Abstract

This chapter reviews research on the analysis of workplace communication. Alongside the home and education, the workplace is an important social domain in most people’s lives and over the last 20 years sociolinguists have paid increasing attention to interaction in workplace contexts. As a result, a rich and diverse number of theoretical frameworks have developed for approaching the analysis of workplace communication, along with a range of contrasting and complementary methods of data collection. Within a broad sociolinguistic framework, this review describes some significant theoretical orientations, key issues and methodologies, and considers likely directions for future research in this area.