Humor, small talk, and the construction of identity and power in workplace instant messaging
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Humor, Small Talk, and the Construction of Identity and Power in Workplace Instant Messaging MAK, Chun Nam A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English (Applied English Linguistics) The Chinese University of Hong Kong November 2014
Transcript of Humor, small talk, and the construction of identity and power in workplace instant messaging
Humor, Small Talk, and the Construction of Identity and Power
in Workplace Instant Messaging
MAK, Chun Nam
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English (Applied English Linguistics)
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
November 2014
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Abstract of thesis titled:
Humor, Small Talk, and the Construction of Identity and Power in Workplace Instant
Messaging
Submitted by MAK, Chun Nam
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English (Applied English Linguistics)
at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (November 2014)
Abstract
Workplace discourse analysis and computer-mediated discourse analysis have
gathered momentum in the broad field of applied linguistics, but analysts have rarely
empirically studied workplace discourse and computer-mediated communication
simultaneously from a socio-constructionist perspective. Studies of the former have
tended to explore face-to-face workplace interaction in non-Asian settings, while
studies of the latter have centered on interpersonal and public communication
contexts. However, the reality is that the use of digital devices, especially instant
messengers, has become a trend in backstage communication in the workplace,
including the small-sized enterprises in Sino-settings. This research hence aims to
explore how the professionals in three Hong Kong white-collar organizations interact
in Windows Live Messenger, Tencent QQ, and Facebook Chat for various
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transactional and relational purposes. Drawing upon Etienne Wenger’s Communities
of Practice framework (1998) and James Gee’s model of discourse analysis (2011),
the study analyzes the participants’ instant messaging chat logs supplemented with
interview data, especially concentrating on how their humor and small talk took
place functionally and creatively in such a computer-mediated work environment.
Results indicate that these discursive strategies contain many fundamental features of
Netspeak (e.g., the use of emoticons, non-standardized punctuation) that differentiate
themselves from the counterparts in face-to-face settings, and that these speech
events co-occur with the utilization of the general and specific instant messenger
interfaces. The computer-mediated humor and small talk instances also activate
various new dimensions to the reform of identity and the negotiation of power in the
workplace. Further discussions reveal that these phenomena have facilitated sheer
discourse processes in workplace communication, including the tendency to
relational talk vis-à-vis business talk, the circulation of intertextual and multimodal
meanings, the regression of social etiquette, the emergence of heteroglossic identity,
and the amplification of individual intellectuality, linguistic competency, abilities of
information access, and skills of information technology. It is concluded that humor
and small talk in workplace instant messaging are socio-computational products of
national cultural preferences, community norms, colleagues’ personal experience and
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preference of usage, and that they are informal, interpersonal, multidimensional tools
for achieving organizational goals in the long run. It is also argued that the gendered
and colloquial, individual and professional characteristics of humor and small talk in
workplace instant messaging normally coalesce a fluctuating state of turbulence of
workplace identity, and that the discursive strategies often visualize and symbolize
the intellectual capital and personal aptitudes for controlling technology of a
colleague. This dissertation not only provides insight into workplace discourse
analysis and computer-mediated discourse analysis, but also projects novel
knowledge, viewpoints, and implications to white-collar practitioners in Hong Kong,
if not other career fields and societies.
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Table of Contents
Abstract (English) i
Abstract (Chinese) iv
Acknowledgements vi
Table of Contents vii
List of Tables xi
Abbreviations and Transcription Conventions xii
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Discourse, Identity, and Power in the Workplace
1.2 Discourse, Identity, and Power on the Internet
1.3 Research Questions
1.4 Outline of the Thesis
1.5 Significance of the Study
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4
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Chapter 2
Literature Review
2.1 Theoretical Stance of Discourse and Discourse Analysis
2.1.1 Approach to discourse analysis in this study
2.2 Face-to-Face Discourse in the Workplace
2.2.1 Theoretical framework for workplace discourse analysis
2.2.2 Identity in face-to-face discourse in the workplace
2.2.3 Power in face-to-face discourse in the workplace
2.2.4 Humor and small talk as discourse strategies in face-to-face
discourse in the workplace
2.2.5 Research on workplace discourse and professional
communication in Hong Kong
2.3 Computer-Mediated Discourse of Instant Messaging in Daily
Communication
2.3.1 Instant messengers and instant messaging
2.3.2 The role of instant messaging in the workplace
2.3.3 Identity in computer-mediated discourse
2.3.4 Power in computer-mediated discourse
2.3.5 Research on instant messaging in Hong Kong
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2.4 Chapter Summary and Research Questions
2.4.1 Research questions: Humor, small talk, instant messaging
and Hong Kong workplaces
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Chapter 3
Methodology and Analytical Framework
3.1 Context of Research City and Research Site
3.1.1 Background of research city – Hong Kong
3.1.2 Access to research sites
3.1.3 Background of research site one – Superstar Electronics
Holdings
3.1.4 Background of research site two – Sunshine Toys Limited
3.1.5 Background of research site three – Success College
3.2 Collection of Data
3.2.1 Empirical data of instant messaging
3.2.2 Reported data of follow-up interview
3.2.3 Summary of the data collected
3.3 Analytical Framework for Data Analysis
3.4 Coding and Categorization of Excerpts
3.4.1 Consideration of coding method
3.4.2 Coding of discourse strategies
3.4.3 Coding of identity and power
3.4.4 Coding of follow-up interview data
3.5 Chapter Summary
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Chapter 4
