Language In The Workplace

What are the main functions of the language? We could say that the language does not have a main purpose, but it has many uses as communication, asking, taking permission. Generally, the language is used for many purposes and in many forms. Everyone we interact with needs a special way to interact with. For example, the way we talk to our friends in the school or the college differs from the way we talk with our colleague in the work or even our manager or the one who has the authority in specific institution. As there are many forms for the language, every form has a specific use there is a formal language to use in work, but it is so hard to keep it professional all the time we must have a sense of humor in order

The way we talk to our colleagues in the work differs from the way we talk to our boss, also the way the professionals (bosses) talk with each other differs from the way they talk to the co-workers or even the lay people. Therefore, people who work together in an organization or any institution interact together using special genre of language which is structured and goal-oriented. On the other hand, it is impossible to be professional and impersonal in all the relationships at work, you must use some of humor and power in managing the workplace interactions. Further, according to Paul Drew and John Heritage everyday conversation differs from institutional work in three ways. First, goal oriented for these participants must be focused on specific goal or core. Second, there are constraints about treatment. Third, there are inferential frameworks and procedures. But there is one feature common about all the three ways which is asymmetry all the three kinds are variable depending on the speaker, some have more power or special knowledge. Furthermore, the interactions between the insiders in an institution, differs from the way they act with outsiders. According to Goffman, he described them as front stage and back stage, the front stage is the way the professional interacts with lay people as the front stage in the theatre.

English became widely used as lingua franca after being the official language in Britain in the 17th century for trading purpose. After that it didn’t stop for trade only but for economic and social purposes. As lingua franca is spoken by non native speakers it has some discourses that seem normal to the lingua franca speakers rather than the native speakers. Furthermore, it has some pronunciation and grammatical discourse. As an example for the grammatical discourse in the ELF invariant question tag they use only “aren’t you” anything else is irrelevant or excluded, another pronunciation discourse they pronounce the “th” as “z”. All of these exceptions are seen as mistakes for the native speakers, but as English becoming a global language the native speakers don’t own anymore. Some linguists agreed about “let it pass” strategy to solve the problem between the lingua franca users and the native (whom English is their mother tongue) to get each other. For example in the international call phones the international clients use this strategy in order to avoid the misunderstanding. Another feature of the ELF is accommodation is to adapt the speech and the behavior of the one you are speaking to. Also, accommodation strategy includes repetitions, simplification and code switching