The Discourse of Business Meetings

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 1-17

3. Business Discourse and Organizational Business Meetings Across Disciplines

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 19-51

4. Fieldwork in Organizations

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 53-73

5. An Integrated Analytical Framework for Interpreting the Meeting Data

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 75-80

6. Analyzing Innovative Kuwait Co. Meeting Data

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 81-113

7. Analyzing Global Phoenix Meeting Data

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 115-133

8. Compare and Contrast

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 135-185

9. Conclusion and Future Directions in Business Discourse

   • Fatma M. AlHaidari

   Pages 187-211

10. Back Matter

    Pages 213-219

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This book examines the social organizational discourse of task-oriented business meetings in a Kuwaiti financial organization and an American non-profit trade organisation. Focusing primarily on the linguistic behaviours demonstrating agency and power of managers and staff members displayed during these meetings, the project is based on ethnographic data collected during eight months of fieldwork. The author examines the similarities and differences between the linguistic behaviours of both organizations, particularly relating to the production of collective “we,” “us,” and “our” utterances and directive speech acts issued to explore how managers and co-workers perform agency and power in meetings. This distinctive book will shed light into the influence of language on the actions and relationships of managers and co-workers in business meetings, and will be of interest to applied linguists and discourse analysts in the field of business discourse in addition to business professionals in management and finance.

• corporate culture
• language choices in business
• organizational meetings
• cross-cultural business discourse
• American business language
• Kuwaiti business language
• discourse analysis
• discourse of business meetings
• language of business meetings
• agency and power in discourse
• language and gender

• Public Authority for Applied Education and Training, Kuwait City, Kuwait

  Fatma M. AlHaidari

Fatma M. AlHaidari is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training, Kuwait. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language and gender, and the discourse of business meetings.

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