Humor and the Construction of Identity and Power in Workplace
Instant Messaging
4.1 Humor and “Netspeak” in Workplace Instant Messaging
4.1.1 Humor and punctuation
4.1.2 Humor and emoticons
4.1.3 Humor and (online) code-switching
4.1.4 Humor and other creative use of typography
4.2 Humor and the Use of Afforded Functions in Instant Messengers
4.2.1 Humor and the division of instant messages
4.2.2 Humor, online status, and auto-replies
4.2.3 Humor and the embedding of hyperlinks
4.2.4 Humor and personal profile updates
4.3 Humor and computer multitasking
4.3.1 Humor and shifting between CMC devices
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4.3.2 Humor and work on web browsers
4.3.3 Humor and other software
4.4 Chapter Summary
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Chapter 5
Small Talk and the Construction of Identity and Power in Workplace
Instant Messaging
5.1 Small Talk and “Netspeak” in Workplace Instant Messages
5.1.1 Small talk and (naked) emoticons
5.1.2 Small talk and (unmarked) code-switching
5.2 Small Talk and the Affordances of Instant Messengers
5.2.1 Small talk and parallel processing with business talk
5.2.2 Small talk and media-shifting
5.2.3 Small talk and tolerance of delayed response
5.2.4 Small talk and embedded hyperlinks
5.2.5 Small talk and other functions of instant messengers
5.3 Small Talk and Offline Workplace Activities
5.4 Chapter Summary
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Chapter 6
Discussion
6.1 The Functions of Humor and Small Talk through Workplace Instant
Messaging
6.1.1 The predominant genres of humor and small talk in
workplace instant messaging
6.1.2 The predominant functions of humor and small talk in
workplace instant messaging
6.2 The Symbolic Process of Humor and Small Talk in Workplace
Instant Messaging
6.2.1 The use of “Netspeak” and instant messenger interfaces
6.2.2 Intertextuality, multimodality, and interconnection with the
physical settings
6.2.3 The regression of social etiquette in the workplace
6.2.4 The discourse of humor and small talk in workplace instant
messaging
6.3 The Construction of Identity through Humor and Small Talk in
Workplace Instant Messaging
6.3.1 The imposition of gender identities on colleagues and
stakeholders
6.3.2 The blurred boundary between workgroups and individuals
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6.3.3 The emergence of heteroglossic identity in workplace
discourse
6.3.4 The heteroglossic nature of identity construction through
humor and small talk in workplace instant messaging
6.4 The Construction of Power through Humor and Small Talk in
Workplace Instant Messaging
6.4.1 The manifestation of individual intellect in respect to work
and life
6.4.2 The competition for symbolic power and amplification of
information access
6.4.3 The escalation in utilizing information communication
technology
6.4.4 The structure of power construction through humor and
small talk in workplace instant messaging
6.5 Summary of the Major Arguments
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Chapter 7
Conclusion
7.1 The Functional Practice of Humor and Small Talk in Workplace
Instant Messaging
7.2 The Processes of Humor and Small Talk in Workplace Instant
Messaging
7.3 The Construction of Identity through Humor and Small Talk in
Workplace Instant Messaging
7.4 The Construction of Power through Humor and Small Talk in
Workplace Instant Messaging
7.5 Limitations and Recommendations
7.5.1 Space for future research
7.5.2 Implications for practitioners and the Hong Kong society
7.6 Final Reflection on the Value of this Study
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Appendices
Appendix A: Processes of Open Coding of Instant Messaging Data
Appendix B: Time Line for the IM Coding Process and Follow-Up
Interviews
Appendix C: A Sample of Informed Consent Form for Participants
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References 289
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List of Tables and Figures
Table 1
3.1 Information of major participants of Superstar Electronics Holdings 85
Table 2
3.2 Information of major participants of Sunshine Toys Limited 86
Table 3
3.3 Information of major participants of the Centre for Teaching and
Learning Development in Success College
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Figure 1
6.1 A graphical depiction of the discourse process of humor and small
talk in workplace instant messaging
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Figure 2
6.2 A graphical depiction of identity construction through humor and
small talk in workplace instant messaging
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Figure 3
6.3 A graphical depiction of power construction through humor and small
talk in workplace instant messaging
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Abbreviations and Transcription Conventions
Abbreviations
CofP Community of Practice (single form)
CofPs Communities of Practice (plural form)
CMC Computer-mediated communication
CMD Computer-mediated discourse
CMDA Computer-mediated discourse analysis
CMWD Computer-mediated workplace discourse
FBC Facebook Chat
ICT Information communication technology
IM Instant messaging
QQ Tencent QQ
SC-CTLD Centre for Teaching and Learning Development in Success
College
SEH-HK Superstar Electronics Holdings
STL-HK Sunshine Toys Limited
WDA Workplace discourse analysis
WLM Windows Live Messenger
Transcription Conventions
All participant and company names are pseudonyms.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Discourse, Identity, and Power in the Workplace
This interdisciplinary study explores the interplay between the broader research
on workplace communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC). When
communicating in the workplace, people seek for performance in the blurred line
between transactional work for their employers and relational work with their
colleagues (Holmes & Marra, 2004; Holmes & Schnurr, 2005). Face-to-face
communication plays an important role in this regard as colleagues, when getting
things done, often talk with their superiors, peers, subordinates, and other
stakeholders (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003; Mullany, 2007). Such a work-oriented
process includes launching directives, exchanging information, making promises,
giving refusals, lodging complaints, to name a few. Simultaneously, such a process is
also relation-oriented; it contributes to construct, maintain, facilitate, or repair the
relationships among colleagues. To fulfill their professional and interpersonal needs,
people talk specifically and carefully, constituting what researchers called workplace
discourse, which is believed to be different from discourses in non-workplace
settings (Schnurr, 2009; Stubbe et al., 2003). Since the constituents that construct
workplace discourse are always changing, it is more of a process than an entity.
