Power and Vulnerability: Managing Sensitive Language in Organisational Communication

Patrick Healey; Prashant Khare; Ignacio Castro; Gareth Tyson; Mladen Karan; Ravi Shekhar; Stephen McQuistin; Colin Perkins; Matthew Purver

Power and Vulnerability: Managing Sensitive Language in Organisational Communication

Patrick Healey, Prashant Khare, Ignacio Castro, Gareth Tyson, Mladen Karan, Ravi Shekhar, Stephen McQuistin, Colin Perkins, Matthew Purver

School of Computer Science

Research output: Contribution to conference › Abstract › peer-review

Abstract

Organisational responsibilities can bring power but also a degree of vulnerability and exposure. This leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, exposure might inhibit it. Data from a large corpus of organisational emails shows that people in positions of relative power tend to avoid potentially sensitive words suggesting that, in at least some circumstances, vulnerability is a more significant influence than power in organisational language use.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 28 Jun 2023
Event	33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse - University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Duration: 28 Jun 2023 → 30 Jun 2023 Conference number: 33 https://www.societyfortextanddiscourse.org/std-2023/

Conference

Conference	33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse
Abbreviated title	ST&D
Country/Territory	Norway
City	Oslo
Period	28/06/23 → 30/06/23
Internet address	https://www.societyfortextanddiscourse.org/std-2023/

Cite this

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title = "Power and Vulnerability: Managing Sensitive Language in Organisational Communication",

abstract = "Organisational responsibilities can bring power but also a degree of vulnerability and exposure. This leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, exposure might inhibit it. Data from a large corpus of organisational emails shows that people in positions of relative power tend to avoid potentially sensitive words suggesting that, in at least some circumstances, vulnerability is a more significant influence than power in organisational language use.",

author = "Patrick Healey and Prashant Khare and Ignacio Castro and Gareth Tyson and Mladen Karan and Ravi Shekhar and Stephen McQuistin and Colin Perkins and Matthew Purver",

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note = "33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, ST&D ; Conference date: 28-06-2023 Through 30-06-2023",

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TY - CONF

T1 - Power and Vulnerability: Managing Sensitive Language in Organisational Communication

AU - Healey, Patrick

AU - Khare, Prashant

AU - Castro, Ignacio

AU - Tyson, Gareth

AU - Karan, Mladen

AU - Shekhar, Ravi

AU - McQuistin, Stephen

AU - Perkins, Colin

AU - Purver, Matthew

N1 - Conference code: 33

PY - 2023/6/28

Y1 - 2023/6/28

N2 - Organisational responsibilities can bring power but also a degree of vulnerability and exposure. This leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, exposure might inhibit it. Data from a large corpus of organisational emails shows that people in positions of relative power tend to avoid potentially sensitive words suggesting that, in at least some circumstances, vulnerability is a more significant influence than power in organisational language use.

AB - Organisational responsibilities can bring power but also a degree of vulnerability and exposure. This leads to divergent predictions about the use of potentially sensitive language: power might license it, exposure might inhibit it. Data from a large corpus of organisational emails shows that people in positions of relative power tend to avoid potentially sensitive words suggesting that, in at least some circumstances, vulnerability is a more significant influence than power in organisational language use.

M3 - Abstract

T2 - 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse

Y2 - 28 June 2023 through 30 June 2023

ER -