Simon Moore's- The universal teacher

Language and Occupation 

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/occupation.htm


Occupations develop their own special language features, and use those of the common language in novel or distinctive ways. Occupations are a source of language change, while attitudes to language may in turn be causes of change in the way occupations work (as in moving from hierarchical or pyramid to flat management structures)

In an explicit sense as those kinds of activity that we can name (job interview, team briefing, disciplinary tribunal, conference, marriage ceremony) or

In a looser descriptive sense (discussing a problem, telling a manager about an incident, asking an expert for guidance).

Here are some general functions of language in occupational contexts:

• communicating information
• requesting help
• confirming arrangements
• instructing employees or colleagues to do something
• making things happen or enacting them

Almost every occupation has its own special lexicon:

• forms used only in the occupation, or
• forms in the common lexicon but used with meanings which are special to the occupation: justify means very different things to a printer or typesetter and to a priest.

Example's: A ship's master may refer to kentledge, gunwales and quarterdeck (forms peculiar to naval language) or to the heads, port and roads (forms in the common lexicon, but with different special meanings - on a ship the heads is a name for the toilet).

Register and Lexis:

• professional orchestral music includes a lexicon of Italian loan words (forte, andante, allegro, pizzicato and so on) with cross-cultural meanings;
• soccer players (and managers and commentators) allows use of the perfect tense in a specific way (he's gone past the defender and given me a good pass, and I've knocked it in);
• particle physicists includes a lexicon of old forms with novel meanings that we cannot describe verbally, but can represent only mathematically, like spin, strangeness and charm.

Conversational maxims:

The “success” of a conversation depends upon the various speakers' approach to the interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations work is sometimes called a co-operative principle. We can explain this by four underlying conversational rules or maxims. (They are also named Grice's maxims, after the language philosopher, H.P. Grice.) They are the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner.

• Quality - this means that speakers should tell the truth, not say what they think false, or make statements without evidence.
• Quantity - this means that speakers should be as informative as is required for conversation to proceed; say neither too little, nor too much.
• Relevance - this means that speakers' contributions should relate clearly to the purpose of the exchange.
• Manner - this means that speakers' contributions should be clear, orderly and brief, avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.

Linguists examples of classifying illocutionary acts

• Representatives: here the speaker asserts a proposition to be true, using such verbs as: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report.
• Directives: here the speaker tries to make the hearer do something, with such words as: ask, beg, challenge, command, dare, invite, insist, request.
• Commissives: here the speaker commits himself (or herself) to a (future) course of action, with verbs such as: guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow, undertake, warrant.
• Expressives: the speaker expresses an attitude to or about a state of affairs, using such verbs as: apologize, appreciate, congratulate, deplore, detest, regret, thank, welcome.
• Declarations the speaker alters the external status or condition of an object or situation, solely by making the utterance: I now pronounce you man and wife, I name this ship, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you be dead. (In this case, the alteration is not the execution of the sentence - which is in the future - but the convict's passing under sentence and becoming a condemned man or woman.)