J Holmes
Biographic Data
| ID | 8034 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Holmes |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Holmes |
| SIGNATURE | HOLMES J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1791-033X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 128 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1321 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 128 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1902 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 20 |
The Complexity of Expressions of Approval—One Aspect of Relational Practice in Diverse Workplaces
The majority of workplaces in Aotearoa New Zealand typically include team members from diverse cultural backgrounds, and yet an orientation to majority group norms (in this case, Pākehā) still dominates. In this article, we draw on naturally occurring workplace talk in a range of workplaces to explore both dominant group practices and norms that are influenced by differing cultural orientations. Our focus is relational practice, or people‐oriente…
Investigating the potential of oxygen-isotope records from anthropogenic lakes as tracers of 20th century climate change
Historical climate change in southern England was investigated using ostracod oxygen-isotope (δ 18 O) records from two anthropogenic lakes in Hampshire, southern England. A strong relationship is observed between δ 18 O ostracod , δ 18 O precipitation and δ 18 O lake_water in the contemporary environment and therefore δ 18 O ostracod from the sedimentary record of these systems has the potential to reflect past climate variability. The possibilit…
Doing leadership in style
The Wellington Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) team has devoted considerable attention over the last few decades to researching workplace communication. We have focused especially on the insights that discourse analysis can provide regarding similarities and differences between the two major ethnic groups in New Zealand in “ways of doing things at work”. In this paper, we draw on both quantitative and qualitative analyses of interaction i…
“Climbing the Same Mountain”
The enactment of biculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand has varied greatly over the time since colonial settlement, and it is still a debated and evolving concept. In this article we examine practices adopted by one Māori Chief Executive Officer in two different workplaces at two different points in time to illustrate this process in action. Our analysis examines the way he opens meetings of his senior management teams, demonstrating the way he ad…
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction between language and society. In this classic introductory work, Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson examine the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Divided into three parts, this book explains basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light of classic approaches, as well as int…
Leadership and managing conflict in meetings
There is extensive literature describing the characteristics of a good leader in the area of organisational communication and business management. However, the research tends to be based on secondary, survey or reported data, typically interviews and questionnaires. Moreover, the predominant image of a “good” leader tends to be a charismatic, inspirational, decisive, authoritative, ‘hero’. The Language in the Workplace database provides a large c…
Contesting the Culture Order
Contrastive pragmatics encourages a focus on variation in the ways that different groups enact their distinctive cultural values and norms. In New Zealand, Pākehā (European-based) ways of doing things are the norm, taken-for-granted and rarely questioned or even noted unless someone “breaks the rules”. For minority group members, however, including the indigenous Māori people, Pākehā norms are ever-present reminders of their non-dominant position…
Trading Places, Creating Spaces
In referencing the title of Chris Candlin's (2008) plenary, this paper focuses on the continuing concern to align research and practice in applied linguistics, and more particularly in language for specific purposes (LSP) and professional communication. We examine how Candlin identified practices for trading places between research and practice and for creating synergies between them – and in so doing opened up new spaces for enquiry and understa…
Explicit or implicit? Facilitating interactional competence through mentoring discourse at work
Dans toutes les organisations, il est important d'assurer l'accompagnement des nouveaux venus et des jeunes collaborateurs afin de favoriser le développement professionnel et la compétence interactionnelle. Cet accompagnement peut prendre de nombreuses formes, qu'il s'agisse de commentaires très explicites dans un contexte formel ou d'un mentorat subtil et implicite par le biais de conversations plus anodines. À partir d'interactions spontanées, …
Negotiating the culture order in New Zealand workplaces
In many societies the relative social status of different social and cultural groups results in hegemonic relationships or an 'order' which manifests itself as sets of taken-for-granted societal norms or ideologies which influence behavior, including linguistic behavior. I label this concept theculture order, and propose it as a potential sociolinguistic universal. Drawing on the research of the Language in the Workplace Project (LWP) team, I pro…
