Power and Politeness in the Workplace provides insights into the way we all talk at work. The book contains a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This book aims to provide useful information to those interested in the many functions of talk at work. It should be useful to those teaching business or interpersonal communication courses, language in the workplace courses, courses on discourse analysis, communication studies, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. It should also be of interest to workplace practitioners, and especially those involved in Human Resources training, communication skill development, and professional development and education.

Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.

Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people "do" power and politeness in the workplace, and examines the discourse strategies involved in balancing the competing demands of meeting workplace objectives and getting things done on time with maintaining good collegial workplace relationships. Drawing on a large and very varied corpus of data collected in a wide range of workplaces, the authors explore specific types of workplace talk, such as giving advice and instructions, solving problems, running meetings and making decisions. Attention is also paid to the important contribution of less obviously relevant types of workplace talk such as humour and small talk, to the construction of effective workplace relationships. In the final chapter some of the practical implications of the analyses are identified. This Routledge Linguistics Classic is here reissued with a new preface from the authors, covering the methods of analysis, an update on the Language in the Workplace project and a look at the work in the context of recent research. Power and Politeness in the Workplace continues to be a vital read for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics and communication studies.

This book empirically explores how different linguistic resources are utilized to achieve appropriate workplace role inhabitance and to achieve work-oriented communicative ends in a variety of workplaces in Japan. Appropriate role inhabitance is seen to include considerations of gender and interpersonal familiarity, along with speaker orientation to normative structures for marking power and politeness. This uniquely researched edited collection will appeal to scholars of workplace discourse and Japanese sociolinguistics, as well as Japanese language instructors and adult learners of Japanese. It is sure to make a major contribution to the cross-linguistic/cultural study of workplace discourse in the globalized context of the twenty-first century.

The volume addresses the enormous imbalance that exists between academic interest in politeness phenomena when compared to impoliteness phenomena. Researchers working with Brown and Levinson's ([1978] 1987) seminal work on politeness rarely focused explicitly on impoliteness. As a result, only one aspect of facework/relational work has been studied in detail. Next to this research desideratum, politeness research is on the move again, with alternative conceptions of politeness to those of Brown and Levinson being further developed. In this volume researchers present, discuss and explore the concept of linguistic impoliteness, the crucial differences and interconnectedness between lay understandings of impoliteness and the academic concept within a theory of facework/relational work, as well as the exercise of power that is involved when impoliteness occurs. The authors offer solid discussions of the theoretical issues involved and draw on data from political interaction, interaction with legally constituted authorities, workplace interaction in the factory and the office, code-switching and Internet practices. The collection offers inspiration for research on impoliteness in many different research fields, such as (critical) discourse analysis, conversation analysis, pragmatics and stylistics, as well as linguistic approaches to studies in conflict and conflict resolution.

A revolutionary and timely reconsideration of everything we know about power. Celebrated UC Berkeley psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner argues that compassion and selflessness enable us to have the most influence over others and the result is power as a force for good in the world. Power is ubiquitous—but totally misunderstood. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Dr. Dacher Keltner presents the very idea of power in a whole new light, demonstrating not just how it is a force for good in the world, but how—via compassion and selflessness—it is attainable for each and every one of us. It is taken for granted that power corrupts. This is reinforced culturally by everything from Machiavelli to contemporary politics. But how do we get power? And how does it change our behavior? So often, in spite of our best intentions, we lose our hard-won power. Enduring power comes from empathy and giving. Above all, power is given to us by other people. This is what we all too often forget, and it is the crux of the power paradox: by misunderstanding the behaviors that helped us to gain power in the first place we set ourselves up to fall from power. We abuse and lose our power, at work, in our family life, with our friends, because we've never understood it correctly—until now. Power isn't the capacity to act in cruel and uncaring ways; it is the ability to do good for others, expressed in daily life, and in and of itself a good thing. Dr. Keltner lays out exactly—in twenty original "Power Principles"—how to retain power; why power can be a demonstrably good thing; when we are likely to abuse power; and the terrible consequences of letting those around us languish in powerlessness.

Workplace Writing: Beyond the Text draws together a wealth of research into different aspects of writing in workplace settings, creating a comprehensive picture of workplace writing and covering factors and activities that go far beyond the text. In a full analysis of the challenges facing the student writer transitioning from the academy to the workplace, this book: covers topics ranging from intertextuality and collaborative writing practices to considerations of power and politeness, and the impact of organisational culture and processes of socialisation brings together the multiple, often interlinked factors that surround and impact on the process of workplace writing and the texts produced in professional settings takes a close look at the pedagogical implications of the various issues relating to workplace writing serves as a resource for teachers who want to go beyond potentially simplistic accounts of writing in the workplace and to provide students with a richer picture of what happens there Workplace Writing will be essential reading for any students, pre- and in-service teachers and researchers with an interest in professional and business discourse and language teaching for specific purposes.