LSO - L3 Gestion
Anglais : Culture and Society
Introduction to cultural analysis
2023-2024 – 1st semester
Responsable de l’UE : Ludovic Le Saux
Contact : ludovic.le-saux@dauphine.psl.eu
1
The semester is composed of 12 weeks, starting from September 11th to December 9th. There is a
one-week break between October 30th and November 4th (no intermediary test outside of class in
English). The final exam will take place between December 11th and December 16th.
Table of contents
1. Attendus du cours
2. Introduction to cultural analysis : a few key concepts
3. Society Through Culture
a. Consuming
b. Storytelling
c. Exoticism & Otherness
4. Guide d’accompagnement pour la maîtrise de l’anglais professionnel
a. Writing a CV
b. Writing a cover letter
c. Writing an e-mail
5. More Vocabulary
a. Jobs and job search
b. Industrial relations
c. Intercultural communication skills
2
Attendus du cours
Compétences à acquérir :
L'objectif de ce cours est de fournir aux étudiants les outils nécessaires pour exploiter au mieux leur
capital culturel (définition p.5) en milieu professionnel anglophone. L’enjeu est d’améliorer les capacités
d’analyse critique des étudiants dans un anglais riche, bien construit et élégant.
●
●
Développer ses compétences d’analyse critique des médias, des arts visuels et de la littérature
dans les sociétés étudiées.
Renforcer et développer ses acquis linguistiques en anglais (grammaire, lexique spécifique,
anglais de spécialité)
Mode de contrôle des connaissances :
- Contrôle Continu, TD (oral & écrit) : 50% de la moyenne finale
- Examen de fin de semestre : 50% de la moyenne finale
Format de l’examen :
S1 & S2 : vocabulaire, question de compréhension & essay à partir d’un texte (portant sur un ou
plusieurs thèmes du semestre concerné)
- Au-delà de 3 absences, la moyenne est réduite de 30%.
Pré-requis obligatoires :
Niveau d’anglais intermédiaire supérieur ou avancé (B2+).
Il est fortement conseillé aux étudiants étrangers d’avoir aussi un niveau B2+ en français.
Pré-requis recommandés :
Avoir à disposition une variété de supports numériques en anglais disponibles en libre accès ou via la
bibliothèque : bases de données de presse, de documents spécialisés, fiction, documents audio-vidéo
(podcast, documentaire, cinéma). Rassembler les différents moyens d’accéder à ces supports en un
document facilement utilisable.
Description du contenu de l’enseignement :
L’objectif de ce cours est double : sur le fond, il s’agit d’initier les étudiants à l’analyse de la société
contemporaine à travers l’étude de notions de base d’analyse culturelle et de divers objets culturels
grand-public (art, littérature, cinéma, séries, presse, fiction & non-fiction, phénomènes culturels, objets
de consommation). Sur la forme, il s’agira de consolider les compétences linguistiques (compréhension
écrite, expression écrite, compréhension orale, expression orale, prise de parole en continu et en
interaction) en les appliquant à l’analyse culturelle, à travers une variété d’exercices (rédaction,
présentation, débat, jeux de rôle, etc.). L’enjeu de ce cours sur le plan linguistique est d’acquérir le
niveau C1 du CECRL, à savoir, être capable d’avoir une conversation sur n’importe quel sujet et
exprimer avec finesse son avis, s’adapter à une plus grande variété de sujets pour mobiliser des
auditoires variés.
Le cours repose sur une brochure mobilisable selon le souhait de l’enseignant ; elle comporte
également un guide d’accompagnement pour l’anglais professionnel (rédaction de CV et lettre de
motivation, vocabulaire spécifique, relations au travail, etc.).
3
S1 : Society through Culture
Le premier semestre sera axé sur l'étude d'enjeux contemporains au prisme de la culture, notamment
populaire (cinéma, séries, jeux vidéo, BD ou encore objets de consommation).
S2 : Keywords
Analyse de documents de nature variée en lien avec des mots-clefs. Ces documents pourront être des
extraits de romans, d'ouvrages scientifiques, d’articles, à associer avec des œuvres visuelles,
cinématographiques, etc.
Des rappels lexicaux et grammaticaux accompagneront les deux semestres, l’enjeu étant de ne pas
scinder fond et forme.
Suggestions de lecture/visionnage :
Keywords, Raymond Williams
Mad Men, Matthew Weiner
Minimalism, A Documentary about the Important Things, Matt D’Avella
Le Vocabulaire de l’anglais, Agathe Majou, Annie Sussel & Corinne Denis
4
Introduction to cultural analysis : a few key concepts
Culture, i.e. manifestations of intellectual achievement, influences our perception of the world and
the society in which we live. Its products (books, paintings, films, series, etc.) surround us and, in turn,
influence our culture as a society in the sense of ideas, customs or social behaviour which are
characteristics of a social group.
Cultural analysis therefore aims at analysing the production and consumption of various forms of
cultural phenomena (including the arts but not only, think of advertising, marketing, games, goods) to
understand how they influence our way of life, our perceptions, what sort of ideas, of ideologies (i.e
systems of ideas and beliefs characteristic of a social group) they generate, encourage or, on the
contrary, reject or scoff at.
The term cultural products draws attention to the fact that culture is not just a common good, a
key element in the definition of a specific community’s way of life. Culture is an exchange value, and
today it is an industry.
The term cultural industry encompasses a wide variety of commodified activities, including the mass
media (print and broadcast media and advertising), film, new media, art, design, music, and architecture.
Due to the importance of such industries in the dissemination of culture, different governments have
sought to provide support for their maintenance and growth.
One way of looking scientifically at the role of culture in our society is through the lens of cultural
studies. CS is a field of study developed by British Marxist academics in the late 50s, which then
spread internationally. It is a politically-engaged, interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture,
meaning that it looks at how culture is shaped by a variety of social actors. One of the founding fathers
of CS was Raymond Williams
High-brow culture means intellectual culture and low-brow means ‘ordinary’, popular culture.
Cultural capital is a concept coined by French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude
Passeron. It describes the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours and skills (cultural assets) of a person
that can be strategically used as resources in social contexts. Cultural capital (with economic and social
capitals) determines your position in a social order. Today cultural capital no longer only applies to
‘high-culture’ but to all forms of culture and amounts to an ability to summon up the appropriate
knowledge (whether highbrow or pop) in any given situation: a job interview, a conversation, a
networking event, etc. In this new sense, cultural capital is embodied by an individual who is
knowledgeable about a wide range of culture and is comfortable discussing its value and merits.
5
“The organising principle of this book is the discovery that the idea of culture, and the word itself in
its general modern uses, came into English thinking in the period which we commonly describe as the
industrial revolution. The book is an attempt to show how and why this happened, and to follow the
idea through to our own day. It thus becomes an account and an interpretation of our responses in
thought and feeling to the changes in English society since the late 18th century. Only in such context
can our use of the word ‘culture’, and the issues to which the word refers, be adequately understood.”
“In the last decades of the 18th century, and in the first half of the 19th century, a number of words,
which are now of capital importance, came for the first time into common English use, or, where they
had already been generally used in the language, acquired new and important meanings. There is in fact
a general pattern of change in these words, and this can be used as a special kind of map by which it is
possible to look again at those wider changes in life and thought to which the changes in language
evidently refer.”
Raymond Williams, Foreword and Introduction to Culture & Society, 1958
“Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images.”
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
6
Society Through Culture
1. Consuming
a.
b.
c.
Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, 1952
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, 1963
Exemple d’examen: The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair, 2016
A few suggestions for further analysis
Mad Men, 2007-2015
Mona Lisa smile, 2003
Empire of Things, How we Became a World of Consumers, Frank Trentmann, 2016
“… and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.”
William Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More, 1593
7
Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson, 1952
Life Among the Savages is a collection of stories forming a semi-autobiographical memoir on Shirley Jackson’s
experience as a writer/stay-at-home mother of four in the 1950s in the US. The stories were first published
individually in women’s magazines such as Woman’s Day or Good Housekeeping. A second volume entitled
Raising Demons was published in 1957.
Our house is old, and noisy, and full.
When we moved into it we had two children and
about five thousand books; I expect that when
we finally overflow and move out again we will
have perhaps twenty children and easily half a
million books; we also own assorted beds and
tables and chairs and rocking horses and lamps
and doll dresses and ship models and paint
brushes and literally thousands of socks. This is
the way of life my husband and I have fallen into,
inadvertently, as though we had fallen into a well
and decided that since there was no way out we
might as well stay there and set up a chair
and a desk and a light of some kind; even though
this is our way of life, and the only one we know,
it is occasionally bewildering, and perhaps
even inexplicable to the sort of person who does
not have that swift, accurate conviction that he
is going to step on a broken celluloid doll in the
dark. I cannot think of a preferable way of life,
except one without children and without books,
going on soundlessly in an apartment hotel
where they do the cleaning for you and send up
your meals and all you have to do is lie on a
couch and – as I say, I cannot think of a preferable way of life, but then I have had to make a good many
compromises, all told.
