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In this paper, I will present the language analysis of the academic article “Language as a lightning rod: power contests, emotion regulation, and subgroup dynamics in global teams” written by Cramton, Hinds and Neeley (2014). The analysis will illustrate 4 parts, including: the formal/informal language level of the article, professional vocabularies, the use of nouns and noun phrase and the use of verb tense (finite/non-finite).
First, about the formal/informal language level of the article, this article has high formality. Although the article included plenty of informal words, such as “we” pronoun (more than 10 times), “you” pronoun (more than 10 times) and “etc.” imprecise expression (once), the authors managed to use abundant formal language features in the article. For example, the authors avoided contraction and indirect questions. The reason of using “you” pronoun is some quotation of the subject of the experiment. And the authors used “we” pronoun is mainly for the methodological factors, like illustrating the data and analysis of interviewing people. The adverbs were frequently used at the middle position in the article (more than 10 times) to strengthen the formality of the article. For instance, “Multinationals are increasingly mandating English as the lingua franca, or common language, to facilitate collaboration across national and linguistic boundaries” (p. 536). The authors also adequately used active and passive voice in the article to make language more formal. In addition, the authors introduced a lot of professional vocabularies, such as faultlines, language asymmetries, subgroup dynamics, ILR is Interagency Language Roundtable, and the definition of situation selection, situation modification, reappraisal and experience and display regulation. It visible that these specialized words can help readers understand the article well. Additionally, this article consisted of many nouns and noun phrases. To illustrate, “The Germans expressed some frustration that the Indian team members were not as capable as they had hoped and were anxious to have the Indians learn German work practices” (p. 551). In this sentence, ‘some frustration that the Indian…German work practices’ is the noun phrase an adjective clause and the main noun is ‘frustration’. In the sentence “Our goal in this study was to understand the effect of language asymmetries on subgroup dynamics in globally distributed teams” (p. 555), ‘the effect of language asymmetries on subgroup dynamics in globally distributed teams’ is noun phrase, the main noun is ‘effect’, and the modifier is ‘of language…….teams’ to play the adjective role in this noun phrase. In another sentence “The link we propose between language asymmetries and subgroup dynamics extends previous research on language and identity” (p. 556), ‘The link we…subgroup dynamics’ is noun phrase with adjective clause, and the main noun is ‘link’. Moreover, the authors used several form of finite and non-finite verbs in the article. For instance, “This body of research has identified disparities in co-worker lingua franca fluency and has highlighted their importance” (p. 536). In this sentence, these two ‘has’ are finite verbs to show the tense, and ‘identified’ and ‘highlighted’ are non-finite verbs uses with finite verbs. And in this sentence, authors used more than one finite verbs by using conjunction ‘and’. In the sentence “US-based team members identified it as important evidence reflecting…” (p. 550), ‘identified’ is finite verb to show the tense, and ‘reflecting’ is non-finite –ing verb to shorten adjective clause. In another sentence “But generally the regulation strategies used in this team were more constructive…” (p. 552), ‘used’ is non-finite –ed verb in reduced adjective clause. It’s obvious that in this article finite verbs are mostly used to present the time with non-finite verbs, and non-finite verbs are mainly used to shorten wordiness. To sum up, although the authors used informal word like ‘we’ and ‘you’ several times, the article has high level of formality because authors used mid-adverbs to improve the language formality, professional terms to enhance audience’s understanding, noun phrases and non-finite verbs to reduce the wordiness. Therefore, the article written in Management should use formal words like mid-position adverbs and non-finite verbs shortening structure of sentence, instead of contractions, imprecise expressions such as ‘etc.’ and informal words like ‘I/we’ and ‘you’.
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