Learning the Emotion Rules of Communicating Within a Law Office: An Intern Constructs a Professional Identity Through Emotion Management

Abstract

This article explores different types of emotion a student experiences as she interns at a public defender’s office and proposes severalemotion rulesbased on her experience. After a literature review that locates emotions within the identity-construction process, the author analyzes data from reflective questionnaires to identify various emotions this student experienced that serve as a basis for inductively formulating the rules. Following a discussion of the rules, the article concludes with implications of this research for educators and newcomers to workplace communication environments.

Keywords

identity construction reflection emotion emotion rules emotion management business communication internships

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alvesson

Willmott

(1996).Making sense of management: A critical introduction.London, England:Sage.

Alvesson

Willmott

(2002).Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the appropriate individual.Journal of Management Studies,39,619-644.

Baehr

(2015).Complexities in hybridization: Professional identities and relationships in technical communication.Technical Communication,62,104-117.

Bamberg

(1997).Language, concepts and emotions: The role of language in the construction of emotions.Language Sciences,19,309-340.

Baxter Magolda

M. B

. (2001).Making their own way: Narratives for transforming higher education to promote self-development.Sterling, VA:Stylus.

Baxter Magolda

M. B

. (2009).Authoring your life: Developing an internal voice to navigate life’s challenges.Sterling, VA:Stylus.

Boler

(1999).Feeling power: Emotions and education.New York, NY:Routledge.

Bourdieu

Passeron

J.-C.

(1979).The inheritors: French students and their relation to culture.Chicago, IL:University of Chicago Press.

Chickering

A. W.

Reisser

(1993).Education and identity(2nd ed.).San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass.

10.

Corbin

Strauss

A. L.

(2015).Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory(4th ed.).Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.

11.

Cronin

A. M.

(2014).Between friends: Making emotions intersubjectively.Emotion, Space and Society,10,71-78.

12.

Dulek

R. E.

(2015).Instituting cultural change at a major organization: A case study.Business and Professional Communication Quarterly,78,231-243.

13.

Dutton

J. E.

Roberts

L. M.

Bednar

(2010).Pathways for positive identity construction at work: Four types of positive identity and the building of social resources.Academy of Management Review,35,265-293.

14.

Fall

L. T.

Kelly

MacDonald

Primm

Holmes

(2013).Intercultural communication apprehension and emotional intelligence in higher education: Preparing business students for career success.Business Communication Quarterly,76,412-426.

15.

Foucault

(1977).Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison( Sheridan

A. M.

, Trans.).New York, NY:Pantheon Books.

16.

Glaser

B. G.

Strauss

A. L.

(1967).The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research.Hawthorne, NY:Aldine.

17.

Goleman

(1995).Emotional intelligence.New York, NY:Bantam Books.

18.

Goleman

(1998).Working with emotional intelligence.New York, NY:Bantam Books.

19.

Hammond

Cross

Moore

(2016).The construction of professional identity by physiotherapists: A qualitative study.Physiotherapy,102,71-77.

20.

Hargreaves

(2000).Mixed emotions: Teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with students.Teaching and Teacher Education,16,811-826.

21.

Heracleous

Barrett

(2001).Organizational change as discourse: Communicative actions and deep structures in the context of information technology implementation.Academy of Management Journal,44,755-778.

22.

Hochschild

A. R.

(2012).The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling.Berkeley:University of California Press.

23.

Holt

Bowlby

Lea

(2013).Emotions and the habitus: Young people with socio-emotional differences (re)producing social, emotional and cultural capital in family and leisure space-times.Emotion, Space and Society,9,33-41.

24.

Jones

S. R.

Abes

E. S.

(2013).Identity development of college students: Advancing frameworks for multiple dimensions of identity.San Francisco, CA:Jossey-Bass.

25.

Kira

Balkin

D. B.

(2014).Interactions between work and identities: Thriving, withering, or redefining the self? Human Resource Management Review,24,131-143.

26.

Kivisto

La Vecchia-Mikkola

(2015).The integration of Iraqis in two European cities: Emotions and identity work.Emotion, Space and Society,16,90-98.

27.

Kuhn

(2006).A “demented work ethic” and a “lifestyle firm”: Discourse, identity, and workplace time commitments.Organization Studies,27,1339-1358.

28.

Kvale

(1996).Interviews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing.Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.

29.

Langlotz

Locher

M. A.

(2013).The role of emotions in relational work.Journal of Pragmatics,58,87-107.

30.

MacNealy

M. S.

(1999).Strategies for empirical research in writing.Boston, MA:Allyn and Bacon.

31.

Martínez

J. G.

(2012).Recognition and emotions: A critical approach on education.Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences,46,3925-3930.

32.

Nguyen

Murphy

G. D.

Chang

(2014).The construction of social identity in newly recruited nuclear engineering staff: A longitudinal study.Reliability Engineering & System Safety,131,14-28.

33.

Noble

O’Brien

Coombes

Shaw

P. N.

Nissen

Clavarino

(2014).Becoming a pharmacist: Students’ perceptions of their curricular experience and professional identity formation.Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning,6,327-339.

34.

O’Connor

K. E.

(2008).“You choose to care”: Teachers, emotions and professional identity.Teaching and Teacher Education,24,117-126.

35.

Pierce

(1995).Gender trials: Emotional lives in contemporary law firms.Los Angeles:University of California Press.

36.

Pratt

M. G.

Rockmann

K. W.

Kaufmann

J. B.

(2006).Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents.Academy of Management Journal,49,235-262.

37.

Rafaeli

Sutton

R. I.

(1989).The expression of emotion in organizational life. In Cummings

L. L.

Staw

B. M.

(Eds.),Research in organizational behavior(Vol. 11, pp.1-42).Greenwich, CT:JAI Press.

38.

Sigmar

L. S.

Hynes

G. E.

Hill

K. L.

(2012).Strategies for teaching social and emotional intelligence in business communication.Business Communication Quarterly,75,301-317.

39.

Snow

D. A.

Anderson

(1987).Identity work among the homeless: The verbal construction and avowal of personal identities.American Journal of Sociology,92,1336-1371.

40.

Strauss

A. L.

(1987).Qualitative analysis for social scientists.New York, NY:Cambridge University Press.

41.

Tracy

S. J.

(2000).Becoming a character for commerce: Emotion labor, self-subordination, and discursive construction of identity in a total institution.Management Communication Quarterly,14,90-128.

42.

Tracy

S. J.

Trethewey

(2005).Fracturing the real-self↔fake-self dichotomy: Moving toward “crystallized” organizational discourses and identities.Communication Theory,15,168-195.

43.

Urzúa

Vásquez

(2008).Reflection and professional identity in teachers’ future-oriented discourse.Teaching and Teacher Education,24,1935-1946.

44.

Zembylas

(2005).Discursive practices, genealogies, and emotional rules: A postructuralist view on emotion and identity in teaching.Teaching and Teacher Education,21,935-948.