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Over the past decade, scholarly studies of workplace discourse analysis (WDA)
have evidenced that people can accomplish business-directed and relation-directed
goals by means of different speech events, especially humor (Mak, Liu, & Deneen,
2012b) and small talk (Holmes, 2000b; Mak & Chui, 2013a), together with jargon,
code-switching (Mak, 2009), and expletives (Daly, Holmes, Newton, & Stubbe,
2004). The project, “New Zealand Language in the Workplace” led by Janet Holmes,
has particularly demonstrated that because of the co-existence between business and
rapport, workplace discourse is characterized by its applied, strategic, and localized
nature (Mullany, 2007). It is applied because the interactions are functional rather
than random. It is strategic because the interactions are often unnecessary – but
contributive to the tasks to complete (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). It is localized
because the interactions are usually normalized to be part of the culture of a
workplace (Holmes, 2000a; Schein, 1984). Therefore, speech events like humor and
small talk are considered as discourse strategies.
While discourse strategies are deployed to get work done, be it mainly
transactional or relational, they do not end at the point of getting things done. Instead,
there are often two political constructs. When these strategies are employed, there is
situated construction of identity (Cicourel, 2003; Holmes & Stubbe, 2003). This
identity at work is based on the predetermined titles or roles, but is always open to
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renegotiation in an interaction (Holmes, 2005; Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999).
Additionally, there is situated occurrence of power (Thornborrow, 2002; Vine, 2004).
This power at work is based on the relatively static institutional terms and conditions,
but is always open to reconstruction with any change of an interaction (Mullany,
2004; Wodak, Krzyzanowski, & Forchtner, 2012). These two constructs are dynamic
and intertwined with each other, constituting part of workplace discourse that
circulates within both the organizational setting and the broader cultural discourse
(Mak & Chui, 2013a).
Despite the above insights, so far studies of workplace discourse have focused
on verbal, face-to-face interactions in non-Asian societies (Schunrr & Mak, 2011),
especially New Zealand. That is, WDA research on Asian settings is still in its
infancy. For instance, Jaw, Ling, Wang, and Chang (2007) ventured that studies on
how Chinese culture and preferences contribute to the values and behaviors in
Chinese workplaces is limited. From a scholarly perspective, the Western-based
paradigm may have implicitly silenced the voices in Sino or Asian settings, which is
problematic to the theories and practices of workplace discourse. There is a need for
more research to be conducted in Asian communities. After all, Asian societies have
become important in the global commerce and economy. The business ties of
Western and Asian communities are increasing currently (Yang, 2014). There have
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been increasing works that demonstrate the macroscopic differences of discourse
behaviors between Asian and non-Asian participants (e.g., Cheng & Mok, 2006;
Kirkpatrick, 1991), but the majority of discourse studies have been deep rooted in the
western ideologies (Tanaka & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2012). In a word, more
microscopic investigations based on eastern philosophy are needed (Schnurr, 2013).
1.2 Discourse, Identity, and Power on the Internet
Another aspect that this study is grounded on is human communication using
digital devices. Other than the physical environment, people also interact on the
Internet using various communication software nowadays. The text-based
(sometimes audio-visual as well) electronic messages produced in this process
constitute what researchers called computer-mediated discourse (CMD) (Herring,
2001). The investigation of it has been termed computer-mediated discourse analysis
(CMDA) (Herring, 2004). This kind of discourse is similar to other types of
discourse in that it never occurs randomly, but with its own (linguistic) features
depending on software design (Baron, 2010), individual preferences, broader
socio-cultural norms, and many more (Lee, 2007a). It was traditionally presented in
asynchronous communication software (e.g., email), yet nowadays it has become
prevalent in synchronous platforms as well. A typical example is instant messengers
(IM), such as Windows Live Messenger (WLM), Tencent QQ (QQ), and Facebook
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Chat (FBC), which are the key platforms examined in this dissertation.
Research on CMD produced by instant messengers has largely focused on the
features at a structural level, such as turn-taking (Herring, 2004), and functions from
a social-dimension viewpoint, such as linguistic situation (Lee, 2007b). Under the
influence of pre-opted settings (Lewis & Fabos, 2005), people alter utterance length
(Cameron & Webster, 2005), make lexical choices (Fung & Carter, 2007), ignore
grammar rules (Baron, 2005a), adopt abnormal capitals, and individualize
punctuation (Zhou & Zhang, 2005) to accommodate themselves between the
technical constraints and communicative creativity in instant messengers. They also
code-switch (Fung & Carter, 2007), transliterate first languages to English (Lee,
2000c), and lard messages with quotations (Schwarz, 2011) to characterize their
cultural background to achieve different social purposes. Nevertheless, as Jacobs
(2006) noted, these findings are mainly drawn on scholarly works that center on
adolescent use of instant messengers, despite the fact that they have been widely
used in the workplace.
