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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 10:4 (2019) ► pp.559–583

Doing business and constructing identities through small talk in workplace instant messaging

| Hong Kong Baptist University

This paper describes how bilingual colleagues living in Hong Kong make small talk in instant messaging to achieve various business-oriented goals and construct multiple identities in the discursive process. Guided by James Paul Gee’s revised framework of discourse analysis, the analyses evidenced that, overall, colleagues use small talk in instant messages to maintain minimal ties with distant partners, fill in silence during computer work, affect informal decision-making at work, and to diffuse useful surrounding information into business talk. These instances interplay with different affordances provided by the gadgets in the instant messenger interfaces. Such creative usage, together with the perceived nature of online interaction and instant messaging, results in multiple and turbulent identities circulating in the broader context of workplace discourse. The article concludes by arguing that computer-mediated communication has offered participants an emerging modus of interacting socially, beyond the physical and psychological constraints of time and space.

Keywords: small talk, identity, workplace, instant messaging, Hong Kong, computer-mediated discourse analysis, organizational communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The small talk of colleagues in workplace interactions
    • 2.1Small talk in face-to-face workplace communication
    • 2.2Computer-mediated (workplace) communication
  • 3.Methodology and coding
  • 4.Analytical framework
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Substituting ritualistic offline small talk
    • 5.2Extending small talk parallel to core-business communication
    • 5.3Facilitating core-business talk
    • 5.4Making meandering social talk
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1How small talk progresses in workplace instant messaging
    • 6.2How small talk functions in workplace instant messaging
    • 6.3How small talk constructs identities in workplace instant messaging
  • 7.Conclusion: Small talk in workplace instant messaging as an emerging way of social interaction with colleagues
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.16064.mak
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