Negotiating the tall poppy syndrome in New Zealand workplaces
The ‘tall poppy syndrome’ (TPS) is one example of a societal constraint whose function in Australasia is to enforce society-wide ideologies such as egalitarianism and the gender order. The TPS acts as an enforcement mechanism which keeps self-promoting discourse in check. While carefully managed selfpromotion is permissible in some contexts, there are others where New Zealanders are expected to behave with modesty and humility. Using a social rea…
Ethnicity and humour in the workplace
Power and Politeness in the Workplace
Power and Politeness in the Workplace has become established as a seminal text for courses in language and professional communication. Co-authored by bestselling author Janet Holmes, this text provides insights into the way we all talk at work, including a wealth of material illustrating the way people communicate with each other in their ordinary everyday encounters in their workplaces. The analysis focuses, in particular, on how and why people …
Doing power and negotiating through disagreement in public meetings
Power in meetings may be enacted in many ways, ranging from democratic and collaborative through to authoritative and didactic, with the exact positioning on this continuum typically under the control of the chair. By contrast with the focus of most previous research on the behaviour of institutionally ratified chairs of intact teams, this paper examines how volunteer chairs of small focus groups in public meetings use the power associated with t…
Sabine Jautz
Gender and Pragmatics
In the field of language and gender, there is a widely accepted origin narrative in which Robin Lakoff's seminal article is identified as the inaugural publication that launched investigations of a relationship between men, women, and language. Following its publication, there was a veritable explosion in language and gender research, with pragmatic issues attracting a good deal of attention. In the earliest decades, researchers examined features…
Assisting the development of sociopragmatic skills
Trivial, mundane or revealing? Food as a lens on ethnic norms in workplace talk
Talking to the elderly in New Zealand residential care settings
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction between language and society. In this classic introductory work, Janet Holmes examines the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Written with Holmes' customary enthusiasm, the book is divided into three sections which explain basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light …
Doing listenership
The skills involved in contributing competently in workplace interaction include enacting attentive listenership and providing appropriate feedback to the talk of others. These sociopragmatic skills are often overlooked, and when non-native-like listener feedback does attract attention, cultural differences are commonly cited to account for differences observed. In this paper, we analyse data from recordings made by Chinese skilled migrants in Ne…
Women, Men and Politeness
Women, Men and Politeness focuses on the specific issue of the ways in which women and men express politeness verbally.Using a range of evidence and a corpus of data collected largely from New Zealand, Janet Holmes examines the distribution and functions of a range of specific verbal politeness strategies in women's and men's speech and discusses the possible reasons for gender differences in this area. Data provided on interactional strategies, …
Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English
Leadership discourse in a Maori workplace
Masculinist gender norms and majority group ethnic norms are always covertly relevant as important systemic characteristics of interaction at work, subtly influencing people’s unconscious interpretations of what is considered appropriate in the workplace and influencing evaluations of the ways in which individuals do gender, ethnicity and leadership. Drawing on material from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, we focus on a particul…
Speaking up
Allyson Jule’s overview of language and gender research introduces readers to a range of valuable material using accessible prose and an engaging tone. As a ‘beginner’s guide’ to the ways in which
Having a laugh at work
Paying compliments
Modifying illocutionary force
Politeness, Power and Provocation
This article examines verbal humour in routine interactions within professional workplaces, using material recorded in four New Zealand government departments. The problem of defining humour is discussed, followed by a brief outline of the theoretical models which underpin the analysis of the various functions which humour serves in professional organizations. Humour can express positive affect in interaction. It can also facilitate or `licence' …
Sharing a laugh
Over the edge? Subversive humor between colleagues and friends
Functions of you know in women's and men's speech
