Investigation #12 Reflection and Retrospective

Throughout this semester, I have done six investigations to apply what I've learnt from this course to analyze the discourse of the language learning centre that I work in. Below is a brief summary of the six investigations:

#2 To identify the main social actors of the investigation site, their social practices and actions as well as the different cultural tools used to facilitate them
#3 To investigate one of the most significant events- consultation of curriculum with reference to Hymes's SPEAKING model and also the 'marked' behavior as well as the different kinds of cultural competencies
#4 To look into a formal internal email message to see how discourse community is constituted
#7 To investigate the politeness strategies used
#8 To identify the procedural rules of conversations
#11 To analyze the power relationship among participants

Before doing the investigations, I have listed out a certain questions that I found in this site. Since most of the staff are female and there is a distinctive hierarchy which signifies the different levels of power the participants have, I was wondering how such 'rules' were constituted and why people acted on them.

Having done the six investigations, I now have a clearer idea of the way people communicate and the way they construct reality. The way the staff communicate is largely affected by the power relationship among them. The titles given to different positions have formed a distinctive hierarchy and hence, influencing how the staff use politeness strategies to protect each other's face and the implicit procedural rules of conversations. To be a member of this discourse, all the staff have to share certain cultural competence such as the education system of the company and the knowledge of the special terms written on internal text messages.

With the cultural competence constituted among the staff, members of this site have formed a 'discourse community' sharing communicative goals and knowledge required for effective communication. Through the daily written or verbal communication within the company, identities and responsibilities have been projected to the employees; and by responding and involving in them, the employees have accepted the membership and the associated responsibilities. This explains why most of the staff act on those 'implicit rules' passed on to them by the company.

As I have mentioned earlier, most of the staff in this site are women. Since women are more indirect and they tend to use euphemisms or hedges more than men, it is important for the members, especially for the male staff, to have a good understanding of the shared 'rules' here. A better way to learn them is by observation; by then members will know the 'normal' way people act and will avoid the marked behaviour which might lead to unwanted miscommunication.

I have shared my analysis with one of my male workmates, who has got into trouble because of his misuse of direct comments made to the senior. According to him, he is now well-aware of the importance of knowing the 'implicit rules' and acting on them in order to survive in this 'female circle'. He also added that this situation is not uncommon in the society nowadays. Since there are more ladies entering the job market than before, the things that we learnt from our company is apllicable to the broader social context so as to avoid miscommunication.