Occupational contexts: written discourses

Starter: you are the owner of a pub. You have to communicate with the following groups of people.

- Your employees- Other companies e.g. Suppliers

- The local council- With potential customers- With actual customers

- The general public e.g. neighbours

What sort of reasons do you have to communicate with them? What mode would you use and what sort of lexis do you think would be appropriate?

Written discourses in business• What would you expect to see in written

business discourses?– Forms of address?– Lexis?– Phrase structure – can you think of any examples?– Formality? Remember that formality is relative –

we would be unlikely to use the 19th century letter closure: I remain, Sir, your most humble and obdt. Servt.

Consider the activity from the previous slide: how would a letter requesting a licence from the

local council differ from a request to

suppliers or an apology to neighbours

complaining about the noise?

LettersFeatures one might expect:

– special lexis– impersonal passive voice (‘the examination revealed...’ rather than ‘I examined her and

found that...’).– subordinate clauses (‘Following further discussions...’)– passive constructions and impersonal forms (It was felt that.../There are...) and by using

both singular and plural first-person forms for different meanings: we for a business or collective decision, I only when the writer wishes to emphasise an individual decision or attitude.

– some writers avoid the directness and immediacy of the common or demotic lexicon in which they speak, substituting polysyllabic (having many syllables) and Latinate lexemes for shorter forms, especially those of Anglo-Saxon provenance (origin). It is perhaps a persistence of 18th century Poetic Diction - as if classical lexis (from Greek or Latin) is more dignified and authoritative.

Consider this real-life example:

• Latinate nouns (situation, colleagues, accreditation) and verbs(proposing, committed).

• Demonstratives (this, those) to refer to things previously mentioned. • Demotic meet has acquired a preposition acting adverbially (with). Meet

with until recently was reserved for the special sense of suffering some adversity - he met with a terrible fate. Now meet with is used as an alternative to meet, as if the preposition (with) served a useful function in qualifying the verb. Strictly, it is redundant - but for some writers it gives extra weight without extra meaning.

• Generic/ambiguous phrasing: ’taking this matter forward for accreditation’

In order not to let this situation drag on any further I am proposing to meet with those colleagues who are committed to taking this matter forward for accreditation.

TASK:• Annotate this letter with the features on the

previous slides and any others that you notice/feel are of interest.

• Remember to consider the context and audience – who is likely to read this letter?

Another example, from a different context

• In what ways is this letter different? Consider again the context, and make detailed reference to language levels.

Another issue to consider• The linguist Veronika Koller noted that there has recently been

a redefinition of citizens as consumers:– ‘customer services’– ‘customer satisfaction’ (I’ve noticed that on trains I am no longer a

passenger, but a customer)• Many social fields and the language use found in them is

increasingly promotional, using synthetic personalisation and persuasive rhetoric, thus blending the genres as both informative and self-promoting.

Koller, V. (2008) ‘The world in one city’: Semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding. Journal of Language and Politics. 7(3), 431-50.

For example:

Plenary• In five bullet points, summarise some of the

significant aspects of letters as a form of occupational written discourse.

Homework• Continue with presentation preparation.