LANGUAGE AS A POWER VECTOR IN BUILDING REALITY - APPROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF WORKPLACE DISCOURSE
LANGUAGE AS A POWER VECTOR IN BUILDING REALITY - APPROACHES TO THE ANALYSIS OF WORKPLACE DISCOURSE

Summary/Abstract: This article aims at analysing the natural occurrence of institutional talk in workplace environments, focusing on its characteristics, such as goal orientation, specific constraints, institutional role, but also on the interpersonal dimension it always includes. Workplace talk occurs in a wide range of settings from talk between co-workers, to international business communication. We have focused on the unidirectional and decision-making discourse genre , providing illustrative examples of this frequently used genre in our attempt to show the way in which speakers signal and negotiate genre in the pursuit of transactional goals. Moreover, I have also examined the relational features of workplace discourse, as an ever present component of specific workplace genres. My final aim has been to show that the existence of relational markers carry out important functions within the workplace discourse, proposing different examples for investigating the participants’ both transactional and relational goals.

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