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> Notes on data and transcription, Acknowledgements, 1 Workplace discourse: an overview, 2 Approaches to analysing workplace discourse, 4 Relational goals: a framework for analysing interpersonal dimensions of workplace talk, 5 A corpus- based comparison of workplace genres, 6 Negotiating consensus and confl ict in workplace talk, 7 Relational talk in workplace interactions, 8 Conclusion, Notes, Bibliography, Index