Staging a Team Performance A Linguistic Ethnographic Analysis of Weekly Meetings at a British Embassy

Drawing on insights from Goffman's dramaturgical approach to interaction, this article demonstrates how meetings are team performances routinely concerned with sustaining or challenging interpretations of power relations. The data for this article were collected at a British embassy, relying on participant observation, audio recordings of weekly gatherings of Heads of Section, and interviews with the people that attended the meeting. The analysis focuses on the double role behavior of the Ambassador as the director and central player of a team performance and the conflicting ideologies these shifting roles entail.

[1]  Martyn Hammersley,et al.  Ethnography : Principles in Practice , 1983 .

[2]  Patrice M. Buzzanell,et al.  Leadership processes in alternative organizations: Invitational and dramaturgical leadership , 1997 .

[3]  Christer Jönsson.  Communication in international bargaining , 1990 .

[4]  Robin Wooffitt,et al.  Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications , 1998 .

[5]  Robert A. Giacalone,et al.  Impression management in the organization. , 1989 .

[6]  E. Goffman.  On face-work; an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. , 1955, Psychiatry.

[7]  F. Bargiela-Chiappini,et al.  Managing Language: The Discourse of Corporate Meetings , 1997 .

[8]  N. Fairclough,et al.  Language and Power , 2009 .

[9]  T. Castor.  Language Use During School Board Meetings , 2007 .

[10]  D. Samra-Fredericks,et al.  Doing 'Boards-in-Action' Research - an ethnographic approach for the capture and analysis of directors' and senior managers' interactive routines , 2000 .

[11]  Reinhold Schmitt.  Interaction in work meetings , 2006 .

[12]  M. Huisman,et al.  Decision-Making in Meetings as Talk-in-Interaction , 2001 .

[13]  Gail T. Fairhurst,et al.  Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology , 2007 .

[14]  M. Malone.  Worlds of Talk: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Conversation , 1997 .

[15]  C. Geertz,et al.  Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. , 1988 .

[16]  R. Scollon,et al.  Discourses in Place : Language in the Material World , 2003 .

[17]  Hartmut Hübner.  The Communicating Company: Towards an Alternative Theory of Corporate Communication , 2007 .

[18]  A. Cicourel.  The Front and Back of Organizational Leadership: A Case Study , 1958 .

[19]  B. R. Schlenker.  Impression Management: The Self-Concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations , 1980 .

[20]  D. Boden.  The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action , 1995 .

[21]  S. Bate,et al.  Whatever Happened to Organizational Anthropology? A Review of the Field of Organizational Ethnography and Anthropological Studies , 1997 .

[22]  Joanne Gilbert.  Performing marginality: Comedy, identity, and cultural critique , 1997 .

[23]  Janet Holmes,et al.  Having a laugh at work: how humour contributes to workplace culture , 2002 .

[24]  Status and Power in Verbal Interaction: A Study of Discourse in a Close-Knit Social Network , 1996 .

[25]  S. Slembrouck.  Discourse, critique and ethnography : Class-oriented coding in accounts of child protection , 2005 .

[26]  Bruce J. Avolio,et al.  The Charismatic Relationship: A Dramaturgical Perspective , 1998 .

[27]  D. Samra-Fredericks,et al.  An Analysis of the Behavioural Dynamics of Corporate Governance – a talk‐based ethnography of a UK manufacturing ‘board‐in‐action’ , 2000 .

[28]  H. Schwartzman.  The Meeting: Gatherings in Organizations and Communities , 1989 .

[29]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .