Business Strategies in Reallife Workplace Conversations

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Business Strategies in Real-life Workplace
Conversations

• Almut Koester
• University of Birmingham

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Introduction

• Focus on strategies in teaching Business English
• Authentic business interactions - a resource for
  strategies used in business
• Useful insights for teaching BE

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What are strategies?

• Things people do to achieve particular outcomes.
• What communicative and linguistic devices do
  speakers employ?

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Overview

• Organising Discussions (Chairing a meeting)
• Cooperative Strategies
• Managing Interaction and Building Consensus
• Being a Good Listener
• Managing Disagreement

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Organising Discussions (Chairing a
meeting)

• Task 1
• What is Mike, the chair, doing in this part of
  the meeting?
• What kind of language does he use to achieve this

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Language used by chair

• Task 2
• Metalanguage
• topics I wanted to handle
• we gotta talk about that
• Discourse-organizing language
• By the way

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Language used by chair

• Metalanguage
• topics I wanted to handle
• we gotta talk about that
• Bill would like to propose
• some other ideas on the table
• we should deal with
• hopefully well get to the other ones

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Language used by chair

• Discourse-organizing language
• that relates to the fact that
• by the way
• thats- one thing
• the second thing is
• part of that has to do with
• and the other thing is
• the first thing
• heres the deal

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Cooperative StrategiesManaging Interaction and
Building Consensus

• Task 3
• How do the participants in this meeting show
  cooperation in the following two ways
• in the way they interact and take turns
• in showing that they want to find a common
  solution and reach a consensus.

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Cooperative Strategies Turn-taking

• 5) Doug Sorry, I interrupted you.
• 6) Roxanne No, thats fine.
• 7) Ben what weve got to come up with is
• some sort of plan, and get back to you with
  reasons-
• 8) Doug Sorry, well not necessarily.

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Cooperative Strategies Consensus-building

• 3) Doug I mean the one area above of all that
• weve all agreed, unilaterally, that doesnt
  work, is the segments
• 7) Ben What do you want?
• 8) Doug What can I do to help you guys achieve
  the targets?

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Cooperative Strategies Being a good listener

• Task 4
• Compare the following two real-life workplace
  conversations. How does the listener respond
  differently in each of the conversations?
• Sorting Invoices
• Nominal Printout

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Cooperative Strategies Being a good listener

• 1) Sorting Invoices
• Ann ?uhm that is for the Save the Earth stuff,
• and I will- it will eventually probably get
  thrown away, but if you havent come
  across a packing ?list for Save the Earth
  products
• Meg okay
• Ann hang onto it
• Meg okay

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Minimal and non-minimal responses

• Task 5
• In what way are some of Hughs responses
  non-minimal?
• Why do you think Hugh uses non-minimal responses
• In what situations might minimal responses be
  more appropriate than minimal responses?
• Can you think of other commonly used non-minimal
  responses?

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Non-minimal responses

• oh yes just what I want
• oh wonderful
• oh I see, yeah
• Also
• fine
• just what I want
• (oh) great
• (McCarthy and Carter, 2000)

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Minimal and non-minimal responses

• Non-minimal responses do not occur
• for routine instructions which are a normal part
  of speakers job
• from subordinates to managers

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Managing Disagreement Agreeing and Disagreeing

• Task 6
• Do the speakers agree or disagree to each
  suggestion?
• What words and expressions do they use for
  agreement and disagreement?
• Are there any differences between agreement and
  disagreement,

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Agreeing

• Carol But you know maybe- maybe what I should do
  is is just write a little memo.
• Beth That's not a bad idea,

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Disagreeing

• Beth So as far as the working is concerned,
• the working should also just have these
  quantities. The first U.S. print run.
• Carol .hh Hmm
• Beth Hmm
• Carol I'm not sure it's worthwhile, to do a
  working, for this minor print run. Because .hh
  the uh gross margin is gonna be so low

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Agreeing and Disagreeing Preference
(Conversation Analysis)

• Agreement is preferred
• simple and direct
• Disagreement is dispreferred
• longer and more complex
• delay and hesitation
• hedging
• a reason given

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Agreeing and Disagreeing

• Clusters for negative responses
• But I think
• I mean
• I dont know if/whether
• Yes, but
• Im not sure
• To be honest with you

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Agreeing and Disagreeing

• Positive responses
• Thats a good idea.
• Thats not a bad idea.
• Thats great/ Oh, great.
• Oh, good.
• Thats fine/ Yeah, fine.
• Yeah, sure.

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Conclusion

• Naturally occurring interactions can help us
  identify strategies used in business and discover
  linguistic and communicative devices employed.
• And now for some activities