub-skills needed in their performance. Written, as well as
spoken communication needs to be given attention, as do the various forms of
computer-mediated interaction and intercultural communication.
I have focused here on activities which aim at raising learners (and teachers)
awareness of the distinguishing features of workplace discourse as revealed by
corpus research, conversation analysis and discourse analysis. In particular,
I have been concerned with showing how interpersonal skills, which have largely
been neglected in teaching materials, can systematically be included in a sylla-
bus of English for occupational, professional and business purposes. I hope that
the suggestions and illustrative examples in this chapter, and the research
discussed in this book, will provide inspiration for teachers, trainers, educators
or materials and course developers who strive to base their professional
practice on realistic, research-informed models of workplace discourse.
Appendix I: Adhesive Labels
Ben: Branch Manager

Sam: Sales Rep
(1) Sam [shouts to Ben in adjoining office] Ben. where could I get a
hundred an seventeen label layout, on a sheet. A4.
[1 minutes of the conversation not recorded.]
(2) Sam See its got nineteen done. Ben: Tha- (yeah) nineteen millimetres
done, but its only a forty-sheet layout, a . . . /as certain./
(3) Ben And how many did he say? Does he want /??/?
(4) Sam a hundred an seventeen.
[3]
Sam He was saying something about kiss-cutting. (Um) [2] (So)
(5) Ben (Ah ???) [2: Ben is probably looking something on in price list]
(6) Sam Cause if we can get hold of em I mean hehe said he can get em
from Merchants Paper . . . So I dont- know if they actually . . . stock
them themselves or theyre getting hold of em somehow, but they-
he said he doesnt like them, so he doesnt wanna go through them,
[2]
(7) Ben (Alright) What does happen, if . . . If you look at . . . uhm . . . [4]
Somebody comes on to you an says . . . we want some twenty
millimetre . . . circular labels. right?
(8) Sam Mm
[2.5]
(9) Ben An he might have already done the job before, . . . So what they do:,
is they- if theyve done the job before:, they . . . print onto these-
onto these labels, Sam: Yeah wi- with a printing plate yeah?
(10) Sam Yeah,
(11) Ben So on the printing plate, . . . [4 sec: draws a diagram] [whistles]
(Lets say . . .) Lets say thats a printing plate.
(12) Sam Yeah,
(13) Ben So . . . what they do, is /they then say/ right okay, right, . . .
[3: Ben still drawing] Heres our- heres our sheet, of labels Sam:
Yeah, an theyre twenty millimetre circular labels.
[8: Ben drawing and making some noises] You got the- got the
drift. There Thats- thats your sheet o labels right,
where the circular /holes/ are,
162 Appendix I
(14) Sam Mm
[2]
(15) Ben /So . . . / we say hm! Done the job before, you wanna print em
again, . . . We do twenty millimetre circular labels as well . . .
Alright?
(16) Sam (Yeah)
(17) Ben So heres his printing plate, an on his printing plate, hes got-
lets say theyre- lets say theyre um: labels for peanuts.
(18) Sam Yeah,
(19) Ben [drawing and pointing to his diagram as he speaks] so on each one
o those, . . . theyre just white labels, and in the middle o that you
might put a picture of a . . . peanut, . . . with a couple o legs and a
couple o arms an /?/ an put peanuts under it right? Alright?
(20) Sam Yeah . . . [chuckles]
(21) Ben So all youve got on here, . . . is loads o little peanuts, with arms
anlegs, . . . So . . . on that printing plate, you got them going round
an round a cylinder, . . . thats /flat/ wrapped round a cylinder
like that right, . . . an here comes all the labels yeah?. . . So here
comes these labels, . . . an all those little . . . peanuts, land, right in
the middle of all those . . . labels, right?
(22) Sam Yeah,
(23) Ben Bonzai! Alright so we come along, an we go yeah! . . . We do
labels, with twenty- milli- twenty millimetre labels, An heres ours, . . .
[6 sec: drawing] (Alright theres all that) Alright. We aint got
them anymore, so heres his blanket, /this is/ his printing plate,
Sam: Yeah an here comes our labels. [whistles and draws] Oh
fuck! Where are all those little peanuts gonna go, theyre gonna
go nowhere near his fucking labels,
(24) Sam Mhm,
(25) Ben So, . . . the thing is, hes got two options. He can either use, exactly
the same . . . labels . . . again, which means to say that he hasnt got
to change that plate, . . . which means all he does is go an get
the old plate out that he used before, Sam: Mm an stick- stick . . . /
the plate o labels on/. Sam: Mm Or, . . . he says well I dont
wanna use those people anymore, . . . plates a bit knackered anyway.
So I have to:, get another plate made up, that m- matches that
format that /lay down of/ labels.
(26) Sam Right . . . Okay,
(27) Ben Uh:m . . . Now all these labels have already been pre-cut out,
havent they.
[Encounter continues for approximately 5 more minutes]

