The Construction and Demonization of the Lazybones

Abstract

What constitutes work is not always clearly defined and what may be regarded as diligent work performance in some contexts may be viewed as idleness and passivity in others. Further, the societal norms that regulate our perception of work are temporally, spatially and socially unstable; an ambiguity that, in comparison to previous epochs, probably has increased as people’s movements between various social, cultural and geographical contexts have increased. Within this motion, we exist and are influenced by various work ethics. The ward manager, interviewed at a Swedish emergency ward, suspects that the staff believe she spends work time surfing the Internet, so called cyber-loafing or cyber-slacking. She worries that they may feel she lacks work ethics or, even worse, that she is lazy. We probably all recognize the ward manager’s feeling of frustration. The present article addresses the building of norms that govern and regulate work and working life. We argue that it is necessary to view the individual work place and the organization’s norms in a broader context, and to see them as part of a societal system of norms. This article focuses the linguistic metaphors and symbolic actions that are at once a manifestation of, are active in the creation of, and a vehicle for work norms. We subscribe to a discourse analytical approach and argue that our linguistic expressions correspond to our thoughts and social practices and thereby govern how we understand and categorize our surrounding world (Fairclough 1992; Lakoff & Johnson 2003; Larsson 2012). In other words, our language does not only inform our thoughts but also which thoughts are possible to think and, as a consequence, which actions are possible to carry out. Simultaneously, linguistic expressions are context-bound and tied to specific situations. We will, therefore, take our starting point in the argument that our way of relating to work and work time fetches its sustenance from contemporary norms and that it is possible to observe the same system of norms active at different system levels. The ward manager’s experience, therefore, is based in the same norm system that allows an unemployed person to feel “useless.” It should also be noted that although the article addresses a general problem, the text is written from a Swedish perspective. Finally, we use empirical examples retrieved from the Swedish election in 2010 which highlight active attempts to manipulate and reinforce certain norms.