Just like other types of discourse, CMD carries various kinds of identity and
power that are constructed and negotiated by the conversational participants in the
process. Due to the relative freedom and physical distance created by the Internet,
people are more cognitively and behaviorally separated from each other (Donath,
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1999; Kendall, 1998), which may have led to more space and less constraints to
reform their relatively static selves to situated identities (Paasonen, 2002), and to
manipulate their relatively fixed authority to momentarily enact different types of
power (Spears & Lea, 1994). This is the same with instant messaging. People
code-switch to emphasize their identities of bilinguals (Jones, 2007), challenge the
accepted language norms to reconstruct their social identity (Cheuk & Chan, 2007),
take the message windows as a means of controling online working status
(Quan-Haase, Cothrel, & Wellman, 2005), and key in emoticons to boost
communicative competence (Aarsand, 2005). Owing to the collapse of context
(Marwick & boyd, 2011), identity and power in instant messaging are perceived as
incredibly fluid and complicated, constituting CMD in a more versatile and
negotiable manner in comparison to other mere verbal and written discourse.
Just like the situation in WDA, scholarship of CMD has been largely
constructed in classroom settings with secondary school and college students (Baron,
2005a; Lee, 2007a) or in a broader online setting where English is used as a first
language (Matsuda, 2002). In other words, they seldom investigate adults (Bordia,
1997) or the professional settings in Asian societies (Mak, Liu et al., 2012; Mak &
Chui, 2013b). If the role of CMD is marginalized in organizational studies, especially
in Asian communities, the understanding of the use of technology in the workplace
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will be incomplete. Indeed, recent studies have increasingly noted that adults
communicate on the computer in significantly different ways from teenagers at
school (Guo, Tan, Turner, & Xu, 2008; Huang & Leung, 2009), not to mention that
the Internet has become a prime site for workplace interaction (Herring, 2010;
Kleifgen, 2001). In that case, “contemporary working life is characterized by
relatively rapid developments in technology, constant changes in customer
preferences and behaviors, and continuously on-going organizational restructuring”
(Kira & Balkin, 2014, p.142). In addition, many speech events, such as online humor,
have not been widely studied in applied linguistics (Zappavigna, 2012), let alone in
WDA. Consequently, CMD research on adults’ speech events when using digital
technologies actually demands more scholarly attention.
1.3 Research Questions
All in all, studies of workplace discourse and those of CMD have gathered their
own momentum respectively. Nonetheless, they have their own underexplored areas.
The mainstream of these two fields may have implicitly silenced or marginalized
other communication channels in Asian workplaces or use of computer in
non-classroom settings, let alone the identity and power involved. There is clearly the
need for more Asian-based research on how workplace discourse takes place beyond
face-to-face settings and how CMD occurs outside the classroom. Pre-existing
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approaches to WDA, though, may not map onto CMD at work in which audio-visual
cues are different from the offline counterparts (Darics, 2008). Time, space, and other
contextual elements in CMD are perceived differently from face-to-face discourse as
well. Consequently, I launch the present interdisciplinary study by linking up the
spheres of WDA and CMDA. As a local Hong Kong citizen, I choose my hometown,
an international metropolis where English and computers are ordinarily used in
white-collar workplaces, to be the broad research site. I concentrate on two important
discourse strategies in the workplace, namely humor and small talk, and focus on a
popular communication channel in office computers, namely the instant messenger.
There are three key research questions for the present study:
1. How do colleagues of Hong Kong white-collar workplaces employ
humor and small talk as discourse strategies in instant messaging to
achieve transactional and relational goals?
2. How are different types of identity constructed and negotiated in such
an instant messaging process at work?
3. How are different types of power constructed and negotiated in such
an instant messaging process at work?
I address the above three questions by employing the inductive method of
discourse analysis to analyze the CMD of instant messaging collected continuously
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over a period of one year from three Hong Kong white-collar workplaces. I take the
Straussian Grounded Theory approach (Strauss, 1987) to design this study. In other
words, I adopt a few theoretical frameworks and pre-established categories to
increase my theoretical sensitivity, but leaving myself open during the data analysis
processes. The arguments formed will be to a large extent grounded on the empirical
data collected from my participants, but projected to an academic and theoretical
level.
1.4 Outline of the Thesis
The thesis consists of seven chapters, and is briefly outlined as follows.
Chapter 1, the current chapter, explains the importance of conducting WDA and
CMDA in an Asian setting. It makes clear the aims and research questions of the
study. It ends with an outline of the whole dissertation.
Chapter 2, the next chapter, focuses on current literature on WDA and CMDA.
Since this study is of interdisciplinary interest, research from different disciplines is
discussed together, but the review concentrates on humor and small talk in the
workplace, identity, and power in workplace exchanges, instant messaging in
ordinary communication, and instant messaging in professional settings. The chapter
introduces the theoretical framework that this study adopts, namely the Communities
of Practice (CofP).
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Chapter 3 explains the methodological design of the present study. A brief
description of the decisions made throughout the data collection period is provided.
The profiles of the participants and background information of their workplaces are
illustrated in detail. This chapter also introduces the analytical framework, namely
Gee’s (2011) model of discourse analysis. The coding processes are briefly outlined
at the end of the chapter as well.
Chapters 4 and 5, which constitute the main analytical parts of this study,
analyze the key findings from the data collected from the three sites. Chapter 4
focuses on humor, while Chapter 5 centers on small talk. All authentic
instant-messaging data are investigated by means of discourse analysis, with
reference to the relevant literature where applicable.
Chapter 6 is the discussion chapter. It projects the findings in the previous two
data-analysis chapters to a theoretical level. Through inductive reasoning, the chapter
aims to form a number of arguments to answer the three research questions. It is
intended to theorize the main arguments into figurative models as well.
Chapter 7, as a conclusion of this study, generalizes my overall findings and
arguments, states the outcomes and limitations of the research, and invites future
studies on similar and relevant topics.
