- In studying language and occupation, you should consider particular forms (instruction, interview, discussion, conference, briefing, appointing, disciplining) in relation to their functions. We can understand forms
- in an explicit sense as those kinds of activity that we can name (job interview, team briefing, disciplinary tribunal, conference, marriage ceremony)
- in a looser descriptive sense (discussing a problem, telling a manager about an incident, asking an expert for guidance).
- Here are some general functions of language in occupational contexts:
- Communicating information
- Requesting help
- Confirming arrangements
- Instructing employees or colleagues to do something
- Making things happen or enacting them
- Language interactions may occur between or among those within a given occupation, or between those inside and those outside (customers, clients, the “general public”). This distinction will affect significantly a speaker's language choices.
- Almost every occupation has its own special lexicon - a vocabulary that is specific to the occupation generally (the legal profession, the Merchant Navy, teaching) or more narrowly to the particular solicitors' practice, ship or school.
- Forms only used in the occupation
- forms in the common lexicon but used with meanings which are special to the occupation: justify means very different things to a printer or typesetter and to a priest.
- Lexis is one (admittedly an important one) of various language features that might go to make up a register, which is, in Professor Crystal's phrase “a socially defined variety of language”
- professional orchestral music includes a lexicon of Italian loan words (forte, andante, allegro, pizzicato and so on) with cross-cultural meanings;
- soccer players (and managers and commentators) allows use of the perfect tense in a specific way (he's gone past the defender and given me a good pass, and I've knocked it in)
- particle physicists includes a lexicon of old forms with novel meanings that we cannot describe verbally, but can represent only mathematically, like spin, strangeness and charm.
- Some linguists have attempted to classify illocutionary acts into a number of categories or types. David Crystal, quoting J.R. Searle, gives five such categories:representatives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations.
- Representatives: here the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using such verbs as: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report.
- Directives: here the speaker tries to make the hearer do something, with such words as: ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, invite, insist, request.
- Commissives: here the speaker commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course of action, with verbs such as: guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake, warrant.
- Expressives: the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a state of affairs, using such verbs as: apologize, appreciate, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome.
- Declarations the speaker alters the external status or condition of an object or situation, solely by making the utterance: I now pronounce you man and wife, I name this ship, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead. (In this case, the alteration is not the execution of the sentence - which is in the future - but the convict's passing under sentence and becoming a condemned man or woman.)
- "Face" (as in "lose face") refers to a speaker's
sense of linguistic and social identity. Any speech
act may impose on this sense, and is therefore face
threatening. And speakers have strategies for lessening the threat. Positive politeness means being complimentary and gracious
to the addressee (but if this is overdone, the speaker may alienate the other
party). Negative politeness is found in ways of
mitigating the imposition:
- Hedging: Er, could you, er, perhaps, close the,
um , window?
- Pessimism: I don't suppose you could close the
window, could you?
- Indicating deference: Excuse me, sir, would you mind
if I asked you to close the window?
- Apologizing: I'm terribly sorry to put you out, but
could you close the window?
- Impersonalizing: The management requires all windows
to be closed.
- Conversations are based on speakers taking turns to
make an utterance. Ideally, these come in adjacency
pairs - an initiation or request for information meets an immediate
response. There may also be backchanneling to express
satisfaction or thanks. There are various devices for claiming and keeping a
turn.
- Dropping intonation may signal that a point is
made, so a response is in order.
- Pauses for breath may also be taken as an opening for
another speaker to claim and take a turn. In order to keep the floor, a speaker
may take breaths in the middle of a clause, rather than at the end of it. This
is using an utterance incompletor to retain the speaking turn.
- Another device is to end a clause with a connective,
such as and, therefore, so or but - which signals that the speaker
has more to say.
- Fillers (er or um) can be used to block
others who wish to claim the turn. However a listener can use um or
hm to display sympathy or endorsement and so to encourage a speaker to
continue.
