April 2008 Volume 4 Issue 1
Article 2.
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Article Title
Deconstructing the Textbook Myth:
Using Discourse-Disorders Analysis for Job Interview Training

Author
Anil Pathak
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Bio Data
Anil Pathak teaches Professional Communication courses in Singapore. He has published books and research papers in this area, his latest book being 'Communication Skills Development Through Open Learning'. His interests include communication training through Toastmasters and delivering motivational speeches in developing counties.

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Abstract
This paper focuses on training university students for job interviews. When we apply our understanding from the field of therapeutic communication to the situation of communication training, it becomes clear that developments in pragmatics and speech act theory can be meaningfully applied to a number of communication training situations. The term therapeutic communication might be suitable for the approach used in this project since we wish to depict a training situation in which action is almost exclusively verbal (in our case focused on text analysis), with the aim of self-reflection and a change in communication behaviour. Although the fields of therapeutic communication and therapeutic discourse have been widely researched, the term therapy is being used in this paper in a rather broad and divergent sense. From the point of view of training, it makes sense to use data from extreme and artificially created situations so that principles of communication can be easily derived and generalized in a practicable manner (Drew and Heritage, 1992). Therapy can take different forms. In this project, therapy takes the form of role-plays followed by analysis tracking the disruptions, interruptions, and communication failures evident through the role-plays. The aim is to present interview situations as examples of discourse disorders. By emphasizing the disorders of discourse rather than presenting the interview as a mythical structured event, we wish to shift the focus from the subject (the interviewee) to the event and to the actors. Therapy in terms of self-reflection has been achieved by this shift in emphasis.

Key words
Job Interviews, Discourse, Communication Training, Role-play