Yilin He
EAP 506
04/21/2016
Language Analysis
Being familiar with the language and writing conventions in one’s discipline is a pretty important part in the learning process. Therefore, analyzing the language of one journal article will be beneficial to me to learn about the specific conventions in Management. The article “Courage-Making Teamwork Work Well” written by Benjamin Amos and Richard J. Klimoski is selected from Group & Organization Management, which I have analyzed before. This article asserts that leaderless team is widely adopted in contemporary business, even though little extant literature attempts to study the root cause of why an individual would be prone to act like a team leader when needed. Aiming to address this gap, the authors offer eight propositions to explain. Overall, this article mostly maintains a formal and scholarly tone. The authors avoid using contractions, informal negative forms, and “you” in this article, and they place the adverbs in middle of a clause. Analyzing the language in the article could help me learn more about the specific linguistic features used in Management. More importantly, it also could pave the way for me to write a professional essay by following these clues in this article.
A useful source for such analysis is Swales and Feak (2012), who consider that “maintaining a formal academic writing style should generally avoid contractions, use the more appropriate formal negative forms, avoid addressing the reader as you, and be careful about using direct questions. Place the adverbs within the verb.” To be more specific, in this article, there are not usually contractions such as isn’t or don’t. Instead, the complete and separate words, such as do not, does not, and is not, are used. One good example is “these do not fully acknowledge that …” (P.110). The sound of this phrase is like a professional and academic lecture for me. Furthermore, there are only formal negative forms. For example, “there is no shortage of frameworks for describing team leadership” (P.110), and “but we find little consideration of risk …” (P.112). Above all, it can be inferred that management, as a rigorous business discipline, pays more attention to the word choice in order to prevent writings from becoming less formal.
In addition, Passive voice, another indication of formal tone is presented. It is used instead of the second person pronoun – “you”. For example, “GSE has been linked to team leadership emergence …” (P.116). The authors write this sentence in passive voice without addressing any human person, making this article sound more formal and objective. In contrast, the authors use a great deal of “we” in this article. Actually, the first person pronoun is acceptable because the authors use it to list their opinions. Secondly, adverbs are always placed between the verbs that they modify. For example, “research has been surprisingly silent …” (P.111), and “relevant risks are reasonably appraised …” (P.114). Last but not least, long noun phrases are widely used in the article. For example, “the move toward flatter and more flexible team situations …” (P.110), and “the choice if whether or not act as a leader in the team …” (P.110). Using long noun phrases makes the article succinct instead of long and wordy.
Beyond those observe patterns, there are five more noticeable phenomena in this article. First, there are some modals, such as “may”, “may be”, and “ might”, making the article more objective. Second, the authors use “one’s self”, “one’s expectations”, and “one’s moral identity” rather than using himself or herself, their expectations, and person’s moral identity. It sounds less personal and makes the article more scientific. Third, “meta-analysis”, “multi-dimensional ”, and “self-managed”, which are homo-made words, are widely used in this article. It can be assumed that it is an academic behavior. Those contents are significant for this article. Fourth, “proposition”, a particular word, is used to replace “strategy” to offer the authors’ suggestions. From this point, this word could be a specific word choice in Management, and it may be more common in Management than other disciplines. Fifth, the authors use dashes in different sections, and each usage has different meaning. For example, “the presence of risks – such as the risk of failure …” (P.112), the dash in this context is meant to give example. “They can influence the situation toward a desired or necessary outcome – especially under risk” (P.116). The dash in this context is meant to emphasize the influence. Hence, it can be implied that a dash is used to give examples and emphasize particular information in a more formal tone than other punctuations.
Analyzing the language from one article is not sufficient to learn all the writing conventions in Management, but it still gives me some clues. In conclusion, formal language and tone are expected in Management writing. Those linguistic features suggest that the use of contractions, informal negative forms, “you”, and direct questions should be avoided. Moreover, it is best to removing personal or human tone in Management because it makes article informal and unprofessional.
Reference
Amos, Benjamin & Klimoski, Richard J. (2014). Courage: Making Teamwork Work Well. Group & Organization
Management. Vol. 39 (1), 110-128.
Swales and Feak. (2012). Academic Writing For Graduate Students.