Appendix II: Sample Activities
Activity 1: Frequent business words1

Below are twenty words: ten are typical in business, and ten are unusual in busi-
ness compared to everyday English. Which ones do you think are typical in
business, and which ones are more usual in everyday English? Why?
We, I, business, oh, problem, house, need, shit, issue, cool, if, terrible, customer, hate,
sales, was, contract, lovely, hmm, no.
Answer key
Business keywords:
We, business, problem, need, issue, if, customer, sales, contract, hmm,
Negative business keywords (more usual in everyday English):
I, oh, house, shit, if, customer, sales, contract, no
Activity 2: Beginning and ending a conversation2
Getting information can sometimes be more complicated than simply asking a

question. It is also important to know how to begin and end a conversation.
Look at the following real conversation which took place in a university office
in North America. Karen, a student, goes into the office to ask Don, who works
there, a question about her ID (her student identity card). Karen and Don
know each other.
What happens in the conversation before Karen asks the question she wants
answered? How do the speakers end the conversation?
(1) Karen Hello.

(2) Don Hiya
(3) Karen How are you?
164 Appendix II
(4) Don Im all right.

(5) Karen Good. I have a quick question for you. I hope its a quick question.
Tell me why on my ID this year it says it expires on June thirtieth
as opposed to September thirtieth.
(6) Don It always said June thirtieth as far as I know.
(7) Karen The last . . . I just checked the last two I had; the last two years, it
said September thirtieth.
(8) Don Maybe- are you scheduled to graduate this June?
(9) [Karen shakes head]
(10) Don I dont know. Talk to Helga.
(11) Karen Okay, thank you.
(12) Don You can go right in.
(13) Karen Okay.
[Karen goes into back office to talk to Helga and comes back out about
1 minute later]
(14) Karen Thank you, Don
(15) Don So it was a quick question and answer, huh?
(16) Karen Quick question, quick answer.
(17) Don All right!
(18) Karen Thanks.
(19) Don Yeah.
Activity 3: Planning a conversation where you need to get

something done
Make an arrangement, ask for information, ask for a favour

Before you begin, plan your conversation:
1. Greet your partner and ask how they are

2. Tell your partner what you want to talk to them about.
You could begin with:
I just wanted to . . .
Id like to . . .
3. Now ask your questions, make the arrangements, etc.
4. Now show your partner you have finished, for example you can say:
I think thats everything.
I think thats my last question.
I just wanted to check that.
5. End on a positive note, for example:
Thats great!
Appendix II 165
Thanks for all your help.