I look around sometimes at the paraphernalia of our living – sandwich bags, typewriters,
little wheels off things – and marvel at the complexities of civilization with which we surround
ourselves; would we be pleased, I wonder, at a wholesale elimination of these things, so that we
were reduced only to necessities (coffeepot, typewriters, the essential little wheels off things) and then
– this happening usually in the springtime – I begin throwing things away, and it turns out that
although we can live agreeably without the little wheels off things, new little wheels turn up almost
immediately. This is, I suspect, progress. They can make new little wheels, if not faster than they can
fall off things, at least faster than I can throw them away.
8
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, 1963
The Feminine Mystique is the result of an extensive study of what being an American housewife in the late
50s meant, and of why so many women in that role experienced depression. Friedan conducted interviews with
housewives, researched psychology, media (especially women’s magazines) and advertising to debunk the
mystifying assumption that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—
the housewife-mother."
Flamme furniture catalogue 1970s
Women are the chief customers of American business
There are certain facts of life so obvious and mundane that one never talks about them. Only
the child blurts out: "Why do people in books never go to the toilet?" Why is it never said that the
really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things
for the house. In all the talk of femininity and woman's role, one forgets that the real business of America
is business. But the perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense
(and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business. Somehow,
somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the
underused, nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of state of being housewives. (…)
I learned how it happened when I went to see a man who is paid approximately a million dollars a
year for his professional services in manipulating the emotions of American women to serve the needs
of business. (…) Properly manipulated ("if you are not afraid of that word," he said), American
housewives can be given the sense of identity, purpose, creativity, the self-realization, even the
sexual joy they lack — by the buying of things. I suddenly realized the significance of the boast that
women wield seventy-five per cent of the purchasing power in America. I suddenly saw American
women as victims of that ghastly gift, that power at the point of purchase. The insights he shared
with me so liberally revealed many things ....
The dilemma of business was spelled out in a survey made in 1945 for the publisher of a leading
women's magazine on the attitudes of women toward electrical appliances. The message was
considered of interest to all the companies that, with the war about to end, were going to have to
make consumer sales take the place of war contracts. It was a study of "the psychology of
housekeeping"; "a woman's attitude toward housekeeping appliances cannot be separated from her
attitude toward homemaking in general," it warned.
On the basis of a national sample of 4,500 wives (middle-class, high-school or college-educated),
American women were divided into three categories: "The True House-wife Type," "The Career
9
Woman," and "The Balanced Homemaker." While 51 per cent of the women then fitted "The True
Housewife Type" ("From the psychological point of view, housekeeping is this woman's dominating
interest. She takes the utmost pride and satisfaction in maintaining a comfortable and well-run home
for her family. Consciously or subconsciously, she feels that she is indispensable and that no one else
can take over her job. She has little, if any, desire for a position outside the home, and if she has one
it is through force or circumstances or necessity"), it was apparent that this group was diminishing, and
probably would continue to do so as new fields, interests, education were now open to women.
The largest market for appliances, however, was this "True Housewife" — though she had a certain
"reluctance" to accept new devices that had to be recognized and overcome. ("She may even fear
that they [appliances] will render unnecessary the old-fashioned way of doing things that has always
suited her.") After all, housework was the justification for her whole existence. ("I don't think: there is
any way to make housework easier for myself," one True Housewife said, "because I don't believe that
a machine can take the place of hard work.")
The second type — The Career Woman or Would-Be Career Woman — was a minority, but an
extremely "unhealthy" one from the sellers' standpoint; advertisers were warned that it would be
to their advantage not to let this group get any larger. For such women, though not necessarily jobholders, "do not believe that a woman's place is primarily in the home." ("Many in this group have never
actually worked, but their attitude is: 'I think housekeeping is a horrible waste of time. If my youngsters
were old enough and I were free to leave the house, I would use my time to better advantage. If my
family's meals and laundry could be taken care of, I would be delighted to go out and get a job.''') The
point to bear in mind regarding career women, the study said, is that, while they buy modern
appliances, they are not the ideal type of customer. They are too critical.
The third type — "The Balanced Homemaker" — is "from the market standpoint, the ideal type."
She has some outside interests, or has held a job before turning exclusively to homemaking; she "readily
accepts" the help mechanical appliances can give — but "does not expect them to do the impossible"
because she needs to use her own executive ability "in managing a well-run household."
The moral of the study was explicit: "Since the Balanced Homemaker represents the market with
the greatest future potential, it would be to the advantage of the appliance manufacturer to make more
and more women aware of the desirability of belonging to this group. Educate them through advertising
that it is possible to have outside interests and become alert to wider intellectual influences (without
becoming a Career Woman). The art of good home-making should be the goal of every normal
woman."
10
Final exam example
“Chapter Green”, The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair, 2016
The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair is a collection of essays (each chapter is composed of short
essays on different shades of its respective colour), in which the author explores the cultural and social history
of colours.
Avocado
In February 1969 the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, turned black. Several days earlier, on the
morning of 28 January, an oil well 10 kilometres off the coast had ruptured. In all it is estimated that
200,000 gallons of crude oil escaped, and for 11 days it spewed out from the sea floor, coating a 35mile stretch of Californian coastline and any marine wildlife in its path. The Santa Barbara spill marked
a turning point in the way the world, and particularly the United States, perceived the globe and its
fragility. The inaugural Earth Day was celebrated on 22 April the following year. (It was founded by
Senator Gaylord Nelson, who had seen for himself the damage at Santa Barbara.) Over the next few
years, in response to popular protests, legal progress against pollution gained traction in America:
the Clean Air, Clean Water and National Environmental Policy Acts were passed.
Over the next decade the environmental health of the world loomed increasingly large in
the public consciousness. A picture of the globe taken on 7 December 1972 by the crew of the Apollo
17, who were bound for the Moon, made the world look, for the first time, vulnerable. The ‘Blue
Marble’ photo became one of the most iconic and widely shared images of all time. Artists like Robert
Smithson and James Turrell used the land as raw material, creating works that frankly commented on
the Earth’s fragility and challenged perceptions of the planet as immutable and inexhaustible. It was
during this period that the colour green became the shorthand for nature. The two had always been
linked, of course – the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph for ‘green’ was a papyrus stalk – but during the
1970s the link became ubiquitous. A small organisation called the Don’t Make Waves Committee
changed its name to Greenpeace in 1972. PEOPLE, the forerunner to the British Green Party, was
founded in 1973; Germany’s equivalent, Die Grünen, in 1979; and France’s Les Verts were consolidated
in the 1980s.
These grand ideas and a burgeoning concern for the natural world were translated into a backto-nature palette of earthy colours: burnt orange, harvest gold and, above all, avocado. This shade,
which appears so dated now, dominated palettes throughout the 1970s. As shoppers strove to appear
sincerely concerned for the welfare of the world, the furthest reaches of consumer goods – clothing,
kitchen appliances, baths, even cars – were colonised by this smoky yellow-green tint.
These attempts at environmental redemption through consumption may well seem hopelessly
naïve, but similar consumer impulses prevail today. And avocado has stealthily been reprising its role
since the millennium. Those who doubt this need only check their Instagram feeds. While few advocate
for avocado-coloured macramé and shag pile, the Persea americana has become the poster fruit
(technically it’s a single-seed berry) for a new kind of luxury consumption underpinned by the
concept of natural healthfulness. Lovingly slathered on pieces of toast everywhere from southern
California to Slough, they have become the centrepiece of the eat-clean brand of aspirational lifestyle.
And as one of the few heart-healthy, ‘good’ fats that nutritionists consistently agree on, avocado
imports have skyrocketed. In 2014, four billion avocados were consumed in America, around four
times the number eaten a scant 15 years before. In 2011 alone sales were $2.9 billion, an 11% increase
on the year before. As Mike Brown, a marketing executive for the Mexican Hass Avocado Importers’
Association, told a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in 2012: ‘the stars have aligned.’
11
I. Comprehension /10
1. Define in your own words the following terms : /3
become more influential
a) to gain traction:
b) to loom:
c) a shorthand:
being in a good situation,
d) to strive (strove - striven):
to
support
e) to underpin:
f) to skyrocket: increase really fast
2. Explain how the popular perception of the Earth has evolved over the past fifty years. (5070w) /3
3. Why is avocado an ambiguous symbol of environmental concerns? (OR comment on the
notion of “environmental redemption through consumption”) (70-90w) /4
II. Essay
/10
Choose one of the following topics and discuss it in a well-organized essay (300-400w). Take care over the
quality of your English, your arguments and examples and the different parts of your reasoning.
1. Offer an analysis on the cultural or social role of a colour of your choosing.
OR
2. “Colour is stronger than language.” Marie-Laure Bernadac
Frigidaire 1970s poster ad
12
2. Storytelling
a. The storytelling revival, Storytelling, Bewitching the Modern Mind, Christian Salmon, 2007
b. From Logo to story (Nike’s swoosh), Storytelling, Salmon
c. Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 DNC
A few suggestions for further analysis
Thank You for Smoking, Jason Reitman, 2006
Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Other Classic Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Angela Carter,
1977
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll, 1865-71
The Elder Scrolls series (fantasy action role-playing video games), Bethesda Game Studios
“Once upon a time…”
Anonymous
13
Storytelling, Bewitching the Modern Mind, Christian Salmon, 2007
The Storytelling Revival
“In recent years, storytelling has been promoted in surprising places,” writes the American
sociologist Francesca Polletta in her major study of storytelling in politics: “Managers are now urged
to tell stories to motivate workers and doctors are trained to listen to the stories their patients tell.