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1.5 Significance of the Study
The topic of this study will touch on the three important foci of scholarly
research about the Internet as summarized in Flick (2009). It articulates how people
interact in instant messaging at work, thereby revealing how instant messengers and
the Internet have changed communication, people, the workplace, and society. The
three research questions also meet what Herring (2004) called the four good
indicators of studies of CMD. They are empirically answerable by authentic data
incorporating interview data; they are non-trivial in that they bridge two important
gaps in the fields of workplace discourse and CMD respectively. They are motivated
by two reasonable hidden hypotheses that face-to-face workplace discourse is
different from its counterparts on the Internet, and that CMD can be characterized
when occurring in office computers. They are open-ended to unexpected findings in
that existing literature has rarely addressed workplace discourse on the Internet or
instant messaging from the workplace perspective. This study can delineate new
theories of the workplace in a non-traditional frame (Finholt & Sproull, 1990).
The current project, albeit in academic nature, will also contribute to practitioners in
white-collar workplaces where networked computers and instant messaging are
regularly used. My findings will imply the communication effectiveness and
potential problems produced when colleagues perform humor and small talk in
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instant messengers. My analyses will also indicate how pre-determined roles or titles
will be reconstructed to different identities, and how official regulations can be
renegotiated to different types of power in instant messengers. To discourse
technologists (Mayr, 2008), my arguments will help them come up with various
informal arrangements to intervene into the use of instant messengers during or
beyond office hours (Guo et al., 2008), so as to fulfill their needs for achieving
individual and team goals efficiently and effectively with the advantages of
information communication technology (ICT).
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Chapter 7 Conclusion
The primary purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to investigate the
functions of humor and small talk in workplace instant messaging; another purpose
was to explore the identities and power construed through the processes of humour
and small talk. It was hoped that the findings that characterized the speech events in
instant messengers would provide fruitful insights of the relationships among humor,
small talk, workplace discourse, and instant messaging.
This study mainly employed naturally-occurring data by collecting the authentic
discourse of instant messaging from three white-collar Hong Kong workplaces. The
data were coded by the characteristics of humor and small talk that more or less
differentiated their occurrence from the counterparts in offline workplace settings.
The research was also supported by the reported data gathered from follow-up
interviews with selected participants, who had provided their insider and subjective
thoughts about what was happening in each selected instant messaging interaction.
The two data analysis chapters demonstrated that humor and small talk in
workplace instant messaging took place with Netspeak and the adaptive use of the
instant messengers interfaces, occurred with other tasks or CMC behaviors, and
pertained to offline workplace activities. Generalizing and elaborating the findings in
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individual excerpts, the discussion chapter proposed a number of arguments to
address the three research questions through inductive reasoning. The following
subsections offer a recap of the crux of the arguments and salient conclusions drawn
on all discoveries. This is followed by my understanding of the limitations of the
research design, recommendations for future studies and practitioners, and a final
self-reflection on the value of the whole study.
7.1 The Functional Practice of Humor and Small Talk in Workplace Instant
Messaging
The first major finding of this study was that humor and small talk in workplace
instant messaging might depend on a number of non-linguistic factors. They were the
general cultural preferences of colleagues, the specific shared repertoires of a CofP,
sometimes the colleagues’ perception of the use of instant messaging, and
occasionally their moral values. A conclusion to be drawn on this finding is that
humor and small talk are not universal or incidental in workplace instant messaging.
Their performance depends on national culture, CofP norms, colleagues’ collective
and individual experiences of computer use, and other beliefs and values. They are
social-cultural products that are created by a community, its members, and the
development of ICT in a particular society and period. They are not only based on
cultural preferences, but also on CofP norms and personal styles that arise
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independently from wider culture. Their usage and outcomes are neither dictated by
instant messaging clients nor human beings only. Employees experience the instant
messengers, and they do humor and small talk. Nevertheless, their experiences and
performance are all distinctive.
Secondly, humor and small talk in workplace instant messaging seemed to have
a tendency to serve relational purposes. This means that they seldom help to finish
professional work directly, but usually externalize the interpersonal side of
colleagues, such as their shared feelings, emotions, interests, etc. Their contents may
be funny or light-hearted, but their goals are serious in the long run. It is possible to
conclude that digital media have created extra, huge capacity and numerous tools of
infotainment for improving, maintaining, and enriching interpersonal communication
and closeness among colleagues. It helps colleagues maintain work life balance
through amicable bonding and companionship. This finding also provides a remote,
positive response to the forerunners of CMC studies, such as Danet (1997) and
Kleifgen (2001) who had predicted that CMC would ultimately revolutionize
workplace communication.
7.2 The Processes of Humor and Small Talk in Workplace Instant Messaging
The third major finding was that when humor and small talk occurred in
workplace instant messaging, colleagues tended to employ various aspects of
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Netspeak, and to make groundbreaking use of instant messenger interfaces.
Conclusively, this implies that digital humor and small talk are distinguishable from
their counterparts in face-to-face settings. The finding also supports the previous
consensus that old genres of a speech event would be renewed due to constant
changes in communication technologies (Gunnarsson et al., 1997). Instant
messengers uplift the social process of humor and small talk, and they drive the
creative use of instant messengers. An instant messenger is non-human on its own,
but it will become productive and inspirational when colleagues activate and explore
it for humorous and social achievements. Since individual users will even readjust
their use of instant messaging differently according to their personal experiences
(Anandarajan et al., 2010), humor and small talk in instant messaging will become
multifarious with the accumulation of usage and the instant messaging clients’
development of user interfaces.
