Directives in Professional Kitchens and Potential Learning Opportunities

Abstract

There has been to date a long tradition of research in workplace discourse. The bulk of the research has focused on professional white-collar workplaces, but a handful of studies have examined working-class settings such as factories and building sites. This area of research has, however, been concerned with interactions involving co-workers. Studies examining interactions between newcomers and experienced others, such as Holmes and Woodhams (2013), are rare. Using data collected in the working-class setting of the professional kitchen, the current study presents interactions between newcomer trainee cooks and the cooks they worked under. It focuses on the use of directives, which was a prevalent feature of their interactions. As individual utterances, the directives would seem to be designed to elicit specific, ad-hoc actions from trainees. However, closer analysis reveals that series of directives may serve important instructional purposes. Findings from the study are useful in raising the awareness of those assigned to mentor trainees in work settings and should enhance on-the-job workplace training as well as support newcomers as they adjust to their new workplaces.