Reporters have rallied around a movement for narrative journalism and psychologists around a
movement for narrative therapy.”
Long regarded as a form of communication reserved for children and as a marginal leisure
activity to be analyzed in literary studies, since the mid 1990s storytelling has enjoyed a surprising
success in the United States that has been described as a triumph, a renaissance or a “revival.” It is a
form of discourse that has come to dominate all sectors of society and that transcends political,
cultural, or professional divisions, and it lends credence to the idea of what researchers in the
social sciences call the “narrative turn.” It has subsequently been likened to the dawn of a new
“narrative” age.
But is there really anything new about this? “The essence of American presidential leadership,
and the secret of presidential success, is storytelling,” writes Evan Cornog, who teaches journalism at
Columbia University, in an essay that re-examines the history of American presidencies from George
Washington to George W. Bush through the prism of storytelling: “From the earliest days of the
American republic to the present, those seeking the nation’s highest office have had to tell persuasive
stories—about the nation, about its problems, and, most of all, about themselves—to those who have
the power to elect them.” […]
Before, it was ‘That’s only a story, give me the facts,’ adds Paul Costello, co-founder of the
small Center for Narrative Studies in Washington, DC, which was formed six years ago to track the
spreading use and practice of narrative. Now, he said, more people are realizing that “stories have real
effects that have got to be looked at seriously.
Narrative as Instrument of Control
The success of the narrative approach first became apparent in the field of the human sciences.
From about 1995 onwards, this development was described as “the narrativist turn,” and it soon spread
to the social sciences. In the 1980s, the economist Deirdre N. McCloskey was already defending the
idea that economics is essentially a narrative discipline: “It is no accident that the novel and economic
science were born at the same time.” […]
It is thanks to this shift that storytelling has been able to emerge as a technology of
communications, control, and power. The narrativist turn of the mid 1990s in the social sciences
coincided with the Internet explosion and the advances in the new information and communications
technologies that created the preconditions for the “storytelling revival” and that allowed it to spread
so rapidly. NGOs, government agencies, and big companies increasingly discovered the effectiveness
of storytelling. In 2006, the American management consultant Lori Silverman noted that NASA,
Verizon, Nike, and Land’s End all regarded storytelling as the most effective approach to business.
Popularized by the highly effective lobbying of new gurus, storytelling management is now regarded as
something decision-makers cannot do without, no matter whether they are in politics, economics,
telecommunications, the universities, or diplomacy.
If you wish to bring commercial negotiations to a successful conclusion, get rival factions to
sign a peace treaty, launch a new product, get a team to accept a major change (including its own
firing), design a “serious” video game, or treat GIs suffering from postwar trauma, storytelling is
regarded as a panacea. Pedagogues use it as a teaching technique, and psychologists use it as a way
of treating traumas. It provides an answer to the crisis of meaning in organizations, and it is a
propaganda tool. It is an immersion mechanism, a tool for profiling individuals, a technique for
visualizing information, and a powerful way of spreading disinformation.
14
15
[For further analysis…
A few more pages from Salmon’s essay]
From Logo to story
(This chapter traces the invention of storytelling management in the 1990s, charged with using shared
narrative to mobilize emotions. This discourse is addressed primarily to managers; its function is to transform
the virtues of autonomy and responsibility, leadership and innovation, and flexibility and adaptability into
narratives)
The role of marketing is to sell, and that objective can be obtained in various different ways:
through aggressive advertising or material inducements, directly or indirectly with advertisements that
have a subliminal influence, but also by involving the consumer in a long-term emotional relationship.
That is the brand’s role: to “involve” the consumer. That is why brands are effective, and why they are
mysterious.
In the 1990s, brands began to express themselves through dazzling logos—Apple’s apple,
Nike’s swoosh, the oil company’s shell, McDonald’s golden arches—and all kinds of pictograms. The
product was dissolved into the brand. Within a decade, the logo, even more so than money, had
become the sign of wealth. And the brand became a pure value that shimmered in the sky of the stock
exchanges. “What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet. “That which we call a rose/By
any other name would smell as sweet.” Ashraf Ramzy—a marketing consultant whose clients include
Nissan, Canon, and KLM—and Alicia Korten asked the same question of brands in 2006. What’s in a
brand? An image? A reputation? What is the unique and indefinable thing that defines a company for
its clients and that makes it different from its competitors? Is there such a thing as a brand essence?
Or does its aura develop from familiarity with the brand and its market because we have seen the
advertising campaigns or seen the product on the supermarket shelves? Does it emerge from ferocious
battles with its competitors? Some saw brands as images that were as abstract and eternal as possible.
They were signs or signifiers, not signifieds. Others put the emphasis on their historical nature. […]
By the end of the 1990s, Nike no longer made anyone dream. Its name, slogan, and products
had become bogged down in a shameful narrative that demonized its divine brand. No-logo activists
had unexpected answers to the questions the marketing people were asking themselves: beneath the
smooth logos of the brands one could see the women workers in Indonesia who assembled Nike’s
sneakers, the child-slaves of Honduras who made sports gear for the Wal-Mart distribution chain, or
the young women in Haiti who made “Pocahontas” pajamas for Disney, who were so exhausted that
they had to feed their babies sugared water. Stories of suffering and exploitation. In June 1996, Life
magazine published photographs of Pakistani children making footballs bearing Nike’s logo. The pictures
were seen all over the world. Brands concealed stories, and they were ugly stories. If those stories
were to be done away with, and if the brands had to be saved, edifying stories had to be made up as a
matter of urgency. And what better way to do that than to call on the services of the protesters?
In August 1999, Amanda Tucker, the director of the ILO’s anti-child-labor program, was
recruited by Nike. At the same time, Nike commissioned a report from some American academics.
Throughout the 1990s, David M. Boje, who was one of the pioneers of “organizational storytelling,”
had been involved in anti-Nike campaigns and, together with his students, had done theoretical work
that deconstructed the Nike brand. According to Boje, companies were storytelling organizations.
They were sites for multiple narratives and for a dialogue between stories that either contradicted or
complemented one another. They were undermined from within by issues that were narrative as well
as economic, financial, or industrial. David Boje took his inspiration from Roland Barthes’ narratology
as well as Guy Debord’s thesis on the society of the spectacle; he also referred to the Russian
semiologist Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories about the dialogic or polyphonic nature of narrative. Boje
developed the paradigm for a new postmodern organization that would constantly mutate and would
communicate both internally and externally thanks to alternating strategies of narration and counternarration.
The exploitation stories that had demystified the Nike brand had to be challenged by other
narratives or counter-narratives. The brand was no longer self-sufficient and had to become a vector
for stories. If it reformulated its labor policy and made certain ecological commitments, explained Boje,
16
Nike could create a new identity for itself “just in time.” Nike was not in the process of improving its
moral standing, but just changing its story.
The Invention of Storytelling management
On June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs, the legendary boss of Apple computers, addressed the students
of Stanford University: “I am honored to be with you at your commencement from one of the finest
universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever
gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big
deal. Just three stories.
(…) When he told his stories, Apple’s boss was conforming to the norms established by storytelling’s intrusion into the spheres of management ten years earlier. That is a different story, and it is
one worth telling.
It is a story for our times. It is an edifying story, with the stars of the new economy in the
leading roles: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and many others, directors of the World Bank,
IBM, Xerox, and the gurus who preach “capitalism with soul.” It is a true story that tells us of “lean”
multinationals that turned away from production to develop daring screenplays that made their shares
soar on the Stock Exchanges, of international organizations on which the health of millions of people
in Africa depends, and whose directors sometimes have difficulty communicating from one office to
another. It is a story that tells of “battles with organizational monsters” in glass towers in New York,
where hyper-motivated managers try to persuade their colleagues to accept “daring transformations”
and to transform profoundly their perception of both themselves and their company. They are, explains
French management consultant Dominique Christian, “stories of miraculous strategic virtuosity and
heroic turnarounds … Stories of the heroes and heroines who make success possible.” They are
stories that celebrate the “knowing firm” whose object is no longer just to produce commodities, but
to share knowledge, to circulate information, and to manage emotions.
This is also the story of the invention of storytelling management. This new school of
management emerged in the United States in the 1990s, and it recommends bringing storytellers and
griots into companies. There are many new lessons to be learned: thinking, acting, networking,
managing distance, forming nomadic teams, mastering the information overload, adapting to the speed
of real-time business… There are innovations that lead to “e-transformations” and stubborn prejudices
that cost companies millions of dollars. PowerPoint presentations, checklists, and boring arguments
have had their day. Make way for storytelling!
17
Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 DNC
When Barack Obama launched into his keynote address
at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was
still an obscure state senator from Illinois. By the time he
finished 17 minutes later, he had captured the nation’s
attention and opened the way for a run at the presidency.
The following text is an extract from his speech.
BARACK OBAMA:
On behalf of the great state of Illinois,
crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me
express my deep gratitude for the privilege of
addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on
this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya.