As to the fourth major finding, humor and small talk in workplace instant
messaging was characterized by their interlinking with other CMC and face-to-face
workplace discourses, transmitting of multimodal meanings, and mapping with
offline workplace activities. This finding, which points at the multidimensional
nature of CMC, concludes that instant messengers allow colleagues to accumulate
eclectic, aesthetic humor and small talk experience that is formed by a web of
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meanings across traditional boundaries. Humor and small talk are performed through
what scholars (e.g., Riva, 2002) called hypermedia, a setting in which meanings are
presented through different semiotic modes of textual, visual, audio, and animated
communication. Moreover, since the online speech events often have a dynamic,
reciprocal relationship with offline activities, the online will redefine and reconstruct
the offline, whereby this results in assortments of workplace discourse on the whole.
Then, workplace discourse becomes unstable, and boundaries among practices will
overlap, blur, and bifurcate.
Also encouraging is the fifth major finding, the regression of social etiquette
when humor and small talk take place in workplace instant messaging (that is
inaccessible to outsiders). Suggestively, this means that humor and small talk through
instant messaging, despite being situated in work hours, enable a certain degree of
dropping of formality, digression of designated roles, and deconstruction of terms
and regulation in the workplace. In other words, colleagues may have a greater sense
of ease, openness, and sincerity. Allan, Diefendorff, and Ma (2014) argued that
Chinese culture, as a representative of collectivistism, expects people to control their
emotional expressions in an open setting. Humor and small talk in the front region
may be required to be politically appropriate and superficially professional, but
colleagues can enjoy more personal autonomy for the anti-social contents and
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manners of participation of a speech event in the back, probably when
communicating in their second language.
7.3 The Construction of Identity through Humor and Small Talk in Workplace
Instant Messaging
The sixth finding was the tendency to ascribe gender identity to other colleagues
through humor and small talk in instant messaging. Colleagues may not be interested
in fabricating their gender, but focus on gearing or exaggerating stereotyped gender
characteristics to each other. A conclusion to be drawn on this is that humor and
small talk are equally (or even more) gendered when colleagues move from
face-to-face talk to instant messengers. Although sexist contents and manners are
perceived to be aggressive and offensive in folk theories, their appropriateness still
depends on individual CofP norms. The nature of instant messaging, possibly, has
magnified the development and justification of the norms that tolerate uninhibited,
sexually-antagonistic humor and small talk. Eventually, many normally-unwanted,
dismissive gender identities will be insinuated and circulate in the instant-messaging
setting over time.
Seventh, colleagues appeared to integrate personal identity with workgroup
identity through humor and small talk in instant messaging. The interspersion not
only provides evidence to the diminished line between business and individuality in
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the workplace, but also indicates that it is no longer appropriate to see workplace
humor or small talk as collective constructs only. Instead, the speech events in instant
messaging can be individualized and privatized. This further implies that the
traditional roles of joint enterprises, mutual engagements, and shared repertories may
fade out. It is difficult to determine whether a humor or small-talk interaction
primarily aims to achieve the CofP or personal goals, strengthen the CofP ties or
personal desire, and practice the shared parameters or idiosyncratic styles. As Faure
(2008) concluded, CMC redefines the public and private frontier with the new
possibilities of communication, so any CMC devices are actually more than a simple
improvement in talk (at work).
The eighth finding was the simultaneous reinforcement of the similarities and
differences in different aspects, which coalesced a type of heteroglossic identity
through humor and small talk in instant messaging. In other words, one interaction
casts numerous features of the speakers and the interlocutors, projecting a state of
turbulence of identities that will continue to grow in instant messengers or extend to
other workplace settings. The characteristic in one domain is defocalized; instead, the
characteristics in different roles and relationships are encompassed simultaneously.
With humor and small talk, the wider cultural, generational characteristics, and the
narrower workgroup personal preferences, can go hand in hand across psychological
271
and linguistic boundaries. The heterogeneity complex or part of it is always subject
to negotiation and modification.
7.4 The Construction of Power through Humor and Small Talk in Workplace
Instant Messaging
The ninth major finding was that humor and small talk in workplace instant
messaging could manifest the general wisdom of individual colleagues that was
infrequently afforded in face-to-face workplace talk. Rather than exerting control or
coordination, humor and small talk probably aim at showing or visualizing one’s
uniqueness of intellectual capital at a particular moment in instant messaging. To
conclude, instant messengers are gadgets that liberate intellectual emancipation
through communicating social messages with implicit knowledge that is gained from
the rhythms of life. They become an oasis that is devoid of the offline hierarchy and
status imbalance that are largely based on expert knowledge and codified position.
As regards the tenth finding, the actualizing of symbolic power and the crafting
of information access abilities were common in the process of humor and small talk
in workplace instant messaging. The process usually rendered colleagues
communicative and informative. This is not to say that instant messaging is always
power levelers, but that the CMC process often provides sufficient time and space for
colleagues to decipher or produce the speech events in linguistically skillful or
272
influential ways. This is particularly important for Hong Kong people, who may not
be fully expressive when speaking in English face to face (Du-Babcock, 2005).
Opportunities of empowerment (especially when countering) are always given to
colleagues who are gauche or introverted but still want to joke and exhibit socially.
Then, the ownership of humor and small talk becomes less centralized to the
socialites or managers than it used to be.
The last but not least finding in this study is that humor and small talk in
workplace instant messaging often revitalized the technological abilities of those
who took the initiatives. Different speech events will generate different aspects of
power, but the use of instant messengers frequently displays one’s competence in
using computer and the instant messaging clients for workplace communication.
When those technical and mechanical skills are used for social purposes, they
become indicative and promotional of who is the better computer and instant
messenger user, who is the better online communicator, and whose humor and small
talk are the most influential or productive.
