Language at Work: Analyzing Communication Breakdown in the Workplace to Inform Systems Design

220 Pages·2016·11.36 MB·English

by  Devlin Keith

LANGUAGE
AT
WORK

CSLI
Lecture Notes
Number 66
LANGUAGE
AT
WORK
Analyzing Communication
Breakdown in the Workplace
to Inform Systems Design
KEITH DEVLIN
DUSKA ROSENBERG
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF
LANGUAGE AND INFORMATION
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Copyright© 1996
CSLI Publications
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States
00 99 98 97 96 54321
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Devlin, Keith J.
Language at work • analyzing communication breakdown in the work-
place to inform systems design / Keith Devlin and Duska Rosenberg,
p. cm. — (CSLI lecture notes ; no. 66)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-57586-050-3 (hbk.).
ISBN 1-57586-051-1 (pbk.).
1. Communication in organizations—Data processing. 2. System design.
3. Context (Linguistics) 4. Information technology—Management.
5. Work groups—Data processing.
I. Rosenberg, Duska, 1946- . II. Title. III. Series.
HD30.3.D478 1996
658.4'038-dc20 96-24100
CIP
CSLI was founded early in 1983 by researchers from Stanford University, SRI
International, and Xerox PARC to further research and development of integrated theories
of language, information, and computation CSLI headquarters and CSLI Publications are
located on the campus of Stanford University
CSLI Publications reports new developments in the study of language, information, and
computation In addition to lecture notes, our publications include monographs, working
papers, revised dissertations, and conference proceedings Our aim is to make new results,
ideas, and approaches available as quickly as possible Please visit our website at
http //csli-www Stanford edu/pubhcations/
for comments on this and other titles, as well as for changes and corrections by the author
and publisher
©The acid-free paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39 48-1984
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue: Understanding information 1
1 The fine power of a culture 7
2 Crossing the boundaries 31
3 Situation theory 56
4 Whose mother is it? 79
5 Sacks, norms, and mathematics 103
6 LFZ analysis 126
7 The PRF at work 151
8 Interpreting the PRF 180
Epilogue 199
Bibliography 205
Index 211

Acknowledgments
The work described in this book has benefited from our interactions with
a number of colleagues. In particular Herb Clark, Chris Hutchison, David
Israel, John Perry, and Stanley Peters have all provided us with useful
input at various stages of the research. Bernie Cohen and David Leevers
gave us feedback on the manuscript in its final stages. The researchers
and staff at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and
Information (at which we are both Senior Researchers) provided us with
an occasional base to meet up and enhance by irreplacable face-to-face
interaction what was otherwise an electronic collaboration conducted over
a 5,000 mile separation.
As will be clear from the story that we tell, we owe an immense in-
tellectual debt to the late Harvey Sacks. We have done things with his
profound insights that he probably never anticipated (and may not have
approved of). But without his groundbreaking work on the way people pro-
duce and understand ordinary language, our work could not have begun.
Accordingly, we would like to dedicate this book to his memory.
Keith Devlin Duska Rosenberg
Saint Mary's College of California Brunei University
Moraga London
California England
April, 1996
vn

Prologue: Understanding
information
Managing information
A modern company has many assets that have to be properly managed. The
most obvious—at least from a traditional perspective—are physical plant,
personnel, and the company's financial assets. Management of each of those
assets requires different kinds of expertise. The appropriate expertise may
be provided by the company's regular employees, or it may be outsourced,
either in the form of subcontracting or by the use of expert consultants.
Going outside the company for expertise is particularly common in the case
of a planned expansion, for example when an architect is brought in to help
design a new building. Whether internal employee or external expert, the
architect, the design engineer, the personnel consultant, the accountant, the
market analyst, etc. each brings a particular set of skills and experience
appropriate to the particular task at hand.
In today's commercial environment, information is another asset that
requires proper management. Of course, information has always been im-
portant to any organization. But it is only within the last fifty years or
so that it has become a clearly identifiable asset that requires proper man-
agement. The reason for the growing importance of information within the
organization is the growth of computer and communications technologies,
and the increasing size and complexity of organizations that has in large
part been facilitated by those technologies. It is both a cliche and a fact that
information is the glue that holds together most of today's organizations.
Actually, that last metaphor is often apt in a negative way. In many
cases, information acts as the glue that causes things to stick fast when it
should be the oil that keeps the wheels turning. A familiar scenario in the
industrial world of the late twentieth century is for a company to introduce
a new computer system to improve its information management, only to
discover that, far from making things better and more efficient, the new
system causes an array of problems that had never arisen with the old way
of doing things. The shining new system provides vastly more information
2 LANGUAGE AT WORK
than was previously available, but it is somehow of the wrong kind, or
presented in the wrong form, at the wrong time, or delivered to the wrong
person, or there is simply too much of it for anyone to be able to use. What
used to be a simple request for information to one person over the phone
becomes a tortuous battle with a seemingly uncooperative computer system
that can take hours or even days, eventually drawing in a whole team of
people.
Why does this happen? The answer is that, for all that the newspapers
tell us we are living in the Information Age, what we have is an information
technology, or rather a collection of information technologies. We do not
yet have the understanding or the skill to properly design or manage the
information flow that our technologies make possible. In fact, it is often
worse. In many cases, companies are not even aware that they need such
skill. Faced with the persuasive marketing of ever-more powerful and glitzy
computer systems, there is a great temptation to go for the 'technological
fix'. If the present information system is causing problems, get a bigger,
better, faster system. This approach is like saying that the key to Los
Angeles' traffic problem is to build even more, and still bigger, roads.
In many organizations, the computerized information system, far from
being the panacea it was promised to be, acts as an 'information bot-
tleneck', that slows up or prevents the information flow it was supposed
to facilitate. The solution? Just as the company has experts to manage
its other assets, so too it needs experts to manage its information assets.
Alongside the lawyers who handle and advise on the company's contracts
and the accountants who handle and advise on the company's financial as-
sets, should be the 'information scientists' who handle and advise on the
company's information assets.
But there is one problem. There are, at present, no such 'information
scientists'. The world of information flow does not yet have the equivalent
of a lawyer or an accountant. There is not even an established body of
knowledge that can be used to train such people. To become a lawyer,
you go to law school and follow a well-established educational path. To
become an accountant, you learn about the various principles and theories
of accounting and finance. But there is no established 'information science'.
(Actually, there is an academic discipline called 'information science', but
this is not what is meant here. What is often now called 'information
science' used to be called 'library science'. The latter name is more accurate,
but as libraries themselves became more electronically oriented, the former
name was adopted as being more in keeping with the times. In terms of the
need for 'information assets managers' described here, the former 'library
science' offers just one part of what is clearly a very large jigsaw puzzle.)
While the world of information-flow does not yet have a correspond-