He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook,
a domestic servant.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my
father got a scholarship to study in a magical place; America which stood as a beacon of freedom
and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother.
She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and
farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor he signed up for duty, joined
Patton's army and marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised their baby and went to
work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through
FHA, and moved west in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream, born of two continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this
nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or "blessed," believing that in a tolerant America
your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even
though they weren't rich, because in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your
potential. They are both passed away now. Yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with
pride.
I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents' dreams
live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American
story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth,
is my story even possible. Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the
height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based
on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago, "We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
That is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on
small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe
from harm. That we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on
the door. That we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe or hiring
somebody's son. That we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that
our votes will be counted — or at least, most of the time.
18
3. Exoticism & Otherness
a.
b.
c.
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson, 2012
Racism in American Popular Media, From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito, Brian Behnken
and Gregory Smithers, 2015
“What White, Western Audiences Don’t Understand About Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up”,
Margaret Dilloway, 2019
A few suggestions for further analysis
Still processing: Reparation for Aunt Jemima, Jenna Wortham & Wesley Morris July 16th 2020
(podcast)
Get Out, Jordan Peele, 2017
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Audre Lorde, 1984
On Being Different, Merle Miller, 1971
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie
Kondo, 2014
Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, Jade Sandberg Wallis (Netflix), 2019
The Wolf Among Us, Telltale Games, 2013
The X-Men franchise
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world,
but then you read.”
James Baldwin, “The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are”, Life Magazine, 1963
19
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson, 2012
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, subtitled ‘A 21st Century Bestiary’, takes up the tradition of medieval
bestiaries which offered illustrated descriptions of elements from the natural world (especially animals), often
accompanied with moral and philosophical considerations. Caspar Henderson uses different surprising species
as basis for various reflections on our own experience of the world. The following excerpt is taken from the
introduction.
All this [the omnipresence of animals in prehistoric cave paintings] points to something obvious
but which is, I think, so important that it is hard to overstate. And that is that for much of human
history attempts to understand and define ourselves have been closely linked to how we see and
represent other animals. Methods of representation may change but a fascination with other modes of
being remains. The cabinets of curiosity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, are
in obvious respects quite different from the bestiaries of the medieval period. Bringing together actual
specimens and fragments of exotic animals, plants and rocks, they helped pave the way for more
systematic study of the natural world in the eighteenth century when the taxonomic system that we
still use today came into being. But, like the bestiaries, these cabinets still have the power to enchant,
as their German name, Wunderkammern (‘cabinets of wonders’), attests. Today our fondness for
curiosities and wonders is no less. From the Wunderkammer to the Internet is a small step, and the
latter – containing virtually everything – is both the servant of science and an everyday electronic
bestiary. From giant squid to two-faced cats, what we know about animals and what we don't, the
amazing things they can do and the things they can't, the ways they never stop being strange or
surprising, feature constantly among the most shared articles and video clips on the web.
The following seems to be true: our attention is often momentary or disorganized, but
fascination with other ways of being, including that of animals, is seldom far from our minds, and
gushes up like spring water from within dark rock in every human culture. We may be shameless
voyeurs, passionate conservationists or simply curious, but we are seldom indifferent. Like our
ancestors, we're continually asking ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, ‘what has this got to do
with me, my physical existence, the things I hope for and the things I fear?’ (…)
I have tried to look at a few ways of being from different angles and, through ‘a wealth of
unexpected juxtapositions’ [Italo Calvino], explore both how they are alike and unlike humans (or how
we imagine ourselves to be) and also how their differences from and similarities to us cast light on
human capabilities and human concerns.
Illustration from De
monstruorum causis, natura
et differentiis, Fortunio
Liceti, 1634
Monsters at Work 2021
20
Racism in American Popular Media, From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito,
Brian D. Behnken and Gregory D. Smithers, 2015
In early 1888, business
entrepreneurs Charles Underwood
and Christopher Rutt purchased a
defunct flour mill in rural Missouri.
They hoped to expand operations, but
soon found themselves in a glutted
market with surplus flour filling a small
warehouse. The two men needed to
find a way to market this flour, and
so they began mixing batches of
ready-to-make pancake mix.
Their ready-to-make formula, offered
in an unassuming white paper bag,
sold poorly, that is until Rutt stumbled
upon a marketing strategy designed to
appeal to his largely local and
southern clientele. At a minstrel show
in 1889, Rutt witnessed a performance
by a white male actor in blackface and drag who impersonated a black female figure called “Aunt
Jemima.” Rutt realized instantly that this Aunt Jemima, the southern Mammy incarnate, not only
represented culinary expertise but could symbolize a product so easy to make that it was almost as if
your black servant had done it for you. Thus Aunt Jemima the pancake queen was born, a figure whose
name graces countless products today and is a multimillion-dollar industry, but one rooted in the
advertising industry’s racist history. The advertising industry is an old one and exists to serve clients
who want to market and sell products. The industry, however, does more than this; it both mirrors
and creates images of life that people (or consumers) internalize and ultimately define as normative.
The historian Jackson Lears contends that advertising has played an important role in American
society in promoting a “certain vision of the good life” that is acquired through the purchase of goods.
According to this view, advertising aims to appeal to human desires and wants, and so plays on our
inner fantasies. Advertising also fosters a sense of “imagined community” and nurtures a
psychology of “peer pressure” to promote consensus around a broad range of social and cultural
issues. In other words, advertising and marketing creates, as Lears puts it, a “symbolic universe where
certain cultural values were sanctioned and others rendered marginal or invisible.”
The advertising industry’s use of race and racist imagery provides us with an instructive
example of how mass media institutions contribute to the shaping of social and cultural norms.
Professional advertising and marketing firms emerged in the United States and other parts of the
Western world during the latter third of the nineteenth century. In Britain, for example, late
nineteenth-century advertisers played a crucial role in providing white Britons with a racial language
that became central to articulating a sense of superiority in the British Empire. Anne McClintock refers
to this as “commodity racism.” McClintock defines “commodity racism” as the idea that certain
consumer goods acquired fixed racial and cultural meanings. For example, Pears’ soap developed a
marketing campaign that played on popular associations of racial identity and personal hygiene. Pears’
soap was thus portrayed as an instrument of British civilization, capable of “brightening the dark
corners of the earth.”
In the United States, a similar cultural process was under way during the late nineteenth
century. Historian Kristin Hoganson refers to this process as “cosmopolitan domesticity.” Hoganson
argues that at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a growing number of daily and weekly
publications, expanding trade markets, and increasing income levels, enabled white Americans to let
more of the outside world into their homes without Americans having to leave their homes. With
rising income levels, an increasingly bourgeois consumer population purchased literature, “Turkish
curtains,” “Oriental” rugs, and “knickknacks from around the globe,” which entered into the dining
rooms and parlors of white Americans without disrupting the racial tranquility of their homes. The
21
incorporation of these items into American homes did not require a commitment to, or belief in,
equality among human beings. Rather, in an era when many millions of white Americans shared a
common set of racial stereotypes about African Americans and Native Americans and felt unsettled
by the “influx” of immigrations from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and southern and eastern Europe,
cosmopolitan domesticity allowed white middle-class Americans to indulge in an “orientalist”
aesthetic in which the “Soap adsotherness” of non-white people reinforced, rather than challenged,
their sense of racial superiority.
1948 ad for rice
1930s ad for chocolate
Soap ads: 1884 v. 2017
22
Former logo of a football team
What White, Western Audiences Don’t Understand About Marie Kondo’s Tidying
Up
Backlash to the Netflix show ignores an essential aspect of the KonMari method: Its Shinto roots.
Margaret Dilloway On assignment for HuffPost, 01/22/2019
When I was a child, I often joined my mother in prayer at the shrine in her bedroom. The
shrine looked to me like a doll’s house, a wood-and-glass scale model of a human-sized sanctum. It
housed small bowls of rice, water and salt. My late Japanese mother married an American in 1958, and
despite her insistence that her children not speak Japanese for fear people would think we were foreign,
she never gave up her Japanese religion. As the daughter of a priest in the Konko Church, she practiced
a Shinto mindset, stubbornly and daily, alone at our home.
“Clap three times,” she instructed me, “so the kami know you’re here.”
Kami are Shinto spirits present everywhere — in humans, in nature, even in inanimate objects.
At an early age, I understood this to mean that all creations were miracles of a sort. I could consider
a spatula used to cook my eggs with the wonder and mindful appreciation you’d afford a sculpture;
someone had to invent it, many human hands and earthly resources helped get it to me, and now I use
it every day. According to Shinto animism, some inanimate objects could gain a soul after 100 years
of service ―a concept known as tsukumogami ― so it felt natural to acknowledge them, to express
my gratitude for them.
I had my mother in mind when I watched Marie Kondo’s Netflix show Tidying Up for the first
time. In each episode, Kondo, a professional organizing consultant, instructs her clients to identify the
objects in their homes that “spark joy” and devise a plan to honor those objects by cleaning and storing
them properly. She also encourages people to part ways with the objects that fail to spark joy, but
not before thanking them for their service. The way Kondo pledges gratitude for the crowded houses
she visits, and thanks the clothes and books and lamps that serve so much purpose for the families
seeking to declutter their homes, struck me as a powerfully Shinto way of conducting life.
