Language and occupation Theorists

Language&Occupation Theorists

Eakins&Eakins: In 1976, Eakins and Eakins studied 7 university meetings. The results were that men spoke for longer during these meetings and also started conversations, with men's turns ranging from 10.66 to 17.07 seconds and the women's from only 3 to 10. Men were also seen to ask questions more and make jokes more within these meetings compared to women. This suggests that men are more dominant in some occupations or most as they seem to be the ones that spoke for longer and gave more input within all conversations.

Edelsky: In 1981, Edelsky conducted research on men and women by observing face to face conversations on office floors in a university in America to try and look into how the different sexes speak to one another and who seems to take charge. In a series of meetings that were looked at, results showed that men were the more dominant speakers as they were the ones who took longer turns when speaking and made more jokes, had more arguments and done the most directly within the meetings. However, during the 'free for all', women and men talked equally, and women joked, argued, directed and solicited responses more than men. Coming to the conclusion that men and women within the work place speak equally and neither seems to overall be more dominant.

Herbert & Straight: 1989 - Herbert and Straight showed that compliments were more likely to flow from those of a higher rank compared to those of a lower rank.

Herring: In 1992, an email discussion took place with the participation of 30 men and 5 women. It took place on a linguistics distribution list. Only five women took part even though women make up nearly half the members of the linguistic society in America which didn’t show in this example. On average, the emails men sent were twice as long as those of women's showing that men feel they have more to say and try to be dominant in conversations. In an email, men adopted an assertive tone such as 'it is obvious that...' which shows their dominance.  On the other hand, women would use a more personal tone showing the personalities and the difference between the two.

Holmes: From 1998, various studies from Holmes were conducted on managers within particular occupations. These studies showed that managers who were female were more likely to negotiate consensus compared to male managers who are less likely as they take time to ensure everyone genuinely agrees with what has been decided. This is because people see women as the more caring and considerate sex which is shown here.

Tracy and Eisenberg: In a role play where the individual had to deliver criticism to a co - worker regarding errors in a business letter, men showed more concerns for the feelings of the person they were criticizing. This was only when they were in the subordinate role, whereas women showed more concern when in a superior role.

Holby City- Language in the work place

To what extent does the represented language of medical drama reflect real language use in this kind of work place, or language in the workplace more generally?

Holby City;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lv5Aep0WFg
In this clip from an episode of Holby City there are few surgeons doing an operation on a man. They are quite friendly amongst one another and talk mostly about their social lives within this scene and what’s going on outside of work which seems quite unexpected as they should be talking about what they are doing and concentrating on operating on this man.
They start the conversation talking about a relationship that involves one of the surgeons in this clip as soon as he enters the scene, this seems rather odd as normally you would expect them to tell him what they should be doing instead of talking about social life. They don’t use much grammatically complex words and seem quite relaxed with what they are saying. Going on from this they briefly talk about the patient and what is wrong with him and then mention what they need to do from then on, at this point their language is quite hard to understand but everyone involved in this clip seems to know what they mean as they are all part of the same occupation or discourse community. They use technical terms to briefly describe what they need to do and what has happened to this particular patient, they all acknowledge and understand what they are doing. They then carry on the conversation about what’s going on outside their lives of work, this is unusual as you wouldn’t expect this from people doing such a difficult procedure.
My selected clip from Holby City demonstrates the idea of equality in the dialogue between the speakers as they are all from the same occupation. There are overlaps in their speech as they all have equal power and want to input within the conversation so turn taking is less predictable and so is the content. There is slight use of technical jargon when they are actually talking about the operation in order to have a quick way of communicating.
At one point in the clip there is a use of Jargon from this particular discourse community when the doctors say “neurotic valve’, ‘powder please’, and ‘we may need to replace the ascending aorta”. This supports the idea that the language in hospitals can be general but can also be technical and that this technical talk binds the speakers together within their discourse community. It is hard for anyone who is not working in this occupation to understand particular terms and language that the doctors use as they haven’t learnt or have needed to understand. In some conversations where they feel they know what they’re doing the conversation is quite relaxed but at times it can be difficult and stressful.
Overall I believe that language in this work place and most likely most occupations speak quite generally when working. I think this because they feel they know what to do and get along and possibly know each other out side of work. It also shows that people within their work space speak quite generally and freely a lot of the time.