Investigating Workplace Discourse

<p>Exploring the characteristics of different types of workplace conversations including decision-making training briefing or making arrangements this enthralling account pays particular attention to interactions with a more social focus such as small talk or office gossip.</p><p>Presenting a range of approaches to analyzing such workplace discourse Almut Koester argues for a combination of quantitative corpus-based methods to compare specific linguistic features in different genres and qualitative methods involving a close analysis of individual conversations to explore such issues as politeness power conflict and consensus-building. A corpus of conversations recorded in a variety of office environments both in the UK and the USA is used throughout to demonstrate the interplay between speakers accomplishing tasks and maintaining relationships in the workplace.</p>