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... bit of spice to the work place. He or she knows that an office relationship is a total no-go and yet can't avoid the temptation. The male comments on how nice his female co-workers look, often whilst perching on their desks gazing intently into their eyes. The female, on the other hand, coyly plays with her hair, 5 metamorphosing into a giggling schoolgirl as she chats to The Boss. The flirt uses his or her words to develop power.
In an all male office, the few women must be on guard when confronting the flirt. The flirt will slyly imply words that point to his power in the office. (Popp, Gender, Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes) (See comics 15, 26) Stereotypes are a product of perceptions. Perceptions are not always a true picture of reality. Perceptions are based on how we view ourselves and how we view others.
The process of constructing a perception is based on two things, raw data and the mental process. Raw data is the information we take in from experience. The mental process is unique in every individual and is where the mind reviews and tries to analyze what we have experienced or seen. The end product is a perception. Stereotypes often aid in the creation of a perception. (Stanford, Stereotypes and Prejudice) A stereotype is an exaggerated belief associated with a particular category. In the work place, employee-employer relationships are built around the perceptions of how a person should act, how they should speak, and how people should relate to each other.
Those who work in an office environment are often unaware of how they use different levels of dialect to create perceptions of themselves. (Popp, Gender, Race, and Speech Style Stereotypes) Perhaps the most important dialect level responsible for creating office relationships and stereotypes is pragmatics. Pragmatics deals with how meaning is conveyed. The use of pragmatics differs from one social relationship or another. Pragmatics is highly power based. For example, the office boss gives orders in short clear concise ways.
Instead of saying "Bob, when you find the time, I could really use those expense reports. " the boss would probably be more direct and say something like. "Bob, I 6 need those expense reports ASAP!" Each of these statements will elicit a different response from the employer the boss is speaking to. It is often a fine line that has to be walked in choosing whether to be direct or less direct when dealing with office relationships. (Wolfram, American English) Where it might be okay to make strong direct demands at the new, young intern, it would be less appropriate to make those same demands to a co-worker with the same pay and responsibilities as yourself. Today, there are management classes companies send their managers and upper level employees to. These classes teach people how to use words affectively enough for people to listen and do what is requested of them. Another important language item that helps define a person's place and position in the office is the use of double speak. The best examples of the use of double speak and its affect on the employee employer relationship is Dilbert.
Scott Adam's cartoon strip has been striping away at office stereotypes since the early nineties. Dilbert comics cover topics that affect both employees and employers in a middle class American environment. Topics such as quality management, endless meetings, doughnuts, cubicles, business plans, and all the other aspects of working in a modern office are picked apart in Adam's strips. Because of these comics straightforward witty commentary on office life it is only appropriate to dedicate a portion of this paper to the language and social systems this comic presents. Although most of Adams's trips play on the plight of the nameless cubicle worker against an uncaring and oblivious management, he also covers the flip side of work where managers are unable to motivate employees beyond using the office jargon and the fine art of making sleep look like work.
Adam's humor comes from his manipulation of 7 language. Much of the humor derived from Dilbert comes from Adam's use of double speak. In an interview concerning the origin of Dilbert, Adam's talks about the use of double speak when used by managers. Take, for example, this wonderful bit of normal business communication that might have come straight from Management 101: 'Perform world-class product development, financial analysis, and feet services using empowered team dynamics in a Total Quality paradigm until we become the industry leader. ' Take out the double-speak, and what you have is a mission statement that says: 'Do the best work to provide the best product with the best people until we become the best in our field. ' (Adams, Dilbert.
com) By using what George Orwell described in his essay Politics and the English Language as pretentious diction, a manger or boss can dress up simple statements with pseudo scientific terms in order to make what he or she is saying sound more intelligent, more important, and much more ominous. (See comics 5, 7) Double speak is also used to identify a workers place in a company. Job titles frequently rely on double speak to dress up the actual occupation of a person. This type of double speak seems to try and do away with stereotyping. Instead of the person who cleans up the office being called and labeled as "the janitor" he is now called a "custodial engineer. " The person is still doing the same job, but with the new title there seems to be a new importance in the job itself. The use of euphemisms is a powerful tool in the business world. Boss's no longer fire employees.
Employees 8 today are permanently laid off, or excused from work indefinitely. Even more than mission statements such as this, business double-speak of the nineties has centered on terms such as 'downsizing' and 're-engineering'. By putting a different spin on the timeless tradition of firing and re-organization, today's companies act more like politicians than producers. Language determines the social atmosphere of an office.
Language defines the roles of both management and employees. Stereotypes are produced as a result of the language and style associated with the different roles of the office. Having given a run down of the types of stereotypes found in the office place and how language has contributed to these stereotypes it is clear that the office is a self contained social hierarchy. At the end of the workday every member of the office leaves their role behind and takes on other roles; a father, a mother, fianc " ee, son, sister. These roles are also founded on the types of language used by the particular people who play them. Language allows people to play the parts of several different characters.
Media like comic strips allow use to observe the roles we play from a safe distance where are egos will not be hurt, but amused.
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Research essay sample on Gender Race Work Place