You know, like the tag question and the parenthetical I think, has been regarded as a linguistic hedging device, and consequently as a "women's language" form. This paper describes a range of forms and functions expressed by you know, as well as its use by women and men in a corpus of spontaneous speech. While there is no difference in this corpus in the total number of occurrences of you know produced by women and men, there are interesting cont…
The Community of Practice
This article provides an introduction to this issue of Language in Society by exploring the relationship of the concept of Community of Practice (CofP) to related terms and theoretical frameworks. The criterial characteristics and constitutive features of a CofP are examined; the article points out how a CofP framework is distinguished from other sociolinguistic and social psychological frameworks, including social identity theory, speech communi…
Expletives as solidarity signals in FTAs on the factory floor
Women, Language and Identity
This paper explores the ways in which women and men use language to mark gender boundaries, and to convey femininity and masculinity in the construction of a gendered identity. The first section of the paper examines evidence that language serves as a gender identity marker not only in the particular phonological variants used more by women than by men, but also in the wider stylistic range evident in women's discourse in some communities. The ge…
Apologies in New Zealand English
The function of apologies is discussed within the context of a model of interaction with two intersecting dimensions - affective and referential meaning. Apologies are defined as primarily social acts conveying affective meaning. The syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic features of apologies are described, based on a corpus of 183 apologies. While apology exchanges divided equally between those which used a combination of strategies and those…
Politeness, Humor and Gender in the Workplace
After first considering some of the challenges of defining and measuring the concept of politeness, the analysis draws on data from the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project to illustrate the value of complementary quantitative and qualitative approaches to the issue of what it means to be polite at work. Using the concept of relational practice, an analysis of workplace humor serves to illustrate what each approach offers in terms of dist…
You know, eh and other ‘exasperating expressions
Doing femininity' at work
Workplaces constitute one of the more interesting sites where individuals 'do gender', while at the same time constructing their professional identities and meeting their organisation's expectations. Drawing on interactional data recorded in New Zealand professional organisations, this paper focuses in particular on how participants manage and interpret the notion of 'femininity' in workplace discourse. In much current usage, the concepts 'femini…
Humour as an ethnic boundary marker in New Zealand interaction
1997). Humour as an ethnic boundary marker in New Zealand interaction. Journal of Intercultural Studies: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 127-151
Relational practice in the workplace
This article explores the concept of relational practice, the wide range of off-line, backstage, or collaborative work that people do which goes largely unrecognized and unrewarded in the workplace (Fletcher 1999). The analysis identifies a range of different ways in which people do relational practice in workplace discourse, and critically examines the proposal that, as subtle support work, relational practice is considered “women's work.” Drawi…
Hedges and boosters in women's and men's speech
Exploring Co-leadership Talk Through Interactional Sociolinguistics
This article seeks to bring to the fore the processes by which leaders co-create leadership through collective talk within the workplace. Co-leadership has recently been recognized as an important aspect of leadership practice, especially at the top of organizations, yet it remains under-theorized and empirically under-explored. Guided by the desire to integrate concepts that have emerged from leadership psychology with discursive leadership appr…
Being (im)polite in New Zealand workplaces
Politeness and impoliteness in ethnic varieties of New Zealand English
Women's Talk in Public Contexts
This paper examines the distribution and function of women's and men's contributions to formal discourse. Evidence is provided that males talk for longer and make more frequent contributions than females in formal contexts such as seminars, TV discussions and full-class exchanges in classrooms. These contexts are ones in which talk is highly valued because contributions generally have status-enhancing potential. Moreover, the predominant function…
Humor and leadership style
Drawing on authentic workplace interactions, this paper examines the ways in which effective leaders use humor as a discursive resource to construct particular aspects of leadership style. The conventional wisdom in leadership studies suggests that humor is an important tool for “good” leaders who inspire and challenge their subordinates. The management studies literature suggests a basic distinction between a traditional transactional style, whi…
New Zealand women are good to talk to
Teachers and Students Learning about Compliments
