Language as evidence in workplace harassment

Abstract

Drawing on the hypothesis that workplace harassment may be considered a genre of negative communication serving malicious purposes (Guillén Nieto & Stein 2019; Stein in this volume), the purposes of this paper are threefold. In the first place, we consider the difficulties involved in proving workplace harassment before administration or in court. In the second place, we analyse the challenges workplace harassment poses to linguistic analysis, with special reference to genre theory, and suggest ways of making the theory compatible with the new linguistic input the language of harassment provides. Finally, we illustrate the knowledge the expert linguist can offer from the perspective of genre theory in cases involving workplace harassment. In order not to build a castle in the sky, our analysis is grounded in an exemplary case study relating to a specific type of harassment in the workplace that Leymann (1990 : 119-126; 1996 : 165-184) named « workplace mobbing ».

Keywords

• genre theory ; language as evidence ; workplace harassment ; workplace mobbing