Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

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.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Barnard, Chester I. The Functions of the Executive. 1938. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Blyler, Nancy Roundy . “Theory and Curriculum: Reexamining the Curricular Separation of Business and Technical Communication.” JBTC 7 (1993):218-245.

Brown, Penelope , and Stephen Levinson . Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Cherry, Roger D.

“Politeness in Written Communication.”

Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988): 63-81.

Clark, Burton R. The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Cohen, Michael D. , and James G. March . Leadership and Ambiguity: The American College President. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986.

David, Carol , and Margaret Baker . “Rereading Bad News: Compliance-Gaining Features in Management Memos.” Journal of Business Communication 31 (1994): 267-290.

French, John R. P., Jr. , and Bertram Raven . “The Bases of Social Power.” Studies in Social Power. Ed. Dorwin Cartwright . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959. 150-167.

Graham, Margaret Ann Baker , and Carol David . “The Rhetoric of Power: Political Issues in Management Writing.” Technical Communication Quarterly 3 (1994): 165-178.

10.

Hagge, John , and Charles Kostelnick . “Linguistic Politeness in Professional Prose: A Discourse Analysis of Auditors' Suggestion Letters, with Implications for Business Communication Pedagogy.” Written Communication 6 (1989): 312-339.

11.

Halal, William E.

“The Legitimacy Cycle: Long-Term Dynamics in the Use of Power.”

Power, Politics, and Organizations: A Behavioral Science View. Ed. Andrew Kakabadse and Christopher Parker . New York: Wiley, 1984. 47-64.

12.

Hassard, John , and Martin Parker , eds. Postmodernism and Organizations. London: Sage, 1993.

13.

House, Robert J.

“Power and Personality in Complex Organizations.”

Research in Organizational Behavior 10 (1988): 305-357.

14.

Keller, George . Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

15.

Lakoff, Robin . “What You Can Do with Words: Politeness, Pragmatics, and Performatives.” Proceedings of the Texas Conference on Performatives, Presuppositions, and Implicatures. 22-24 Mar. 1973, University of Texas at Austin. Ed. Andy Rogers , Bob Wall , and John P. Murphy . Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1977. 79-105.

16.

Neusner, Jeffrey . “What It Takes for Professors to Get Themselves Fired.” Chronicle of Higher Education 17 Mar. 1993: A52.

17.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey . “Management as Symbolic Action: The Creation and Maintenance of Organizational Paradigms.” Research in Organizational Behavior 3 (1981): 1-52.

18.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey . Power in Organizations. Marshfield, MA: Pitman, 1981.

19.

Salancik, Gerald . “Commitment Is Too Easy!” Organizational Dynamics 6 (1977): 62-80.

20.

Schwenk, Charles R.

“Information, Cognitive Biases, and Commitment to a Course of Action.”

Academy of Management Review 11 (1986): 298-310.

21.

Smeltzer, Larry R. , and Gail Fann Thomas . “Managers as Writers: A Metanalysis of Research in Context.” JBTC 8 (1994): 186-211.

22.

Wendt, Ronald F.

“Learning to `Walk the Talk': A Critical Tale of the Micropolitics at a Total Quality University.”

Management Communication Quarterly 8.1 (1994): 5-45.

23.

Yli-Jokipii, Hilkka . Requests in Professional Discourse: A Cross-Cultural Study of British, American and Finnish Business Writing. Helsinki, Finland: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1994.

Power and Politeness

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References