- Title
- Empty adjectives and excessive intensifiers, or savvy discourse moves? A feminist critical discourse study of gender-based differences in the discourse of businesspeople on LinkedIn
- Creator
- Schmauss, Lindsay Susannah
- ThesisAdvisor
- Kilian, Kelly
- ThesisAdvisor
- Adetomokun, Idowu
- Subject
- Corpora (Linguistics)
- Subject
- Critical discourse analysis
- Subject
- Intensification (Linguistics)
- Subject
- Women's language
- Subject
- Adjective
- Subject
- Politeness (Linguistics)
- Date
- 2023-10-13
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Master's theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/425111
- Identifier
- vital:72211
- Description
- This Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) examines the use of ‘empty’ adjectives and the equative intensifier so in discourse on LinkedIn, a social network service (SNS) for businesspeople and professionals. These linguistic features soften the impact of what is said in ways that can conform with politeness norms that one should not impose a point of view but can also be negatively construed as weak, uncertain and unclear. The North American sociolinguist, Robin Tolmach Lakoff (1973, 1975, 2004), first associated these linguistic markers with a feminine register in her seminal work, Language and Women’s Place, arguing that there is a social expectation that women talk like a lady and follow politeness conventions, while the speech of men is not similarly constrained. That women are socially conditioned to speak in ways that can undermine their clarity and assertiveness would present a particular dilemma in the business context, where clear, direct and confident communication is valued. This corpus-based study explores the dilemma in the context of LinkedIn where the linguistic behaviour of cisgender women indeed showed evidence of their struggle between conflicting impulses to talk like a lady and a desire to be taken seriously as businesspeople. While the examined features mainly appeared in the discourse of women, it was interesting to note men making use of ‘empty’ adjectives and so in communication contexts where the goal appeared to be relationship-building. As notions of business leadership are evolving to value organisational leadership more, this suggests that linguistic devices that have traditionally been associated more with the communal conversation of the stereotypical ‘woman’ appear to be gaining wider acceptance and relevance, although in domains orientated towards the “soft skill” of building relationships, rather than the “hard work” of business. While the value talking like a lady may be shifting, language that is the opposite of talking like a lady seems to remain the language of serious talk, and the kind of gender-based linguistic discrimination first theorised by Lakoff seems thus to persist, also in the sphere of business discourse.
- Description
- Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2023
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (134 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Schmauss, Lindsay Susannah
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | SCHMAUSS-MA-TR23-184.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |