Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:13:13.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Language Awareness and Leadership

More than a Guide to Communicating Effectively

from Part II - Language Awareness in Business and the Professions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2022

Erika Darics
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands
Get access

Summary

While the crucial role of language for leadership is generally acknowledged, there is often a perception or expectation – especially among professionals, but also among many business and organisational scholars – that language is merely a tool that can be used strategically to enhance leadership performance and effectiveness. This chapter challenges this view by outlining that language does much more than that, and that it is in fact central to the notion of leadership itself. Developing a greater awareness of the relevance of language for leadership, this chapter calls for the need to pay more attention to the language of leadership, and to engage more productively with linguistic research on leadership.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alvesson, M. and Spicer, A. (2014). Critical perspectives on leadership. In Day, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organization. Oxford University Press, pp. 4056.Google Scholar
Bass, B. (1981). Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership. A Survey of Theory and Research (Revised and expanded ed.). Free Press.Google Scholar
Bass, B. M. and Bass, R. (2009). The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications. Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Baxter, J. (2010). The Language of Female Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, L. (2008). Leaders or leadership: Alternative approaches to leadership studies. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(4), 547–555.Google Scholar
Choi, S. and Schnurr, S. (2014). Exploring distributed leadership: Solving disagreements and negotiating consensus in a ‘leaderless’ team. Discourse Studies, 16(1), 324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifton, J. (2006). A conversation analytical approach to business communication. Journal of Business Communication, 43(3), 202–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifton, J. (2009). Beyond taxonomies of influence: ‘Doing’ influence and making decisions in management team meetings. Journal of Business Communication, 46(1), 5779.Google Scholar
Clifton, J. (2012). A discursive approach to leadership: Doing assessments and managing organizational meanings. Journal of Business Communication, 49(2), 148168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifton, J. (2017). Taking the (heroic) leader out of leadership: The in situ practice of distributed leadership in decision-making talk. In Ilie, C and Schnurr, S (eds.) Challenging Leadership Stereotypes through Discourse. Springer, pp. 4568.Google Scholar
Clifton, J., Schnurr, S. and van de Mieroop, D. (2019). The Language of Leadership Narratives. Routledge.Google Scholar
Conger, J. A. (1991). Inspiring others: The language of leadership. Academy of Management Perspectives, 5(1), 3145.Google Scholar
Crevani, L., Lindgren, M. and Packendorff, J. (2010). Leadership, not leaders: On the study of leadership as practices and interactions. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 26(1), 7786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darics, E. (2017). E-leadership or ‘How to be boss in Instant Messaging?’ The role of nonverbal communication. International Journal for Business Communication 127.Google Scholar
Day, D., Gronn, P. and Salas, E. (2004) Leadership capacity in teams. Leadership Quarterly.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairhurst, G. (2007). Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology. Sage.Google Scholar
Fairhurst, G. (2008). Discursive leadership: A communication alternative to leadership psychology. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(4), 510521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairhurst, G. and Connaughton, S. (2014). Leadership: A communicative perspective. Leadership, 10(1), 735.Google Scholar
Grint, K. (2010). Leadership: A Very Short Introduction (Vol. 237). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grisoni, L. and Beeby, M. (2007). Leadership, gender and sensemaking. Gender, Work and Organization, 14(3), 191209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hackman, M. Z. and Johnson, C. E. (2013). Leadership: A Communication Perspective. Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Holmes, J. (2000). Politeness, power and provocation: How humour functions in the workplace. Discourse & Society, 2(2), 159185.Google Scholar
Holmes, J. (2005). Leadership talk: How do leaders ‘do mentoring’, and is gender relevant? Journal of Pragmatics, 37(11), 17791800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J. (2007). Making humour work: Creativity on the job. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 518537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J. and Marra, M. (2004). Leadership and managing conflict in meetings. Pragmatics, 14(4), 439462.Google Scholar
Holmes, J., Marra, M. and Vine, B. (2011). Leadership, Discourse and Ethnicity. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kelly, S. (2008). Leadership: A categorical mistake? Human Relations, 61(6), 763782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotthoff, H. (1993). Disagreement and concession in disputes: On the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society, 22, 193216.Google Scholar
Larsson, M. (2016). Leadership in interaction. In Storey, J., Hartley, J., Denis, J.-L., ‘t Hart, P. and Ulrich, D. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Leadership. Routledge, pp. 173193.Google Scholar
