New Project Idea

I blogged last week about my inspiration for a new project. A few years ago, I read an article by Janet Holmes in which she described the New Zealand Language in the Workplace Project. Basically, they gave recorders to people in workplaces and had them record conversations and meetings. Pretty cool, but what organizations are going to be willing to do that, right? Well, I'm meeting with someone today, and I'm going to at least mention the idea. Don't get me wrong. I'm not devaluing the insights that you can get with surveys--I still believe in the power of generalizeability. However, organizational discourse represents a great, complementary approach. And it's very trendy these days, so I think it would look good from that aspect. So we'll see. Fingers crossed.