The Shinto mindset was present in everything my mother did. Both she and my father grew up
in poverty, she in rural Japan and he in a coal mining town. After they married, they didn’t have much
money compared to others in our neighborhood — my father supported us on his Navy retirement
salary and by selling jewelry at JCPenney’s — but we had a nice, if modest, home. Whereas my father’s
response to the wealth we had resulted in Neiman-Marcus credit card debt and a garage stuffed full of
30-plus years of cheap goods, my mother disliked the disposable, acquisitional mentality of Western
culture. She recycled long before it was popular, repurposing objects others might throw away. She
washed out plastic bags and reused them, because a great deal of energy and materials had gone into
their manufacture. She composted. She saved rainwater.
I’m using my mother as an example, but it’s cultural to imbue objects with a sort of dignity.
Japanese culture, like any, is not monolithic, but the expectation to respect where you live and work
— and therefore other people — is ingrained into many Japanese households that practice Shinto
traditions. Treasuring what you have; treating the objects you own as not disposable, but valuable, no
matter their actual monetary worth; and creating displays so you can value each individual object are
all essentially Shinto ways of living. It’s why some school children in Japan clean their cafeterias. It’s
why you saw some Japanese people picking up trash after the World Cup. It’s not because they are
genetically tidier and more respectful. It’s because many are culturally taught that people and places
and objects have kami.
23
So when people online began condemning Kondo and her
KonMari method, the disparaging memes and criticism read to
me less as a simple sentiment of “eh, not for me” and more as an
outright cultural attack. On Facebook and Twitter, otherwise
empathetic and culturally sensitive peers made fun of Kondo in
starkly xenophobic terms. White writer Anakana Schofield helped
kick off the backlash with a snarly tweet that she expanded into
a Guardian article, in which she takes umbrage with Kondo’s
method of tapping on books to wake them up. “Surely the way to
wake up any book is to open it up and read it aloud,” she writes
indignantly, “not tap it with fairy finger motions — but this is the
woo-woo nonsense territory we are in.”
As online fervor drenched in not-so-subtle racism swelled,
blatant misinterpretations of Kondo’s method proliferated. I saw a
false meme claiming Kondo wanted to limit people to owning only
30 books probably 50 times in a single day. I kept commenting, This
is not true. She doesn’t care how many books you keep, as long as they’re not causing you misery. But
the vitriol was never just about the books. Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Petersen blamed Kondo, in
part, for crushing the spirit of the millennial generation. “The media that surrounds us — both social
and mainstream, from Marie Kondo’s new Netflix show to the lifestyle influencer economy — tells us
that our personal spaces should be optimized just as much as one’s self and career. The end result isn’t
just fatigue, but enveloping burnout that follows us to home and back,” she wrote. Petersen’s analysis
failed to recognize that the opposite is true. Kondo teaches that material goods are not a means for
attaining happiness and urges people to appreciate what they have, a method she intends to lead to
contentment, not burnout. It’s as if Petersen, like so many other detractors, depended on the memes
providing shallow and incorrect summaries of Kondo’s method rather than cull opinions from actually
watching the Netflix show or reading the book upon which the series is based. Either way, the mostly
white people who are not professional organizers had no problem telling Kondo, a woman of color
and highly recognized person in her field, that her approach is objectively wrong.
I had never seen quite this level of concentrated venom directed toward a self-help/home
decor person. Even though Kondo delivers her dictates in the gentlest ways possible (I watched her
show with the subtitles on; they kept saying she cooed), the message was clear to me: White people
are comfortable when a woman of color takes on a stereotypical service role, but they are
uncomfortable when a woman of color deigns to upend our unspoken societal rules.
My dad used to say, “The Japanese do everything backward.” Even when I was little, the
phrasing bugged me, though I couldn’t articulate why. Now I know. It meant that the Japanese were
the wrong ones, the “other.” Westerners were at the center of his universe, just as Western values
are at the center of the memes disparaging the KonMari method. In effect, online criticism sounds like
my father’s: The Japanese are backward. A woman of color could not possibly help white people live
better lives, because that might mean she is better.
Marie Kondo’s method is not for everyone. But to wholesale dismiss her suggestions with
xenophobic language and unadulterated Western hubris is to dismiss an entire ancient cultural tradition
that has harmed exactly no one.
24
ANNEX: METHODOLOGY
Essay writing
•
Presentation:
Do not use contracted forms (not “don’t” but “do not”). Use punctuation marks carefully. Remember
to use capital letters for months, days, languages, etc.
•
Introduction:
It is important to write a good introduction. You can make a quick historical survey of the subject,
express a commonly held view about it, start with an example or an anecdote.
Ex: “it is often claimed that”, “experts have long expressed the belief that”, etc.
It is good to define the words used in the subject assigned to you or situate the main issue in a broader
context.
Do not forget to state the main point of the subject by giving a topic sentence (one presenting the
subject) and then, by asking a question which highlights some tension (= problématique). The
“problématique” needs to underline the problem that lies at the core of the topic.
Ex: “Do the advantages brought by computers outweigh the inconvenience caused by their use?”
Try to provide a subtle presentation of your outline, as your work must be well structured and divided
into several parts. Instead of “first…secondly”, prefer something like “after analysing this topic, I will
try to show…before discussing one final issue”
=> possible outlines: pros, cons, synthesis/ examples from which you infer conclusions/ facts, causes,
consequences.
The outline obviously depends on the theme you are asked to deal with.
•
Development:
Try to stick to the rule: one paragraph per idea, one idea per paragraph (starting with an indented
line).
Start each paragraph with a clear sentence introducing its subject (topic sentence), then develop your
idea using examples, explanations, etc.
Ex: “First I would like to deal with a major issue”
Arrange your ideas in logical order, using link words: “First”/ “Then”/ “Thirdly”/ “Moreover”/ “Finally”
…but not too many of them!
Make sure you are always writing about the subject of the essay.
Try to create a progression: from other people’s arguments to yours, from what you consider less
important to the most powerful argument.
•
Conclusion:
It is also an important stage of the essay. It can consist of a brief summary of your development, and
an open question. You may also give your opinion more explicitly than earlier.
25
•
A few do’s and don’ts
- Keep it simple: do not start writing complicated sentences which you have trouble structuring.
Express your ideas in clear, straightforward English.
- Avoid thinking in French. Write directly in English.
- Try to be broad-minded, to weigh the pros and cons of any stand. Do not be prejudiced.
- Try to keep your reader interested: give specific examples, mention topical issues or current
events and analyse them from a personal viewpoint. Try to be original. Do not mix subjective
arguments and objective facts, and always present them as they are.
•
Useful phrases:
- Introduction: to begin with, as an introduction, first and foremost, the point at issue here, etc.
- Expressing personal opinions: Personally I think/ In my opinion/ To my mind/ From my point of
view/ In my view, for my part, as far as I am concerned, it is my contention that, etc. Avoid:
“According to me”
- Reporting someone’s opinion: According to the author, the president has contended that, etc.
As X wrote/ to quote X’s words, …
- Explaining a cause: for, as, since, because
- Introducing a consequence: So, hence, thus, therefore, as a consequence / The upshot is that… /
All this points to the fact that… / Given these facts, …
- Contradicting: on the one hand, on the other hand. Yet/ Still. On the contrary/ conversely/
However/ Nevertheless/ Although…, …/ Unlike the writer, I think that…/ I completely disagree
with him / No matter what people say, I keep thinking that
- Exemplifying: For example/ for instance / Consider the case of / Similarly / Likewise / Such as/
like
- Generalising: Generally speaking, by and large, roughly speaking, all things considered
- Insisting: I do think/believe/ feel that / I cannot stress this point enough There is no escaping the
fact that
- Restricting: To a certain extent/ Up to a certain point/ In a sense / Strictly speaking Indeed/
true/ undoubtedly
- Qualifying: Oddly enough/ Paradoxically / Strange as it may seem
- Developing: I would like to add/ to point out / It cannot be too strongly emphasised / On top
of that/ in addition/ furthermore / We must bear in mind that It should also be pointed out that
- Concluding: To conclude/ In conclusion/ Last but not least/ Finally/ Lastly/ I’ll wind up by saying
that / To sum up/ (to put it) in a nutshell/ in a word
Oral presentations: cultural analysis
A. Before the presentation
-
Make sure you know what you are talking about (do some research!)
Organise your thoughts so that the presentation should be easier to follow for the
audience.
Practice your speech before the actual presentation
26
B. The presentation itself
BOTH FORM AND CONTENTS ARE IMPORTANT
-
Dress appropriately
Make it lively! We want to feel you are happy to be there. Do not speak in a
monotonous tone. Do not speak too quickly either!
Feel convinced by what you are saying so that you can keep us captivated and alert.
Body language: make eye contact with your audience, do not speak too much with
your hands but do not stand still either.
Do not read from your notes: Be sufficiently prepared so that you do not need to
read. Write keywords on your sheet of paper/ use bullet points if that helps!
If you use audio-visual aids, make sure everything is working beforehand.