Paying appropriate compliments and identifying them accurately is an aspect of communicative competence which may differ in a variety of ways from one culture to another. This article provides examples of misunderstandings in compliment exchanges in different cultural contexts and analyzes them as instances of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure. An analysis of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms of complimenting behavior in two Eng…
Leadership talk
Notes on the Religious Ideas of the Elema Tribe of the Papuan Gulf
Initiation Ceremonies of Natives of the Papuan Gulf
Evolution and Evolution
Biology and Society
Journal Article Biology and Society Get access Frank H. Hankins Frank H. Hankins Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 5, Issue 4, June 1927, Pages 656–659, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/5.4.656 Published: 01 June 1927
Methods and Principles
Human Genetics and Its Social Import
The Increasing Growth-Rate of the Negro Population
The census figures showed that the rate of increase of the Negro population in the United States, which had diminished to 6.5 per cent in the decade 1910-20, jumped to 13.6 per cent in the period from 1920 to 1930. Despite the alleged under-enumeration of Negroes in the federal census of 1920, an adjustment of the figures to take account of the alleged under-enumeration would still show an upward trend of Negro population during the last decade. …
The Principal Causes of Death Among Negroes
S. J. Holmes, The Principal Causes of Death Among Negroes: A General Comparative Statement, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 6, No. 3, The Health Status and Health Education of Negroes in the United States (Jul., 1937), pp. 289-302
The Negro's Struggle for Survival
K. E. Von Baer's Perplexities over Evolution
Micromerism in Biological Theory
Objectives. The aim of this paper is to explore the insufficiently studied problem of the effectiveness of a depression prevention program with positive psychology components. Specifically, the project aims to (1) design a prevention program with positive psychology concepts, (2) implement the program in a sample of adolescents, and (3) assess the effectiveness of the program. Methods. Forty-one third-formers (23 males, 18 females) were recruited…
The Purchasing-Power-Parity Theory
On Language in Society
Sociolingűística
Developing Sociolinguistic Competence in a Second Language
This paper presents and discusses some exercises designed to help the second language learner develop both receptive and productive sociolinguistic competence. The exercises stress the notion of appropriate usage and the potential differences between the sociolinguistic norms of the source and target languages; the importance of recognizing the social meaning or latent function of utterances; and the desirability of learners making an active cont…
Validation of a Natural Landscape Preference Model as a Predictor of Perceived Landscape Beauty in Photographs
A natural landscape preference model (Shafer et al. 1969) was tested experimentally and found to be a valid predictor of perceived landscape beauty in photographs. One-hundred-thirteen subjects wer
State Government in Australia
Hello–Goodbye
Modifying illocutionary force
Axel Hübler, Understatements and hedges in English. (Pragmatics and Beyond IV, 6.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia
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Functions of you know in women's and men's speech
You know, like the tag question and the parenthetical I think, has been regarded as a linguistic hedging device, and consequently as a "women's language" form. This paper describes a range of forms and functions expressed by you know, as well as its use by women and men in a corpus of spontaneous speech. While there is no difference in this corpus in the total number of occurrences of you know produced by women and men, there are interesting cont…
Teachers and Students Learning about Compliments
Paying appropriate compliments and identifying them accurately is an aspect of communicative competence which may differ in a variety of ways from one culture to another. This article provides examples of misunderstandings in compliment exchanges in different cultural contexts and analyzes them as instances of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure. An analysis of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms of complimenting behavior in two Eng…
Doubt and Certainty in ESL Textbooks
Learning to express doubt and certainty in English is a complex task, but an important one since epistemic devices also function pragmatically as politeness markers. Those preparing materials or writing textbooks for the ESL learner must decide which epistemic devices to include. Information on the range and frequency of such devices in naturally occurring speech and writing can provide a basis for the necessary selection. This paper provides som…
Of course
Geography on the move? The 1987 Conference of the Institute
Sociology (96 works) · Psychology (81 works) · Linguistics (75 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (69 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (44 works) · Political science (42 works) · Social Psychology (42 works) · Philosophy (41 works) · Computer Science (37 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (35 works)