Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 250
The style may be doing work
Abrahams shows why audience, genre, rivalry, timing, and social standing can determine what skilled talk actually does in a group
Premise
Leaders often evaluate speech as if wording alone carries the action. Yet talk can simultaneously exchange information, display wit, test authority, defend standing, entertain an audience, or challenge another speaker. Roger D. Abrahams’s Man-of-Words perspective directs attention to the whole speech event and to the social work that performance accomplishes.
This matters when an unfamiliar verbal style is quickly labeled rude, weak, unprofessional, or ineffective. A content-only reading can miss locally recognized competence and the coordination function embedded in teasing, storytelling, ceremonial speech, rapid repartee, or verbal contest. Before correcting the style, executives need to know what event participants believe they are in.
What the model is: Man-of-Words / West Indian Verbal Performance in Knowledge →
Continue in the series
- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryAnalytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
- DomainAcross Cultures
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Analytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
Organizes dimensions, distinctions, types or questions so that a situation can be examined systematically. A framework supplies structure, a typology distinguishes forms, and a heuristic offers a usable way to orient judgment.