You may give handouts if you need to. Make sure they are ready before you start
speaking.
C. Structure
Your presentation needs to be structured around several themes. It can be divided into several parts.
•
Suggestion:
Ø An introduction presenting the topic
Ø A « problématique » which is not necessarily a question but some sort of
tension that you want to highlight.
Ø An outline: Avoid « In a first time » => prefer « First » / « Firstly » before
telling what the other stages of your reflection are.
Ø The body of the work: divided into several parts
Ø A conclusion: a summary and a final interesting question/punchline. Keep
some time for questions!
•
On the theme of “business ethics in pop culture”, for instance:
Instructions: For this assignment, you will watch a movie or television show and prepare an oral
presentation on the way that the issue of ethics is presented in the film. The goal of this exercise
is to think critically and reflectively about how ethical decision-making plays a role in human
interaction, as is exemplified by the fictional characters in movies. The film or TV show should be
used as a case study for ethics and decision-making.
After you have watched the film or television show, you will prepare a well-structured
presentation, with visual aids, that incorporates answers to the following questions:
– Which movie/TV show did you choose to watch for this assignment? Why?
– Describe the central ethical conflict(s) in the plot.
– What ethical theories were used?
– Who was impacted by these characters’ decisions and actions? How?
– What did the characters gain / lose by making (un)ethical choices?
– How was the ethical issue resolved?
– According to you, was the correct thing done in this case?
– What do movies or television shows add to the study of “business ethics”?
– What lessons have you learned from watching and thinking about this movie from a
critical perspective?
27
Guide d’accompagnement pour la maîtrise de l’anglais
professionnel
1. Writing a CV in English
1. Make it objective, individual and personal
A C.V. is an individual document in which you provide standard information on yourself, your
academic and professional background and your specific skills.
You will be asked to provide a C.V. when applying for:
-a job or an internship
-a selective academic program (Master's degree, schools, etc.)
-an opportunity to study abroad (exchange programs)
It is meant to provide all the information required for an objective comparison between several
persons, which is why the content, the style and the layout of a C.V. are standard: there are certain
rules as to what content is to be included and how to present it.
It is, however, possible and desirable that your C.V. should stand out with your own personal touch –
which can be anything from a personal interest to a sophisticated layout.
2. Adapt it specifically to your project
The C.V. should be tailored for a specific project, for which it should provide evidence that you have
some of the key skills and/or experience.
(!) Keep in mind that you know yourself better than anyone else, but that you are virtually anonymous
to your reader: don't be afraid to include items which might seem obvious to you.
It could be useful to keep a “master C.V.” which includes every piece of valuable information, updated
with every new item. You can then use this document and adapt it to each specific application.
The C.V. and cover letter that you will hand in as your coursework should be aiming at a specific
project, even if it is fictional. Please include a sentence to describe this project.
e.g. “I intend to apply for a semester abroad with the ERASMUS program.”
3. Keep it short and precise
A C.V. should be short and precise, in its content, structure and style. Be sure to prioritize
information in terms of order and layout. Your C.V. should never be longer than two pages (no longer
than one page in France).
Use neutral vocabulary. Nominal sentences are possible in French.
You may use bullet points if you wish.
28
1/ contact information
1/contact
Susan Woolf
susan.woolf@neutral-address.com
+33 6 xx xx xx xx
Jeanne Duras
jeanne.duras@adresse-pro.fr
06.xx.xx.xx.xx
In anglo-saxon countries, it is customary not to include a
photograph, in order to preserve a certain anonymity.
En France, une photo est la bienvenue, même si les usages
tendent à évoluer et que l'on se rapproche du C.V. à l'anglosaxonne.
Le cas échéant, la choisir de préférence neutre et
éventuellement en n&b.
It is possible to add a single-sentence objective, describing
your current status
what you are seeking through this application
University student in English studies seeking to pursue Étudiant en licence d'études anglophones souhaitant
a Master's degree in translation
intégrer un master spécialisé de traduction
University student looking to study abroad in an
English-speaking country in 2018
Trained camp counselor seeking a position for the
summer of 2018
2/ education
Etudiant souhaitant effectuer un échange universitaire
dans un pays anglophone en 2018
Animatrice brevetée (BAFA) en recherche d'emploi pour
l'été 2018
2/ formation
Toutes les lignes de cette section doivent préciser le contenu d'une formation ou d'un diplôme:
dates
cursus suivi
lieu
diplômes reçus à l'issue du cursus
éventuellement : mentions obtenues, précisions autres
Les informations contenues dans cette catégorie ainsi que dans la catégorie « expérience professionnelle » doivent être
hiérarchisées et présentées en ordre chronologique inversé (du plus récent au plus ancien).
En général on fait remonter l'historique jusqu'au bac. Inclure le brevet des collèges est possible mais pas nécessaire, et
deviendra inutile au second diplôme obtenu.
To translate your education into English, don't translate literally and don't use the cultural equivalent. Instead, give the
number of years spent and your major, then state the French name of the degree between brackets.
2015-2016 (current)
second year in a three-year degree in English
studies (LLCER anglais)
Université Paris Dauphine - PSL
2015-2016 (en cours)
Licence LLCER anglais
Université Paris Dauphine - PSL
2014
2014
high-school diploma (baccalauréat) in arts,
major in foreign languages, with honors
Lycée Ampère, Lyon
degrees
two-year degree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
degree or three-year degree . . . . . . . . .
five-year-degree (US) or Master's degree
diplôme du baccalauréat, série littéraire, spécialité
langues vivantes (mention bien)
Lycée Ampère, Lyon
diplômes
. . . . . . BTS/DUT
. . . . . . Licence
29
(european countries) . . . . . . . . . . .
two (or three)-year intensive course to
prepare x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
competitive examination for x . . . . . . . . .
with honors (US) or honours (UK) . . . .
3/work experience
. . . . . . Master
. . . . . . CPGE
. . . . . . concours
. . . . . . avec mention
3/expérience professionnelle
This section includes all relevant information about professional experience (so include internships as well!) and should
display:
date
place
position filled
possibly a list of completed tasks or mastered skills
February 2015 – present
part-time work as bartender
in charge of tickets sales
Café & concert venue La flèche d'or, Paris
février 2015 – 2016
travail à mi-temps en tant que serveuse
responsable de la vente de billets
Café et salle de concert La flèche d'or, Paris
May – July 2014
internship as a gallery assistant
Galerie Specimen, Paris
mai – juillet 2014
stage – assistante de galerie
Galerie Specimen, Paris
career
position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
fixed-term contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
permanent contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
part-time work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
temporary work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
summer job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
(training) internship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
to be in charge of x . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
carrière
. . . . . . métier / poste
. . . . . . CDD
. . . . . . CDI
. . . . . . travail à mi-temps
. . . . . . travail en intérim
. . . . . . job d'été
. . . . . . stage (de formation)
. . . . . . être responsable de x
4/ computer and language skills
4/ compétences
As far as language skills are concerned, use the terminology you are familiar with, but use it consistently. You may add
standard examinations (such as TOEFL or IELTS) and scores if the application requires it.
In both sections it is recommended that you organize your skills from more fluent to more basic.
Languages spoken
– French (mother tongue)
– fluent in English and Arabic
– beginner skills in Italian
Langues
– espagnol (langue maternelle)
– anglais (courant)
– arabe (notions)
Computer skills
– fully literate with Microsoft Office Suite and
free equivalents
– basic use of Adobe Photoshop
Compétences informatiques
– maîtrise complète de la suite Microsoft Office
et équivalents en logiciels libres
– notions de base de Adobe Photoshop
languages
notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
langues
. . . . . . notions
30
beginner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
intermediate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
advanced. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
bilingual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
good written and oral skills . . . . . . . . . . . .
good knowledge of x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
computer skills
fully literate with x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
writing knowledge of x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
basic knowledge of x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . débutant
. . . . . . intermédiaire
. . . . . . avancé/courant
. . . . . . bilingue
. . . . . . bonne maîtrise à l’oral et à l’écrit
. . . . . . bonne connaissance de x
informatique
. . . . . . maîtrise complète de x
. . . . . . usage professionnel
. . . . . . usage basique
5/ personal interests
5/ points d'intérêts
This section allows you to include more personal information. You may consider explaining in a simple sentence why you
feel this item is relevant to your application, personality and/or career choice.
Personal interests might include sports, arts, charity/volunteer work (bénévolat), academic interests outside your major,
travels, etc.
6/ references
If you are writing a C.V. intended for an anglophone country, it might be required to include references – that is,
professional or academic contacts who can support your application and vouch (se porter garant) for you, your specific
skills or your general behavior.
– usually two references are required
– in your case it may be e.g. a teacher and a contact from a previous work experience
– include their name, state their position and add their contact information (e-mail address)
– don't forget to ask them in advance if they're willing to vouch for you
References available on request.
Only if the submission guidelines does not require you to
include references.
31
2. Writing a cover letter
When sending a C.V., you usually need to include a covering letter, whose goal is to introduce
yourself more personally and explain why you are applying to this job/academic opportunity.
It is your personal pitch and should show that you understand what is expected from you.
Just like the C.V., the cover letter is both formal and targeted:
-It is a professional document: it should be laid out as a business letter and rather neutral in style.
