Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chapter 1 The languages of business: Introduction and overview
- SECTION 1 INTER-CULTURAL DISCOURSES
- Chapter 2 Spoken discourse in the multicultural workplace in Hong Kong: Applying a model of discourse as ‘impression management’
- Chapter 3 Australian-Japanese business interaction: Some features of language and cultural contact
- Chapter 4 Requests in German-Norwegian business discourse: Difference in directness
- Chapter 5 The Asian connection: Business requests and acknowledgements
- SECTION 2 CROSS-CULTURAL DISCOURSES
- Chapter 6 Organisation in American and Japanese meetings: Task versus relationship
- Chapter 7 Bookshop service encounters in English and Italian: Notes on the achievement of information and advice
- Chapter 8 Joking as a strategy in Spanish and Danish negotiations
- Chapter 9 Lexical landscaping in business meetings
- SECTION 3 CORPORATE DISCOURSES
- Chapter 10 Languages within languages: A social constructionist perspective on multiple managerial discourses
- Notes
- References
- Notes on contributors
- Index
Chapter 10 - Languages within languages: A social constructionist perspective on multiple managerial discourses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chapter 1 The languages of business: Introduction and overview
- SECTION 1 INTER-CULTURAL DISCOURSES
- Chapter 2 Spoken discourse in the multicultural workplace in Hong Kong: Applying a model of discourse as ‘impression management’
- Chapter 3 Australian-Japanese business interaction: Some features of language and cultural contact
- Chapter 4 Requests in German-Norwegian business discourse: Difference in directness
- Chapter 5 The Asian connection: Business requests and acknowledgements
- SECTION 2 CROSS-CULTURAL DISCOURSES
- Chapter 6 Organisation in American and Japanese meetings: Task versus relationship
- Chapter 7 Bookshop service encounters in English and Italian: Notes on the achievement of information and advice
- Chapter 8 Joking as a strategy in Spanish and Danish negotiations
- Chapter 9 Lexical landscaping in business meetings
- SECTION 3 CORPORATE DISCOURSES
- Chapter 10 Languages within languages: A social constructionist perspective on multiple managerial discourses
- Notes
- References
- Notes on contributors
- Index
Summary
ETHNOGRAPHIC TRAVELS AND NATIVE TONGUES
Earlier chapters of this book have taken the reader on travels around the world. We have come across language and the use of language which is familiar to us as well as much which is less so. This chapter tells a story about a further journey: an ethnographic one. But it is not the sort of ethnography which readers might expect. Ethnographies are traditionally anthropologists’ tales of foreign lands, exotic cultures and genuinely foreign languages. My own ethnographic investigation, however, and the theorising about work organisations and their management with which it is connected, occurred in a single factory of a telecommunications and manufacturing company in a British Midlands town.1 Each working day for over a year I walked down to the factory from my own house and worked as a participant observation researcher within the senior managerial team of the company. Although I was very familiar with the world of manufacturing industry, I was nevertheless still a stranger to the natives among whom I had come to live and work. We all spoke standard English. But things were not as simple as this might imply. One of the early conversations with some managers whom I had joined for a meeting went as follows:
Ml I don't think we’ve had a lot of professors working with us down here before.
M2 I suppose you’re really just another consultant, in academic guise.
TTW Absolutely not. I am not a consultant. I am here to work as part of management. I’ve got to earn my keep here at Parkside. I shall not be writing a report for the company at any stage - or recommending anything. I shall write a book, after I’ve left - using my experiences here to reflect on what is happening to managerial work in modem organisations.
M3 Oh ho. So we’re going to be in a book then. That's a good laugh. All of us blokes are hairy-arsed factory managers. I don't think that you’ll get a lot from us. We don't go in for your fancy management - you know, business college - talk.
M2 We can easily tell you how not to do it though. We know all about fuck-ups. But Terry's right. I dare say we won't use the sort of language you want for your posh book.
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- The Languages of BusinessAn International Perspective, pp. 211 - 227Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020