7.5 Limitations and Recommendations
Although this study looked at only three workplace CofPs in Hong Kong, it has
many implications for other research on CMC and practices in society. This section
describes some limitations of this study, followed by offering a number of
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suggestions for academics and practitioners, especially those who work in Hong
Kong.
7.5.1 Space for future research
The three research questions took an optimistic, functional perspective towards
the occurring of humor and small talk in workplace instant messaging. Through the
positive lens, I did not investigate any possible drawbacks or adverse results of them
in detail. Future research may pay more attention to the miscommunication and
communication breakdown caused by humor and small talk in workplace instant
messaging. In particular, some subtypes of humor and small talk are often a gambit
that involves risk-taking. The affordances of a CMC device may also prohibit
internal workplace communication in some hidden aspects (Oliveira, 2011). Only
when one understands all sides of a speech event can one understand it at a
theoretical and a practical level. Also, my research questions limited the study scope
within three white-collar workplaces located in Hong Kong. While the findings are
remarkable, it remains undeniable that colleagues from different cultures may behave
very differently in instant messaging (e.g., Kayan et al., 2006). Further studies are
recommended to look into the workplace settings in other Asian or non-Asian
settings as well. By the same token, as different professional spheres have distinctive
communication norms in general, future studies should investigate the speech events
274
across different occupations.
Because of some technical constraints, the design of this study did not access
the face-to-face and other mediated workplace data from the three research sites. I
merely addressed them indirectly through the retrospective data of follow-up
interviews. Due to privacy and confidentiality reasons, my observation of the
participants’ front-stage interaction was also very limited. Nevertheless, as argued,
speech events in workplace instant messaging should not be detached from the
linguistic practices in other domains in the office. In particular, none of the
instant-messaging practices are enough on their own to account for identity and
power construction through an interaction. It is hoped that, thus, future research will
consider collecting texts from other media (e.g., oral talk, SMS texting, email in the
workplace) to form triangulation to the discourse of workplace instant messaging.
More rigorous, longitudinal ethnographic observations (if possible) in research sites
will be very helpful. More studies should explore how colleagues continue their
face-to-face interactions through CMC, and vice versa. Additionally, as mentioned in
the literature review, discourse in the front region will couple with that in the back
region to make holistic meaning. Although humor and small talk in workplace instant
messaging upstage their significance backstage, they could be investigated with other
data collected from the front region.
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This thesis was centered on humor and small talk, but my dataset also displayed
other speech events when the participants talked through instant messaging. Whereas
I did not touch on them in great depth, other conscious or unconscious behaviors in
workplace instant messaging, such as code-switching, media-shifting, jargon-using,
swearing, storytelling, information-seeking, decision-making, etc. would be worthy
of investigation as well. In the future, they could be researched from a similar
discourse analytic perspective, the more traditional viewpoints (e.g., the politeness,
speech act theories), or a more structural approach focusing on adjacency pairs,
turn-taking, alignment-drawing, overlapping, and repairing. Furthermore, other
informal CMC platforms, such as social-network sites, etc. must be in need of more
research within the field of WDA. Youngsters move onto novelty in other pursuits all
the time (Baron, 2013), and they will join the workforce with their CMC habits.
Consequently, CMC in the workplace always needs to be delved deeper (Avrahami &
Hudson, 2006).
This study indicated that cultural preferences and ideologies could be an
indispensable concern in the process of workplace communication. How humor and
small talk is used or not used for transactional and relational purposes in instant
messaging always relates to the cultural and workplace norms. Inspired by Holmes et
al. (2011), therefore, I suggest scholars work closely with practitioners to increase
276
employees’ sensitivity to cultural preferences and develop their awareness of
strategic speech events at work. In Hong Kong, the communication skills of
teenagers are often criticized by their employers and the mass media. To address this
(stereotypical) social problem, I advocate conducting more field work (e.g., support
services) in collaboration with trainers or practitioners in future, so as to articulate
the social-pragmatic aspects of workplace communication.
7.5.2 Implications for practitioners and the Hong Kong society
This study delineated the importance of humor and small talk in workplace
instant messaging. In practice, it provides an important implication to colleagues,
especially those in a managerial position, that banning or dismissing non-work talk is
not necessarily beneficial or productive to a fulfilling workplace. Instead, employees
are no longer treated as mere sources of labor nowadays. Then, appropriate practices
of humor and small talk would be coping mechanisms that increase colleagues’ work
mood, form their sense of belonging to the workplace, and trivialize the possibility of
burnout. As Wisse and Rietzschel (2014) noted, more and more multinational
enterprises have begun to provide humor workshops for senior employees to
optimize its benefits and minimize its drawbacks. This study also gives an essential
insight to organizational mentors who are in charge of helping new employees
integrate into the workplace more effectively and appropriately. There are usually
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some unwritten norms of interactions (e.g., what topic to choose, what direction to
decode, what attitude to respond, when to initiate or stop) in each workplace CofP.
Passing these repertoires to the newcomers can encourage them to participate
actively, and then can open their career pathways quickly. Enterprises or institutes
that still rely on email communication could consider the policy and internal use of
instant messengers as well, because it has the potential to overcome the spatial and
temporal constraints of workplace discussions, as shown in this research.