-It should be tailored for each job and be very precise about what you are applying for.
It should cover the following points:
-why you are applying to this company/program; what makes them stand out in your eyes
-why you are applying for this position/opportunity; your motivations for applying; your understanding
of your future role
-the skills and experience you have that match the application. Keep in mind that it will be read
alongside your C.V., so this is a good way to explain the elements you've felt were important to
include in your C.V.
Make it short and clear
-Make it short: no longer than one page.
-The structure should be clear: each paragraph should revolve around one idea.
1/ header
1/en-tête
Just like a business letter, your cover letter should feature a header with the following information:
your address and contact information
the addressee's contact information
a subject line
Maxime Sand
38, rue de l'Université
75013 Paris
you may add your e-mail address and mobile phone
number
adresse physique du destinataire (avec ou sans contact
individuel, c.f. infra)
The subject line should be very short and precise
Re: Application for the 2017 Erasmus exchange
program
Re: unsolicited application for an internship in the
media department
If you are writing in response to an ad, include the reference
or the code.
Objet : candidature pour le programme d'échange
Erasmus 2017
Objet : candidature spontanée pour un stage au
service médias
formal application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . candidature (officielle)
unsolicited application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . candidature spontanée
vacancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . poste à pourvoir
2/ who are you addressing?
2/ formule d'adresse
It is usual to address the recipient of the letter formally.
Find the name of a person to address your letter to:
32
-if you have a personal contact: address the letter to him/her
-if you don't have a personal contact: try to look for the person who would be in the position of reading your letter (look
online, call for information). It can be the director of a department or a committee, the person responsible for
internships, the department of human resources, etc.
for a man
Dear Mr Last name,
for a woman
Dear Mrs or Ms Jones,
(!) never include their first name: it is considered as familiar.
On n'inclut pas le nom de famille en français:
Monsieur,
...
Madame,
-if you are unable to find this information, you will have to address your letter to a putative “Madam or Sir”
Dear Madam or Sir
you can also add the following before
To whom it may concern,
Madame, Monsieur,
3/introduction
From the very beginning of the letter, you should
-state that you are enclosing you C.V. for consideration
-explain why you are contacting them (advertisement, unsolicited application, etc.)
-introduce yourself
Establish any links you might have with the person you are writing to, or with the organization itself:
-a personal contact, a conversation with somebody who invited you to apply
-a previous experience with them (an internship, e.g.)
-a personal interest in the organization
This should take no more than two sentences.
-I wish to apply for the position of xxx which I saw advertised on your website, and I enclose my C.V. for
consideration.
-Please find my C.V. enclosed for the position of xxx as listed on [job advertisement website].
-As a final year student in English studies at the Université Paris Diderot, I was very interested to see your
vacancy for a Graduate Intern on your website.
-Following my conversation with xxx at the Salon de l'étudiant in Paris last fall, I am pleased to apply for your
Graduate program in English studies.
4/ main body of the letter
4/ contenu
There are three key points that your letter should go over in more or less detail:
-what makes you personally interested in working for the organization/applying for this academic opportunity?
-why are you particularly interested in the job/program?
-what makes you a strong candidate for the job?
Overall, demonstrating enthusiasm is important, so don't hesitate to use adjectives and adverbs to emphasize your motivation.
skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
ability to. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be enthusiastic about x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be willing to do x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be able/show ability to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be experienced (in x) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be familiar with x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be motivated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
be reliable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33
. . . . . . compétences
. . . . . . aptitude (à)
. . . . . . avoir de l'enthousiasme pour
. . . . . . être (tout à fait) disposé(e) à x
. . . . . . être capable de
. . . . . . être expérimenté (dans le domaine de x)
. . . . . . maîtriser x
. . . . . . être motivé
. . . . . . être digne de confiance
. . . . . . être mobile
be willing to travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
commit oneself to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
make decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
show initiative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Conclude by stating again that you are interested and
qualified, in one sentence:
-For all those reasons, I believe that an internship
in your department would be an incredibly
valuable experience for me. -I hope that I can
bring my energy and my skills to work with you
towards xxx project.
. . . . . . se consacrer à
. . . . . . prendre des décisions
. . . . . . faire preuve d’initiative notions
-Pour toutes ces raisons, j'ai la sincère conviction
qu'un stage au sein de votre département serait
pour moi une très forte expérience.
-J'espère pouvoir porter mes compétences et ma
motivation à votre service.
5/ ending the letter
5/ formule de politesse
State your availability for further information or potentially
for an interview.
Finally, keep it simple:
Yours sincerely,
Yours faithfully,
-Je reste à votre disposition pour plus d'information
ou pour tout entretien que vous jugerez utile.
En français, on peut avoir recours aux longues formules de
politesse :
Dans l'attente de votre réponse, je vous prie
d'agréer, Madame [ou Monsieur, ou Madame,
Monsieur], l'expression de mes salutations les plus
respectueuses.
On peut aujourd'hui envisager se passer de plusieurs éléments
de ces longues formules quelque peu désuètes. Cela dépend
fortement de votre destinataire.
Dans l'attente de votre réponse, veuillez agréer,
Madame, mes salutations (les plus) respectueuses.
Sign with your full name.
You can consider signing the letter by hand.
34
3. Writing an e-mail
0/ before starting to write
An e-mail may seem less formal than a letter, but keep in mind that you are still asking for sb's time and attention, so
be as polite as possible.
Ask yourself:
a. is it necessary to write?
If you know that you will see the other person shortly, and that the matter you are writing for can wait that long,
then wait so that you can talk in person.
(it's always nicer, easier and more efficient to talk in person)
b. know your purpose: why are you sending that message? What do you expect from it?
If you cannot answer these questions in a simple sentence, then don't write at all.
Always:
a. keep your e-mail short: if possible, make each message about one thing only, and try to limit your message
to five sentences.
b. fill in the “subject” line
c. check grammar, spelling and punctuation
In general, avoid
a. writing in an agitated context
Choose a time/space when/where you can think calmly and be dedicated to what you are doing.
b. writing from your cell phone
You won't be able to check vocabulary and grammar, and usually writing from a cell-phone means that you are not in
a situation where you can be calm and collected.
If you do write from your cell phone, consider removing the signature “sent from my iPhone”
In general:
a. write from a neutral or professional e-mail address
b. write like you speak, even in a formal e-mail. It is possible to be polite and formal with simple language.
c. be calm, “in real life” & in the language you use (even if you are worried, or angry)
1/ greet your contact
Même si les usages tendent à évoluer, en français on attend
généralement un ton légèrement plus soutenu qu'en anglais
Dear x,
if you know the person
[first name]
if you do not
Sir or Madam
if you don't know who you are addressing
Dear Madam or Sir,
si vous savez à qui vous vous adressez
Cher ou chère x,
[prénom] si vous le/la connaissez personnellement
Madame ou Monsieur
si vous ne savez pas à qui vous vous adressez
Madame, Monsieur,
if you are writing to a professor
Dear Pr. [+ last name]
(anglo-saxon context only) if that professor specifically
asked to be called by his/her first name
Dear [first name],
si vous écrivez à un professeur :
évitez d'utiliser « bonjour » comme formule d'introduction
Chère Madame ou Monsieur [sans nom de famille]
2/ introduce yourself & provide some context
if you already know each other and you think they need a reminder
We met at/during x
35
I attended your class on x last semester
We spoke when x
if not, always introduce yourself (=say what you do)
I am a student at x
I work as (an intern...) at x
I am writing on behalf of x
3/ start the conversation
get to the point!
if needed, quickly explain your current situation, which led you to write the e-mail, and then, depending what you expect from
your contact:
you have a question
could you tell me...
I am writing to ask (if)...
I'd like to know...
you hand in sth
please find attached/enclosed x
[my paper
[my letter of intent
en français, préférez toujours le conditionnel
je souhaiterais savoir si...
j'aimerais...
pourriez-vous... ?
veuillez trouver ci-joint x
you ask for a service
could you (possibly)…?
do you think you could…?
I wonder if you could…
you ask for permission: state what you want, then ask
I would like to x,
could I…?
may I …?
would it be possible for me to…?
you want to point out a problem
there seems to be a problem with x
there may be a misunderstanding
you want to apologize
a. apologize first
I am sorry about x/that I…
b. give a reason
unavoidable
medical emergency
health/family problems
c. act or suggest an action
pourriez-vous... ?
serait-il possible de... ?
attention à la différence entre le conditionnel et le futur : c'est
bien le conditionnel qu'il faut utiliser par politesse !
