Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on conventions
- 1 Introduction: language and the communication of social identity
- 2 Thematic structure and progression in discourse
- 3 Discovering connections
- 4 Inscrutability revisited
- 5 Negotiating interpretations in interethnic settings
- 6 Strategies and counterstrategies in the use of yes–no questions in discourse
- 7 Negotiations of language choice in Montreal
- 8 Performance and ethnic style in job interviews
- 9 Interethnic communication in committee negotiations
- 10 Fact and inference in courtroom testimony
- 11 A cultural approach to male–female miscommunication
- 12 Ethnic style in male–female conversation
- 13 Language and disadvantage: the hidden process
- Bibliography
- Subject index
- Author index
9 - Interethnic communication in committee negotiations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on conventions
- 1 Introduction: language and the communication of social identity
- 2 Thematic structure and progression in discourse
- 3 Discovering connections
- 4 Inscrutability revisited
- 5 Negotiating interpretations in interethnic settings
- 6 Strategies and counterstrategies in the use of yes–no questions in discourse
- 7 Negotiations of language choice in Montreal
- 8 Performance and ethnic style in job interviews
- 9 Interethnic communication in committee negotiations
- 10 Fact and inference in courtroom testimony
- 11 A cultural approach to male–female miscommunication
- 12 Ethnic style in male–female conversation
- 13 Language and disadvantage: the hidden process
- Bibliography
- Subject index
- Author index
Summary
It took even the Almighty six days to sort out the world's original problems and He was not a committee.
The Economist, May 1980Committee meetings with their delays, procrastinations, and inconsistencies have long been a favorite source of humor, but, like it or not, committees form an essential and in many ways crucial aspect of the process by which policy is made in industry and public affairs. In modern post-industrial urban societies, institutions of all kinds have become increasingly open to public scrutiny. Regardless of how policies originate, or who proposes them and carries them out, actions of all kinds may ultimately be subject to some public inspection and control of decision making processes. This means that the mechanisms by which policies are adopted must have the visibility of group processes where the evidence for and against is openly debated in ways that are comprehensible to most, regardless of interest and background.
Sociologists of organizational behavior point out that committees are designed to “overcome difficulties in bureaucratic hierarchies caused by jobs needing unfamiliar responsibilities by creating a super person, a committee” (Burns 1969). As such superpersons, committees also make decisions that are suprapersonal above and beyond the decision making powers of any member.
Committees act as courts of appeal for what can be acceptable arguments as well as means of sifting information. It is ‘in committee’ that decision making appears to take place.
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- Language and Social Identity , pp. 145 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983
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