Larsson, M. and Lundholm, S. (2013). Talking work in a bank: A study of organizing properties of leadership in work interactions. Human Relations, 66(8), 11011129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marra, M., Schnurr, S. and Holmes, J. (2006). Effective leadership in New Zealand workplaces: Balancing gender and role. In Baxter, J. (ed.) Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts. Palgrave, pp. 240260.Google Scholar
Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 264284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohd Omar, N. (2018). Exploring distributed leadership in decision making processes. Unpublished PhD thesis. The University of Warwick.Google Scholar
Mumford, M. D. (2006). Pathways to Outstanding Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic Leaders. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, C. and Conger, J. (2003). All those years ago: The historical underpinnings of shared leadership. In Pearce, C. and Conger, J. (eds.) Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Sage, pp. 118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, C. L. and Conger, J. A. (2002). Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Sage.Google Scholar
Pye, A. (2005). Leadership and organizing: Sensemaking in action. Leadership, 1(1), 3149.Google Scholar
Raelin, J. A. (2016). Imagine there are no leaders: Reframing leadership as collaborative agency. Leadership, 12(2), 131158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saito, J. (2011). Managing confrontational situations: Japanese male superiors’ interactional styles in directive discourse in the workplace. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 16891706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003). Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction. Journal of Management Studies, 40(1), 141174.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. (2009a). Leadership Discourse at Work: Interactions of Humour, Gender and Workplace Culture. Springer.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. (2009b). Constructing leader identities through teasing at work. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(6), 11251138.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. and Chan, A. (2011). Exploring another side of co-leadership: Negotiating professional identities through face-work in disagreements. Language in Society, 40(2), 187210.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. and Mak, B. (2011). Leadership in Hong Kong: Is gender really not an issue? Gender and Language. Special Issue on Gender and Language in the Workplace, 5(2), 337364.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. and Mohd Omar, N. (fc). Leadership and humour at work: Using interactional sociolinguistics to explore the role of gender. To appear in Baxter, J. and Angouri, J. (eds.) Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality. Routledge.Google Scholar
Schnurr, S. and Schroeder, A. (2018). A critical reflection of current trends in discourse analytical research on leadership across disciplines. A call for a more engaging dialogue. Leadership.Google Scholar
Skovholt, K. (2015). Doing leadership in a virtual team: Analyzing addressing devices, requests, and emoticons in a leader’s email messages. In Darics, E. (ed.) Digital Business Discourse. Palgrave, pp. 101121.Google Scholar
Smircich, L. and Morgan, G. (1982). Leadership: The management of meaning. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 18(3), 257273.Google Scholar
Solaja, M. O., Idowu, E. F. and James, E. A. (2016). Exploring the relationship between leadership communication style, personality trait and organizational productivity. Serbian Journal of Management, 11(1), 99117.Google Scholar
Stubbe, M. (1998). Are you listening? Cultural influences on the use of supportive verbal feedback in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 29(3), 257289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sveningsson, S. and Larsson, M. (2006). Fantasies of leadership: Identity work. Leadership, 2(2), 203224.Google Scholar
Svennevig, J. (2008). Exploring leadership conversations. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(4), 529536.Google Scholar
Tourish, D. (2015). Some announcements, reaffirming the critical ethos of Leadership, and what we look for in submissions. Leadership, 11(2), 135141.Google Scholar
Tourish, D. and Jackson, B. (eds.) (2008). Leadership. Special Issue on Communication and Leadership (4/3).Google Scholar
Uhl-Bien, M., Maslyn, J. and Ospina, S. (2012) The nature of relational leadership. In Day, D. and Antonakis, J. (eds.) The Nature of Leadership. Sage, pp. 289330.Google Scholar
Van de Mieroop, D. and Schnurr, S. (2014). Negotiating meaning and co-constructing institutionalisable answers: Leadership through gate-keeping in performance appraisal interviews. Journal of Pragmatics, 67, 116.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D. and Hamilton, H. (eds.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Blackwell, pp. 352371.Google Scholar
Vine, B., Holmes, J., Marra, M., Pfeifer, D. and Jackson, B. (2008). Exploring co-leadership talk through interactional sociolinguistics. Leadership, 4(3), 339–60.Google Scholar
Walker, R. and Aritz, J. (2014) Leadership Talk: A Discourse Approach to Leader Emergence. Business Expert Press.Google Scholar
Whittle, A., Housley, W., Gilchrist, A., Mueller, F. and Lenney, P. (2015). Category predication work, discursive leadership and strategic sensemaking. Human Relations, 68(3), 377407.Google Scholar
Wodak, R., Kwon, W. and Clarke, I. (2011). ‘Getting people on board’: Discursive leadership for consensus in teams. Discourse & Society, 22(5), 592644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yukl, G. A. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. Pearson Education India.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×