J'aurais souhaité x,
pourrais-je... ?
il semblerait que x pose problème
il semblerait que nous nous soyons mal compris
s'excuser est délicat en français : il ne faut pas avoir l'air
d'imposer à l'autre d'accepter vos excuses.
très soutenu mais toujours acceptable
je vous prie de bien vouloir accepter mes excuses
pour x
moins soutenu
veuillez accepter mes excuses pour x
évitez
je suis désolé(e) pour x
et d'autant plus
désolé(e) pour x
4/ end the conversation
state your availability and where you can be reached
36
should you need
more information,
to reach me,
please don't hesitate to contact me
through e-mail
on my mobile phone [give your number]
take your leave
personal, less formal
best,
kind regards,
safe options
all the best,
best regards,
very professional/formal
yours sincerely,
sincerely,
extremely formal
yours faithfully,
prendre congé
i. dans un cadre universitaire (et/ou professionnel)
option la plus sûre
cordialement
moins cordial
respectueusement
plus cordial
bien cordialement
bien à vous
ii. dans le cas d'une lettre de motivation ou d'un message à
caractère très soutenu,
les salutations les plus sûres :
salutations respectueuses
formulation de moins en moins usitée
je vous prie de bien vouloir agréer, etc.
plus simple, plus sûr :
veuillez agréer/recevoir, Madame, Monsieur, mes
salutations respectueuses
and finally, sign off
in English, your first name is enough
Jane
enfin, signez
en général, préférez prénom + nom
ou simplement le prénom si vous écrivez à quelqu'un que vous
connaissez en personne et qui vous a déjà appelé(e) par votre
prénom
to be sure, simply add your complete contact information
below, as a signature
Jane Smith
Master's student – Université Paris Diderot
jane.smith@professional-email.com
+33 6 xx xx xx xx
vous pouvez envisager d'inclure vos informations de contact en
signature
Jeanne Martin
Licence LLCER anglais – Université Paris Diderot
jeanne.martin@mail-pro.fr
06.xx.xx.xx.xx
5/ afterwards
a. if you don't get an answer
Before going any further, don't panic. It is almost never because your contact is angry with you.
Ask yourself if your message needed an answer:
if not, then don't insist.
if you do need an answer, then send a follow-up message (relancez votre destinataire)
b. send a follow-up e-mail
/wait two or three days (two or three weeks if it's for an internship/job application).
/always include your previous message as a “forward” or “re:”
i. read your first message again, and consider if elements might be confusing or lead to misunderstanding. If so, send a followup attempting to clarify your message.
I wish to clarify my previous message
Je souhaiterais clarifier/apporter des précisions concernant
37
mon message précédent
ii. practice empathy with your contact. Think that they might be busy, might have read your e-mail on their phone and forgot
to file it, etc.
In that case, send a follow-up e-mail that is short and without insisting that they forgot to write back.
I was wondering if you had the chance to
read through my application,
read my message regarding x,
read my paper,
and wanted to let you know that …
Je souhaiterais savoir si vous avez eu le temps de
prendre connaissance de mon dossier de candidature.
consulter mon message concernant x.
Je reste à votre disposition pour…
Pour plus d'expressions et d'indications sur les équivalences anglais/français, vous pouvez consulter le
guide d'expression contenu dans les pages centrales du Robert & Collins.
38
More (always more) Vocabulary!
Jobs & Jobs search
L'EMPLOI / RECRUTEMENT
offres d'emploi
job postings / situations vacant
vacance de poste / d'emploi
job opening / vacancy
profil de poste
job profile
poste à pourvoir
job vacancy
descriptif d'un poste
job description
recrutement interne
internal recruitment
postuler pour un emploi
to apply for a job
dossier de candidature
applicant file / application file
sélectionner des candidats
shortlist applicants / candidates
être présélectionné pour un poste
to be shortlisted for a job
nommer quelqu'un à un poste
to appoint somebody to a position
être désigné à un poste
to be appointed to a position
débouchés / perspectives d'emploi job openings / prospects
recrutement de jeunes diplômés
graduate recruitment
stage de formation en entreprise
internship / work placement
accepter/refuser un poste
to accept / turn down an offer
39
SALAIRE / MOTIVATION
salaire motivant
attractive salary
fourchette de salaires
salary band / bracket
système de rémunération /
rétribution
reward system
taux horaire
hourly rate of pay
salaire horaire
hourly wage
être payé à l'heure
to be paid (an hourly wage / basis)
(by the hour)
être payé au mois
to be paid monthly
être payé à la pièce
to be paid piece-work,
employé payé à l'heure / à la
vacation
hourly worker
salaire moyen
average pay
salaire annuel net
net annual salary
salaire annuel brut
gross annual salary
salaire fixe
basic salary
avoir un 13e mois
to be paid (an extra month's salary)
bonus variable forfaitaire
lump sum variable bonus
prime d'ancienneté
long-service premium
prime de responsabilité
responsibility bonus
40
prime d'assiduité
attendance bonus
prime de mobilité
mobility allowance
prime de vacances
holiday allowance
droit aux congés payés
holiday entitlement
avantage en nature
benefits in kind
ensemble d'avantages,
rémunération globale
benefit package
taux des heures supplémentaires
overtime rate
rémunération des heures
supplémentaires
overtime pay
congés (annuels) payés
paid (annual) leave / paid holiday
frais professionnels remboursables refundable business expenses
remboursement de frais
refunding of expenses
accord de principe
agreement in principle
TEMPS DE TRAVAIL
heures de service
hours of duty
heures de présence
hours spent at work
durée du temps de travail
hours of work/ working hours
aménagement du temps de travail
flexible working hours
horaire à la carte, horaire libre
flexitime
41
horaires modulables
adjustable hours
choix d'horaires souples
flexible work option
travail flexible
flexible working
travail à temps plein
full-time employment / work
travail à temps partiel
part-time work
équivalent temps plein
full-time equivalent
heures supplémentaires
overtime
jour férié
bank holiday
PLAN DE CARRIERE
projet professionnel
career objectives
parcours de carrière
career path
plan de carrière
career pattern / plan
déroulement de carrière
career evolution
opportunités de carrière
career opportunities
perspectives de carrière
career perspectives
évolution professionnelle
career advancement
perspectives d'évolution
career development prospects
objectifs professionnels
career goals
compétences professionnelles
professional skills
42
gravir les échelons
to get ahead
entretien de carrière
career interview
acquérir de nouvelles compétences
to obtain new skills
formation permanente
on-going education
entretien d'évaluation
appraisal interview
expérience, profil
background
bilan de compétences
skills assessment
critère d'appréciation
evaluation criterion
emploi d'avenir
job with a future
se réaliser dans le travail
to fulfil oneself through work
LE CONTRAT
contrat de travail
individual employment contract
respecter les termes d'un contrat
to abide by the terms of a contract
renouvellement d'un contrat
reappointment
convention collective
collective bargaining agreement
mener des négociations
to hold talks
accord bilatéral
bilateral agreement
convention de stage
internship contract
43
titularisation
granting of tenure
ÉCRIRE
lettre de candidature
letter of application / cover letter
lettre d'embauche
letter of appointment
lettre de recommandation
letter of reference
lettre de démission
letter of resignation
lettre de licenciement
letter of dismissal
Qualities you might want to emphasize:
adaptable
determined
intuitive
reserved
adventurous
diligent
inventive
resourceful
ambitious
diplomatic
logical
self-confident
amiable
discreet
multitask
self-disciplined
broad-minded
domineering
patient
sociable
calm
dynamic
perfectionist
sociable
careful
easy-going
pioneering
straightforward
communicative
energetic
practical
stubborn
conscientious
enthusiastic
pro-active
understanding
44
cooperative
frank
professional
versatile
creative
hard-working
quiet
willing
decisive
helpful
rational
independent
reliable
To be skilled at/ in + ING
To be good with computers / to be computer-literate
To be methodical / systematic / well-organized
To be numerate – good with numbers
To be motivated
To be talented
To be a self-starter
To be self-motivated
To be self-driven – to be good at working on their own
To be a team player
To be a troubleshooter – a person skilled at solving or anticipating problems or difficulties
Industrial relations
The word labour is used to talk about everyone (except the management) who works for a company.
The word may be used in phrases such as labour costs (what companies have to pay for labour),
labour dispute (a disagreement between management and labour), labour leader (someone in
charge of an organization that represents workers), labour relations (the relationship between
management and employees in general), labour shortage (a period when there are not enough
people available to work), labour unrest (a period of disagreement) between management and
employees.
Labor unions (US) and trade unions (UK) defend the interest of workers. They may work as a
pressure group. Members will pay a subscription which will partly be used to employ union officials
who will then act on behalf of them.
The aims of trade unions are to improve the conditions of employment (wages, holidays, hours of
work), the working environment, the benefits of the members. They may be called upon if
someone has been unfairly dismissed or laid off. They can also help in case of discrimination
(sex, racial discrimination), harassment or when there are health and safety issues. They are generally
summoned to improve job satisfaction.
If workers are unhappy with pay or working conditions, they may take industrial action:
45
- they may go on strike or walk out: workers stop working for some time
To support a strike action, workers can stand close to the factory gates and try to dissuade other
workers or suppliers of good from getting in. This is called picketing.
- blacking: Workers may refuse to handle equipment, goods, etc., of the firm in which workers are
on strike as a sign of their support of the strike.
- work-to-rule: Workers stick closely to the rules and regulations which govern their work. These
are usually only seen as guidelines but when followed strictly, they may bring a company to a
standstill.
- a go-slow: workers continue to work but more slowly than usual
- an overtime ban: workers refuse to work more than the normal number of hours.
- a sit-in: the workforce may refuse to leave the factory (for instance, in case a company is
threatened with closure).
46