Thats very helpful.
Im glad I asked you about that.
Im glad weve sorted that out.
Activity 4: Problem solving

The two extracts below are from a meeting in a publishing company between a
senior editor (Carol) and her assistant editor (Beth), where they talk about how
they can improve a procedure.
1. Look at the first extract from the conversation and answer the questions:
(a) What words or expressions show that there is a problem?
(b) What words or expressions show that the speakers are trying to find a
solution?
(c) What verbs do the speakers use to show they think certain actions are
necessary?
(1) Beth Ill update this. I dont need to keep this as it is now
(2) Carol You need to update this
too.
(3) Beth Right.
(4) Carol However, . . . its- its complex.
(5) Beth You know Im wondering whether we should have new
columns
(6) Carol We have to- we have to sit down and think about how we can
(7) Beth Yeah. Id like to sit down and . . .
(8) Carol turn it into a something that could be updated every
Beth Mm. Yeah.
(9) Beth Cause I could tell that before you left for the UK, an . . .
when we kept- I kept doing it, and then we kept saying no thats
not right. I was getting very confused.
2. Now look at how the meeting continues, and complete the gaps with
following modals:
have to, need to, should, could
(1) Carol Yeah. I mean you (a)________ have this cut off date, and say
anything before is on this side.
(2) Beth I know. I know. and then its confusing.
(3) Carol and but when its the running thing then the cut off
date doesnt work anymore. So, anyway.
(4) Beth Right. Well (b) ________ go through it.
166 Appendix II
(5) [CarolI just wanted to say that . . . uh- um . . . you (c) _______ keep a
record of all the reprints,
(6) Beth Right,
(7) Carol and we (d)________ be able to use this in some way, But it may
(e)_______ be modified, So if you (f )______ take a look at it
and see.
(8) Beth Yeah.
(9) Carol Think about it and well sit down and talk about it.
(10) Beth Yeah. I think its-
Beth Okay.
(From the Cambridge International Corpus, Cambridge University Press)
Answer key
1. (a) Words and expression for problems: complex, no thats not right, very
confused
(b) Words and expression for solutions:
Im wondering whether we should . . .
Id like to sit down and . . .
(c) speakers use modal verbs: need to, should, have to
2. (a) have to, (b) have to, (c) should (d) should (e) need to (f) could
(Note: The answers show the original version of the text, but alternatives are
possible for some gaps.)
Notes
Notes on Data and Transcription

