Recontextualization and Communicative Styles in Job Interviews

Abstract

This article presents, discusses and analyses data from a Danish empirical study of authentic job interviews. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, as well as other fields, the author explores the relationship between success in job interviews and communicative style. The recontextualization of lifeworld resources is approached through both qualitative and quantitative analyses of spoken language. The author demonstrates that certain communicative styles and recontextualizations formed by a combination of lifeworld and job-related perspectives are more successful in job interviews; on the basis of sociolinguistic evidence, he argues that these styles and recontextualizations are products of general processes of socialization rather than products of formal education.

Beyond ‘Greeting’ and ‘Thanking’: Politeness in Job Interviews

“…Similarly as Scheuer (2001) points out, interviewers are also more concerned about how the candidates 'perform' rather than 'inform'. Lipovsky (2006Lipovsky ( , p. 1149) also highlights that "more than the information per se, the way it is presented influences the interviewers' appraisal of candidates, that is, the candidates' performance or negotiating of their expertise plays a significant role in the interviewers' impression of them".…”

Approaches to Language, Culture, and Cognition

“…Being committed to excellence and being enterprising are ideologically constructed as qualities with wide scope. That is, individuals who are truly enterprising and focused on excellence pursue and demonstrate these values consistently both inside and outside workplace (Scheuer 2001). It is this wide scope that encourages organizations to look beyond the workplace for inspiration about how to cultivate a culture of excellence.…”

Interviewing: Practice, Ideology, Genre, and Intertextuality

“…These genres include job interviews (Button 1992, Glenn 2010, Gumperz 1982, Roberts 2013, Scheuer 2001, Sniad 2007, medical and psychiatric interviews (Bergmann 1992, Frankel 1990, Maynard & Heritage 2005, social work interviews (Carr 2010(Carr , 2011, job counseling (Erickson & Schultz 1982, Gumperz 1982, asylum interviews (Blommaert 2001, Maryns 2006, Jacquemet 2008, Kjelsvik 2014, police interrogation (Haworth 2006, Johnson 2008 This enumeration shows the potentially limitless types of interviewing, each conducted to produce different types of knowledge. I note two recurrent approaches to this diversity of interviewing norms and practices: "lumping" and "splitting."…”