Honors Program Theses

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Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Cynthia Dunn

Keywords

Employment interviewing; Discourse analysis; Control (Psychology);

Abstract

This thesis examines powerful and powerless speech styles in employment mock interviews. A powerless speech style is defined as the use of linguistic features that have negative effects on how the speaker is perceived. Features analyzed in this study include intensifiers, hedges, and hesitations. A powerful speech style is defined as the absence of powerless linguistic features within speech. Twenty-eight examples of employment mock interviews conducted in the office of Career Services at the University of Northern Iowa were recorded for analysis in this thesis. Four common questions within the interviews were selected and the responses were transcribed and analyzed, examining the occurrence and function of intensifiers, hedges, and hesitations. The research presented here is important in its potential to improve our understanding of how powerless features are used in naturally occurring speech, particularly in an employment interview setting where speech is key to successful self-presentation.

Year of Submission

2009

Department

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2009

Object Description

v, 57 p.

Language

EN

File Format

application/pdf

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