1
The notion of key is based on Brazil (1985)
Chapter 1
1
See Drew and Heritage (1992, pp. 2165) and Koester (2006, pp. 36) for a more
detailed discussion of these features.
Chapter 2
1
Mller (2006b, p. 147), however, distinguishes the reason for the interaction
(Anlass) from goals (Ziele), which are seen as interactively constituted in the
encounter.
2
The Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC) is 1-million-
word corpus of spoken workplace interactions consisting mainly of meetings.
3
See also King and Sereno (1984) on the effect of relationship history on commu-
nication, Norrick (1993) on customary joking relationships and Koester (2004b
and 2006) on relational talk in workplace encounters.
4
See also Jefferson and Lee (1992) on the tension between the goals of troubles-
telling and those of a service encounter.
5
By tools, Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) mean more than just the material
objects used in the course of enacting a genre, but also the specialist knowledge
that genre users draw on, for example knowing how to use a microscope or
knowledge of statistics.
Chapter 3
1
In a corpus-driven approach, the theories developed derive from the corpus
data, which means recurrent patterns and frequency distributions are expected to
form the basic evidence for linguistic categories (Tognini-Bonelli 2001, p. 84).
This can be contrasted to a corpus-based approach, where a corpus is drawn on
to test or exemplify theories which were not themselves derived from the corpus
(ibid., p. 65)
168 Notes
2
However, some lexical items, such as crane, lifts and vehicle, which have a high
frequency within the sectors of industry represented in the corpus, also come out
as key.
3
As the sub-corpus is only about a quarter of the size of CANBEC (262,000 as
opposed to 1 million), frequencies were normalized to a million words in order to
allow comparison.
4
Transcription codes used in HKCSE:
* marks the beginning of an overlapping utterance in the first speakers turn
** marks the beginning of an overlapping utterance in the second speakers turn
(.) indicates a short pause
5
See Chapter 4 for a fuller discussion of politeness.
6
According to Brown and Levinson (1978/87), certain discourse acts threaten the
face of the addressee, and are therefore often mitigated by speakers through the
use of politeness strategies. For a fuller discussion, see Chapter 4.
Chapter 4
1
must does occur in other genres, but is very infrequent across the corpus as a
whole. Findings from other corpora confirm that must is very infrequent in
business and workplace talk. It is negatively key in CANBEC, which means it is
significantly less frequent than in social and intimate talk (Handford 2007).
2
Original turn numbers are retained in these extracts, examples 4.94.10, to reflect
where in the interaction the extract occurs.
3
Handfords study also found a convergence between genre and speaker relation-
ship: manager-subordinate meetings in CANBEC tend to have a procedural focus,
while peer meetings tend to involve more decision-making. While this tendency
can also be observed in the ABOT Corpus, I would nevertheless argue that genre
is a separate factor (from speaker relationship) that influences linguistic choices.
Both quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that different performances of
the same genre display similar linguistic characteristics, regardless of speaker
relationship.
Chapter 5
1
See also King and Sereno (1984) on the effect of relationship history on commu-
nication, Norrick (1993) on customary joking relationships and Koester (2004b
and 2006) on relational talk in workplace encounters.
2
For most of the recordings made for the ABOT Corpus, the researcher, rather
than the participants controlled the tape recorder, therefore any phatic commu-
nion that occurred was usually recorded. Its absence cannot usually be explained
by participants simply not switching on the recording equipment because they did
not think it was important.
3
See Koester (2006) (chapter 7) for a further discussion of identity negotiation in
manager-subordinate encounters.
Notes 169
4
See Norrick (1993, pp. 4381) on customary joking relationships between colleagues.
5
But note that definitions of humour in the literature abound and do not always
converge, for example humour may be defined more from the speakers or from
the other participants point of view (see Holmes 2000b for an overview).
6
This does not necessarily mean that women used humour more than men did, as
the corpus was not balanced for gender (there were slightly more women than
men), or for the amount of talk produced by each. See also Holmes et al. (2001)
for a comparison of humour used by men and women.
Chapter 6
1
The terms native speaker and non-native speaker have recently come under
attack, as they tend to imply a mindset whereby the non-native speaker is viewed
as deficient compared with an idealized native speaker, this negative view
being reinforced by the negative particle non (Firth and Wagner 1997,
Seidlhofer 2001). While fully acknowledging this, I nevertheless occasionally
use these terms in this chapter where making such a distinction is relevant to the
discussion.
2
The notion of world Englishes, developed by Kachru (see e.g. Kachru 1985,
Kachru and Nelson 1996), recognizes the existence of different varieties of
English conceptualized according to three concentric circles: the Inner Circle,
consisting of the countries where English is the first or dominant language (e.g.
Britain, the United States of Ameria), the Outer Circle (often former British
colonies), where English has some kind of official function (e.g. India, Kenya) and
the Expanding Circle, in which English is typically used in lingua franca settings
for specific purposes.
3
Special transcription conventions used by Pitzl (2005):
(.) brief pause up to a half second

() uncertain transcription
UPPER CASE prominent word or syllable
Numbered tags, e.g. <7> <7>, mark overlaps between speakers
4
Of course, creative play with idioms is part and parcel of native speaker speech as
well, but such creativity assumes knowledge of the standard form. However, when
non-native speakers are creative with idioms, this may not be accepted by native
speakers, but viewed as faulty usage (Prodromou 2003). ELF interactions, where
no native speakers are present, provide more scope for idiomatic creativity, as
native speaker norms do not necessarily apply.
5
Special transcription conventions used by Rogerson-Revell (2008):
prominent syllable
bold focus or tonic syllable
/ tone unit final rise
?? uncertain transcription
. brief pause
.. other pauses: two to five ellipsis marks indicate approximate length of pause
170 Notes
6
Special transcription conventions used by Firth (1996):
underlining emphatic stress
UPPER CASE word enunciated louder than surrounding speech
[] Overlapping utterances
(h) audible aspirations within words
7
Special transcription conventions used by Roberts and Campbell (2006):
(.) untimed brief pause
(xxx) uncertain transcription
[] overlapping utterances
Chapter 7
1
Many of the ideas and activities presented in this section were originally presented
at the TESOL Symposium Teaching English for Specific Purposes: Meeting our
Learners Needs, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Universidad Argentina de la
Empresa, 12 July 2007, and published in Koester (2007b).
2
The activities or questions might need to be adapted, depending on whether they
are used with teachers or learners, and depending on the level of the learners.
See, for example, Koester (2004a), pp. 27, which shows a similar (but more
demanding) activity aimed at English Language Studies students.
3
See also Koester (2004a, pp. 6266), which shows an activity using a longer text
that follows a complete problem solution pattern.
4
The examples here show modal uses of think and know. See Halliday
(1985/1994, p. 354) for a discussion of how to distinguish between lexical and
modal uses of theses verbs.
5
See Handford forthcoming (chapter 9) for an example of a corpus-based activity
which takes a critical approach.
Appendix II
1
I am grateful to Mike Handford for this activity.
2
This activity was first published in Koester, A. (2009), Conversation Analysis in
the language classroom, in S. Hunston and D. Oakey (eds), Introducing Applied
Linguistics: Key Concepts and Skills. London: Routledge, p. 45.
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Index
Page numbers in bold denote words that appear in figures and/or tables.
ABOT Corpus 13, 14, 245, 28, 70 see also British National Corpus (BNC) 45
Corpus of American and British see also BNC
Office Talk Business Discourse 10
humour in 111, 113 business discourse 57, 13, 45, 468, 501,
functions of 112, 113 54, 64, 145, 147, 149, 153
by gender 116 Business English Corpus (BEC) 46, 67
situational 113 see also BEC
teasing and self-deprecation 113 keywords in 50
transactional talk 117
interpersonal markers in the ABOT CA 9, 10, 45, 123 see also Conversation
corpus 62 Analysis
accommodation strategies 124 Cambridge and Nottingham Business
accommodation theory 127 English Corpus (CANBEC) 6, 47,
downward accommodation 128 167 see also CANBEC
Adolphs, S. 61 keywords in 49
apprenticeship 90, 91 Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus
Askehave, I. 24 Discourse in English (CANCODE) 20
Aston, G. 134, 138 see also CANCODE
asymmetry 15, 32, 68, 82, 84, 142, 150 Cameron, D. 16
Campbell, S. 145
Bakhtin, M. M. 22 CANBEC 6, 47, 167 see also Cambridge
Bargiela-Chiappini, F. 5, 10, 150 and Nottingham Business English
BAWE 46 see also British Academic Written Corpus
English Corpus CANCODE 20 see also Cambridge and
Bazerman, C. 18 Nottingham Corpus Discourse in
BEC 46, 67 see also Business English Corpus English
Belcher, D. 146 Candlin, C. 6
BELF 123 see also Business English as Lingua CDA 10, 11 see also Critical Discourse
Franca Analysis
Berkenkotter, C. 18, 37 Charles, M. 13, 146, 148
Berns, M. 125 Cheepen, C. 30
Bhatias four-space model 11 Cheng, W. 12, 30, 45, 60, 147
institutional role 12 Christie, F. 18
Biber, D. 53 chunks 535
Bilbow, G. T. 71, 126 Cicourel, A. 12
BNC 45 see also British National Corpus code-switching 124, 127, 1301
Boxer, D. 112, 115 Cogo, A. 130, 134
British Academic Written English Corpus collocation 45, 513, 57, 60, 668,
(BAWE) 46 see also BAWE 75, 151
188 Index
communities of practice 79, 17, 69, 91, 99, EIL 123, 125, 148 see also English as an
103, 109, 111, 143 International Language
characteristics of 8 ELF 122, 123, 124 see also English as lingua
and discourse communities 79 franca
role of relational talk within 103 ELFA Corpus 124, 136 see also Corpus of
concordancing 51, 59, 66 English as Lingua Franca in
Connor, U. 46, 127 Academic Setting
convergence 127 e-mail 33
conversation analysis (CA) 9, 10, 45, 123 embedded 35
see also CA features of 35
Cook-Gumperz, J. 6, 42 as a hybrid genre 35
corpus analysis 68 origin of 34
corpus and genre 61 English as an International Language 123,
Corpus of American and British Office 125, 148 see also EIL
Talk (ABOT) 13, 14, 25, 28, 70 expert performances 149
see also ABOT Corpus expert user 149
Corpus of English as Lingua Franca in native speakers 149, 159, 169
Academic Settings (ELFA) 124, 136 world Englishes 125, 169
see also ELFA Corpus English as lingua franca (ELF)122, 123, 124
Corpus of Environmental Impact Assessment see also ELF
(EIA) 46 see also EIA Corpus Business English as a Lingua Franca
Corts-Conde, F. 112, 115 (BELF) 123 see also BELF
Coupland, J. 30, 98 intercultural communication 125
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 10, 11 language for communication
see also CDA (Kommunikationssprache) 133
language for identification
decision-making 76 (Identifikationssprache) 133
developing interpersonal skills 1558 English for Academic Purposes (EAP) 63,
evaluative adjectives 156 1467, 149 see also EAP
expressing stance 156 English for International Business
hedging 157 (EIB) 123 see also EIB
shared knowledge 157 English for Occupational Purposes
solidarity 158 (EOP) 146
Devitt, A. 12, 36 English for Specific Purposes (ESP) 63, 146,
directives 38, 48, 58, 709, 805, 93 147 see also ESP
density of directives and requests 79 English in the multi-ethnic workplace 139
politeness theory 73 challenge of double socialization 141
and requests 77 contextualization cues 139
in transactional and collaborative gate-keeping encounters 139, 142
talk 76 job interviews 140
discourse communities 79 EOP 146 see also English for Occupational
characteristics of 8 Purposes
discourse structure 61, 63, 64, 150, 153 Erickson, F. 14, 91
Dow, E. 148, 149 Ervin-Tripp, S. M. 70
Drew, P. 4, 52 ESP 63, 146, 147 see also English for Specific
Purposes
EAP 63, 146 see also English for Academic ethnography 9, 43
Purposes evaluation 4, 22, 24, 25, 64, 65, 88, 114, 120,
Eggins, S. 100 150, 153, 154, 155, 158
EIA Corpus 46 see also Corpus of
Environmental Impact Assessment face 66, 73, 81, 112, 126
EIB 123 see also English for International face-threatening act 66, 723, 75, 80, 834,
Business 102, 117, 120, 157
Index 189
Fairclough, N. 16 idioms and metaphors 138