My data and findings illustrated the meaningfulness and justification of using
Netspeak in instant messages as well. It was not subordinated to traditional writing
norms, but just different from them. Purists and mass media in Hong Kong tend to
discredit the use of Netspeak (especially in terms of code-switching and emoticons)
at work. But still, theories and arguments of professional communication should not
be isolated or decontextualized from authentic practices (Candlin, 2002). Perhaps
rather than restricting colleagues from using it, managers should simultaneously
think about whether sometimes it could be rewarding as a rhetorical device in
internal, informal CMC. None of the communication patterns are always good or bad,
and it is only a question of whether they are predominantly used by people.
Therefore, English teachers should help their students develop an open but critical
attitude towards such linguistic phenomena and demography. Likewise, designers of
278
language courses could consider including such controversial language use and
behavior in the syllabi, so as to make good use of any authentic, down-to-earth
teaching material vis-à-vis the conversative, prescriptive ideas in textbooks. This can
nurture students to be competent at effective communication across face-to-face and
computer-medaited workplace settings. The increasing permeability of working in
society has led to diverse language styles or genres to be used in the workplace.
From an intercultural-pragmatic point of view, there is no “one-size-fits-all” standard
of language use in a multicultural society. It is hoped that this finding at least would
trigger indirect attempts to question the folk theories, which seem over prescriptive
and essentialist in Hong Kong.
7.6 Final Reflection on the Value of this Study
This closing section displays a final reflective portrayal of how the current study
contributed to scholarship in various aspects. First and foremost, applied linguistics
is perceived as being primarily concerned with pedagogical issues and language
learning (Schnurr, 2013), which is partly why WDA in Hong Kong is still in its
infancy. Another important reason that renders WDA marginalized is that it is far
more difficult and time-consuming to collect and contextualize authentic data from
professional settings than from educational settings (Mak, 2009). This study, though,
provided many critical insights into how colleagues in the Hong Kong actually talked
279
at work through instant messaging. Focusing on humor and small talk, it specifically
articulated how humor and small talk in instant messaging could engineer colleagues’
everyday work through enlarging their approachability and friendliness in the long
run. While the similar direction was scarce in CMDA, this study proved its
promising space as a research topic. Theoretically, it also suggested that the academic
conceptions of “the workplace”, “workplace discourse”, “professional
communication”, etc. require redefinitions with the prosperity of ICT.
Secondly, this study revealed several discourse processes that should not be
overlooked when studying CMWD. These processes might be easier and more
appropriate to be discovered by a qualitative research design vis-à-vis a quantitative
approach. Not only did my analyses prove the common adaptive use of Netspeak and
the instant-messenger interfaces during humor and small talk, they also highlighted
the intertextuality, multimodality, and overlapping of the online and offline worlds in
the communication processes. Overall, the finding implicated how the boundaries
between human beings and computer technologies, the peripheral and the dominant,
the superior and the subordinate, might disappear when colleagues interacted online
using a digital device. Moreover, this study discovered that instant messengers,
together with the Internet, would allocate a flexible, adaptable gateway to
reconstructing identity and power in the workplace. There was not much research on
280
the role of CMC in workplace identity and power, but this study argued that the
social asymmetric structure of a workplace could be transformed or impacted on by
instant messaging.
Thirdly, the argumentation of this study refered to the cultural preferences and
dominant ideologies in the Hong Kong (Chinese) workplace setting. In the
introduction chapter, it was said that WDA research focusing on Chinese contexts
was very limited. Generally speaking, as “a bicultural society where both Chinese
culture and Western culture are emphasized,” (Yip, 2004, p.484) the culture of Hong
Kong workplaces is rooted in the teaching of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
The tradition is integrated with different schools of thought in the modern world,
namely Marxism and Socialism (Faure, 2008; Lin, 2010). Meanwhile, individual
Chinese who have foreign experience, especially teenagers and young adults, may be
more strongly influenced by Western ideologies that are more open to personal
values and traditional social taboos (Jaw et al., 2007). My discussion chapter even
showed that the cultural situation has been even complicated by the nature of CMC
and instant messaging. In workplace instant messaging, humor, small talk, and
perhaps other speech events, will reconstruct these Chinese ideologies and cultural
values in different but interrelated directions. The findings and arguments here will
give new insights to and produce a change in the Western paradigm of WDA.
281
Lastly, the methodological design of this study showed an exemplar of using
Gee’s (2011) model of discourse analysis to investigate naturally-occurring data. It
activated the potential of a new analytical framework that could embrace many
traditional approaches used in the previous research of WDA. Equally important
were the genres of humor and small talk as well as the domains of identity and power
construction in the workplace. Likewise, my attempts to depict a figurative
representation to answer each research question provided a good example of
theorizing the findings and arguments from qualitative analysis.
As a final note, “work is a fundamental necessity in human existence, so is
workplace discourse” (Gu, 2002, p.175). Indeed, behavior and discourse in the
workplace is always a promising research domain. This interdisplinary study raised
awareness of the interplay among humor, small talk, instant messaging, identity,
power, and the workplace; it also implicated how the development of digital
technologies have changed human behavior in society. It proved the values of using
authentic data incorporating interview data to answer a set of relevant research
questions, and acknowledged that being skepitcal of the existing, widely-accepted
theories could be conducive to scholarship and practitioners. More importantly, it
was different from many WDA projects (e.g., Language in the Workplace Project) in
that it used a relatively new discourse analysis framework (i.e. Gee, 2011) and
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employed a Hong Kong (Chinese) viewpoint on various linguistic behaviors in the
workplace. Although behavior in the workplace has been more researched in
management and business studies than in language studies (Candlin, 2002), it is
hoped that more research will be conducted across the traditional subfields of
sociolinguistics and CMDA studies, so as to explore more unprecedent, interesting
phenomena in such a digitalized, globalized century.
290
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