The persistence of workplace ideology and identity across communicative contexts

Authors

  • Colleen Cotter Queen Mary, University of London
  • Daniel Marschall George Washington University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v3i1.1

Keywords:

WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION, OCCUPATIONAL COMMUNITY, WORKPLACE ETHNOGRAPHY, SOCIALIZATION, IDENTITY, IDEOLOGY

Abstract

We examine the discursive construction of organizational ideology, its role in sustaining membership in a workplace community, and the achievement of community cohesion in a workplace environment through the practice and reinforcement of communicative norms and identities that reflect this ideology. Using a range of spoken and written discourse examples from internal employee listservs, company documents, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation over a continuous four-year period during a time of rapid change at a small U.S. software development firm, we articulate interactional processes by which community membership and organizational alignments are conceptualized, established, challenged, and sustained in the day-to-day physical workplace and the concurrent online sphere. The longitudinal dimension demonstrates how the adoption and interpretation of the firm’s organizational ideology, which contributes to the formation and maintenance of its identity as an occupational community, persists across time and channels of transmission.

Author Biography

  • Colleen Cotter, Queen Mary, University of London

    Colleen Cotter is a lecturer in Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London (previously assistant professor in the Linguistics Department and the Communication, Culture and Technology Program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and professional-in-residence in the Journalism Department at California State University-Chico). Research areas include news media language, institutional discourse, endangered languages, and the ethnolinguistic, sociocultural, and performative dimensions of communication. Articles have appeared in Journal of Historical Pragmatics and International Journal of the Sociology of Language.

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Published

2009-02-20

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Cotter, C., & Marschall, D. (2009). The persistence of workplace ideology and identity across communicative contexts. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 3(1), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v3i1.1

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