Farr, F. 61 Iedema, R. 16
Firth, A. 30, 123, 129 Indianapolis Business Learner Corpus
Flowerdew, J. 46, 66 (IBLC) 46, 64
four-space model 11 institutional discourse 57, 16, 52, 678,
front regions and back regions 1316 1401, 152
front stage and back stage 13, 14, 16, 30 characteristics of 67
institutional identity 102
Gee, J. P. 10, 16 interaction order and institutional
genre analysis 1819 order 10
genre chains 37 interactional sociolinguistics 9, 139
genre colonies 20 intercultural communication 125
genre hierarchies 37 interpersonal markers 613, 74, 76
genre networks 37 intertextuality 37, 41, 43
genre sets 37 role of 43
Gimenez, J. C. 34
goal orientation 4, 5, 12, 15, 27, 67, 150, Jenkins, J. 124
1524 Jensen, 35
Goffman, E. 10
Goodwin 14, 36 Kaur, J. 131
Greatbatch, D. 12 keywords 4867, 151
Koester, A. 7, 41, 74, 97
Haegeman, P. 129 Kordon, K. 134, 135
Halliday, 18 Kuiper, K. 30
Hallidayan approach 18
Handford, M. 7, 45, 80, 156 Labov, W. 85
Harris, S. 26, 71 Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) 146,
Hasan, R. 19, 30 147 see also LSP
hedges 21, 612, 62, 68, 74, 767, 79, 81, 84, language-in-action 36, 3840
135, 148, 150, 1567 Lave, J. 7
Heritage, J. 4, 52 let it pass principle 124, 12930
Hewings, M. 147, 150 Levinson, S. C. 22, 71
HKCSE 6, 47 see also Hong Kong Corpus of Louhiala-Salminen, L. 35, 123
Spoken English LSP 146, 147 see also Language for Specific
HKCSE-bus 54, 60 Purposes
job interviews and presentations 55 Lundin, J. 91
Holmes, J. 10, 70, 97, 99, 108, 110
Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English Malinowski, B. 97
(HKCSE) 6, 47 see also HKCSE Marra, M. 99, 108, 110
House, J. 130, 133 Marriott, H. 126
Huckin, T. N. 18, 37 Martin, J. R. 18, 66
Hllen, W. 133 McCarthy, M. 7, 20, 45, 97
humour 99, 108 Medway, P. 39, 43
collaborative versus competitive 108 meetings 25
instances of 110 structure of 289
supportive versus contestive 108 Meierkord, C. 138
and workplace culture 109 Messerman, L. 6, 42
Hutchby, I. 10 Mest-Ketel, M. 136
Hyland, K. 46, 63 MICASE 46, 54
Michigan Corpus of Spoken Academic
Iacobucci, C. 30 English (MICASE) 46, 54
IBLC 46, 64 Miller, C. R. 18
identity negotiation 1013, 112, 120, 168n.3 Miller, Lindsey 146
190 Index
Mitchell, T. F. 30 Scollon, S. W. 142

