Power and Politeness : Administrative Writing in an “Organized Anarchy” Administrative Writing in an “Organized Anarchy”

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteiligte: GRAHAM, MARGARET BAKER, DAVID, CAROL
In: Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 10, 1996, 1, S. 5-27
veröffentlicht:
SAGE Publications
Medientyp: Artikel, E-Artikel

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weitere Informationen
Umfang: 5-27
ISSN: 1050-6519
1552-4574
DOI: 10.1177/1050651996010001001
veröffentlicht in: Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Sprache: Englisch
Schlagwörter:
Kollektion: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Inhaltsangabe

<jats:p> In addition to reflecting the social and power relationships between the writer and the reader as well as the degree of imposition, politeness strategies in administrative writing also reflect the values of the organization. Operating in the egalitarian climate perpetuated in a university setting, administrators obscured their legitimate power when they wrote nonroutine memos to faculty. Hiding and de-emphasizing their empowerment by using indirectness, tentativeness, indebtedness, and personalization, academic administrators achieved a high level of politeness. This intensified politeness contrasts with the moderated politeness used in a corporation that openly accepts hierarchy and promotes efficiency. This study, therefore, offers a context-based approach to analyzing administrative writing, an approach that can be used to uncover discourse strategies in other organizational sites. </jats:p>