The effect of the workplace on women’s language: A view from Jordan

Abstract

This study explores the effect of the workplace on language use by Jordanian working women in terms of variety, lexis, and pronunciation. To this end, the study adopted a triangulation of research methods utilising qualitative and quantitative analyses, i.e. a questionnaire, ethnographic field notes, and interviews. Ethnographic field notes were taken for Jordanian working women in two different settings over three weeks. The questionnaire was distributed to two groups: an experimental group of 246 Jordanian working women in three different working environments in Amman, Jordan and a second group of 54 non-working women as the control group. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 working women from the experimental group. The recordings of the interviews were transcribed and analysed. The results show that the workplace strongly affects Jordanian working women’s language use, and that solidarity and professionalism are the main reasons that drive Jordanian women to change their language in their workplaces.

Keywords

• women’s language
• accommodation theory
• interactional sociolinguistics
• the workplace