move and discourse-structure 636 Scott, M. 48
Mller, A. P. 22 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) 123
Mullholand, 34 see also SLA
Seidlhofer, B. 124, 125
Nelson, M. 12, 45, 51 semantic prosody 512
Nickerson, C. 13, 34, 35, 149 service encounters 13, 14, 21, 24, 2933, 44,
47, 57, 71, 100, 101, 134, 135
OKeeffe, A. 48, 53 Shi, L. 146
Orlikowski, W. 12 Simpson, R. 53
SLA 123 see also Second Language
Paltridge, B. 19 Aquisition
phatic communion 32, 978, 1001, Slade, D. 100
106, 154, 156, 168n.2 see also small talk 15, 25, 313, 94, 97, 979, 1008,
relational talk 116, 118, 120, 134, 1557
Pitzl, M.-L. 130 Smart, G. 43
Planken, B. 134, 149 socio-cognitive space 12
Plzl, U. 138 solidarity 84, 85
Poncini, G. 26, 100, 134 Spencer-Oatey, H. 126, 134
pragmatics features 5760 Spoken Business English (SBE) 48
problem-solution patterns 66, 155 see also SBE
problem-solving 267, 51, 64, 65, 67, 150, Stubbe, M. 10, 70, 99
1535 Swales, J. M. 7, 24, 37
procedural discourse 17, 245, 25, 38,
42, 701, 749, 79, 805, 8890, Talk at Work 4
934, 158 Tannen, D. 85, 89
corpus-informed study of 74 Taylor, P. 30, 109
frequency of deontic modals in 74 teaching and teacher training 14950
sub-genres of 70 cookie cutter approach 151
advice-giving as a hybrid genre 70 teaching international English 158
Prodromou, L. 159 Tracy, K. 15, 103
professional discourse 57, 10, 39, 66, Tribble, C. 63
143, 149
Pufahl Bax, I. 70, 71 Upton, T. 46
Pullin Stark, P. 134 Ure, J. 36
Ragan, S. L. 12, 97, 98 vague language (VL) 21, 58, 60, 61, 62, 62,
relational language 131 68, 74, 767, 84, 135, 136, 149, 150,
relational talk 978 see also phatic 1569 see also VL
communion Ventola, E. 30
work done through 99 Victoria, M. 134
relationship-building 5, 62, 94, 100, 106, Vienna Oxford International Corpus of
109, 118, 120, 134 English 124 see also VOICE
reporting 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 65, 88 Vine, B. 70
Roberts, C. 6, 139 VL 21, 58, 60, 61, 62, 62, 68, 74, 767, 84,
Rodrigues, S. B. 109 135, 136, 149, 150, 1569 see also
Rogerson-Revell, P. 123, 126, 129, 130 Vague Language
VOICE 124 see also Vienna Oxford
Sarangi, S. 6 International Corpus of English
SBE 48 see also Spoken Business English
Scheeres, H. 16 Wagner, J. 123
Scollon, R. 142 Warren, M. 60, 147
Index 191
Weigel, M. M. 71 workplace genre 18

