Language and Occupation Theories

Language and Occupation Theories

Eakins and Eakins 1976:

They found out that in seven university faculty meetings, men spoke for the longest. Their turn ranged from 10.66 to 17.07 seconds and the women’s were from 3 to 10 seconds.

Edelsky 1981:

Edelsky’s (1981) conducted his research in office floors and face to face. On the F1 floors (linear, hierarchical) there was mostly male participants and on the F2 (collaborative, democratic) floors there were an equal amount of male and women participants. On the F1 floor type, male pre-dominant discussions took place, however female-predominant discussions took place on a mixed floor type (F1, F2). A combined account of his findings that were based on the predictable mapping of gender and floor onto power relations is suggested and raised to explain singularities that appear inconsistent under a simple floor or gender based view. In conclusion, the implications of this account for the notion in the floor in CMC and for floor-based accounts of participation and response patterns in conversational interaction more generally.

Herbert and Straight 1989:

People from a higher status tend to have flowing comments than those people of a lower status.

Compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of lower rank. They said that from a young age, children are taught to say thank you to a compliment, whereas adult speakers think that responding to compliments is embarrassing. They believe that when people are responding to a compliment they should choose their strategy carefully so they avoid appearing arrogant, rude or too eager to please. Regardless of the allegation that adults have been taught to say thank you, research shows that a huge amount of speakers do whatever they can to avoid accepting compliments. Gender is analysed as a variable in mainly all compliments, women give and receive many more compliments than men. This study is especially concerned with the responses used by women in all female compliment exchanges in an undergraduate level university setting and uses a cross-cultural comparison of German and Italian to highlight any similarities or differences in compliment response strategy preference and compliment function between the two cultures.

Herring 1992:

Herring constructed her investigation in an email discussion that took place on a linguistics distribution list, five women and 30 men took part even though women make up nearly half of the Linguistic Society of America. The men’s messages on average were twice as long as women’s. The women tended to use a personal voice, for example – “I am intrigued by your comment…” The men dominated the conversation and their tone was confident – “It is obvious that…”

Holmes 1998 onwards:

Holmes believes that women use compliments positively affective speech acts to build relationship. Its absence would be seen as impolite in situations where a compliment may be expected.

Holmes and Marra 2002 and Holmes 2005:

Women use just as much humour as men and they use it for the same functions – to control discourse and subordinates and to contest superiors even though they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour. They came to the conclusion that the use, type and style of humour reflect the unseen relations to the organizations.

Tracy and Eisenberg 1990/1991:

Men showed more concern for the feelings of the person they were criticizing when in the subordination course when role-playing delivering criticism to a co-worker about errors in a business letter. Women showed more concern when in the superior role.

Various theories 1998-2004:

Workers tend to use more indirect devices such as ‘we’ instead of you, hedged strictures and modals when giving an instruction to an equal. Workers are often more direct when giving directions to a subsidiary.

Occupational therapist theory (Melbourne, Australia):

There was a participatory action research study into the experience and use of occupation, theory and evidence in the everyday practice of a group of occupational therapists working in a large metropolitan hospital delivering a range of sensitive services, in Melbourne in Australia. The occupational therapists decided to change the language they used to describe their practice to a function focus to an occupation focus. The therapist’s confidence levels were improved from this change and their professional identities where strengthened and a sense of renewed empowerment within the organisation was provided. In conclusion, these findings suggest that in sensitive settings occupational therapists can develop their language more successfully to expand their ability to promote the vital and unique contribution that occupational therapy has to make. These small, powerful changes can allow occupational therapist to address long standing dilemmas of representation and allow life forming practices.