Weigel, R. M. 71 collaborative 25
Wellington Language in the Workplace communicative genres in industrial
project (LWP) 13, 27, 73, 145 organizations 24
Wenger, E. 7, 91 non-transactional 25
West, C. 71 within organizations 36
Williams, M. 147 action-based 38
Willing, K. 26 text-based 37
workplace discourse tools 37, 91, 167n.5
approaches to analysing 9 unidirectional 24
genre analysis 9 world Englishes 125, 169n.2
definition of 3 written discourse 11
versus everyday language 151
features of 4, 150 Yates, J. 12
and institutional talk 5 Ylnne-McEwen, V. T. 30, 33
lexico-grammar of 47
frequent words 47 Zhang, Z. 147
and genre 61 Zimmerman, D. 14

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Workplace Discourse

Continuum Discourse Series

Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in

Other titles in the series:

Almut Koester 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN: 9781-84706115-7 (Hardcover)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Part I: Describing Workplace Discourse

2. Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in Workplace Discourse 18

3. What Can a Corpus Tell Us about Workplace Discourse? 45

4. Working Together and Getting People to Do Things: Directives,

4.5 Solidarity and involvement strategies in procedural talk

Part II: Issues and Applications in Workplace Discourse

6. Communicating across Cultures: English as an International

7. Applying Research: Teaching Workplace Discourse 145

Appendix I: Adhesive Labels 161

z Mike Nelsons Business English Lexis Site

My mentor, Michael McCarthy, has continued to provide inspiration for my

Example 2.1 reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press from:

Example 2.3 reproduced by permission of Mouton de Gruyter from: Cook-

, slightly rising in intonation at end of tone unit;

words in these brackets are utterances interjected by a speakers

Heheheh indicates laughter, for each syllable laughed a heh is transcribed.

Describing Workplace Discourse

What is Workplace Discourse?

This book sets out to answer the following questions:

z What is workplace discourse?

This brief extract from an interaction between co-workers illustrates some of

But despite the clear goal-orientation of this encounter, there is nevertheless

(1) Mike Twelve oclock already [as hes walking in]

Despite being focused on accomplishing a particular workplace task, Mike

1.2 Workplace, institutional, professional and

sector organizations have a great deal in common with interactions among

themes of apprenticeship and training at work are explored in more detail in

1.3 Communities of practice and discourse communities

According to Wenger (1998, pp. 7273), communities of practice are

Swales (1990, pp. 2427) proposes that a discourse community . . .

1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals

Mutual engagement seems similar to mechanisms of intercommunication,

The competent members of a given workplace community not only manifest

1.4 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse

The study of workplace discourse is marked by a multiplicity of approaches

1.4.1 Interaction order and institutional order

instance, CA takes a talk-intrinsic view, in which context is seen as dynamically

1.4.2 Textual, tactical, professional and social space

Within textual space, only surface-level properties of discourse are analysed,

to the social context for an explanation of the lexico-grammatical features

1.5 Where does workplace discourse occur?

1.5.1 Front regions and back regions

(1) Visitor /(Hi)/

(1) Don Something very important I need to tell you.

1.6 Workplace discourse in a changing world

1.7 Outline of the book

Workplace Genres: Activities and Texts in

Genre analysis is the study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalized

While genre analysts in the rhetorical school, following Swales definition,

type of relationship between the participants: transactional, professional,

a. existence in most societies

2.2 Recurring or widespread genres in the workplace

Unidirectional genres involve a discursively dominant speaker imparting infor-