workaholic

Unit Five The Company Man I

Pre-reading Qs

II

Text Analysis

III After reading

IV

Exercises

I Pre-reading Background Information  -About the author  Ellen Goodman (1940-), journalist and columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for commentary. She has written for Newsweek, the Detroit Free Press, and the

Boston Globe.

Discussion Qs:  - What do you think is the life of a typical workaholic like?  -How important do you think work is to a person?

T or F?  workaholics are driven by stress and an obsessive need to control the outcome of their jobs.  Some workaholics are as happy as can be in their work.  There are workaholics whose fear of failure and the need to control their lives forces them to work harder and harder until they suffer physical and emotional side effects.

Workaholics are mentally healthy and work hard because it gives them great satisfaction. Unhealthy work addictions are best dealt with by counselors and therapists who specialize in workplace problems.

Are you a healthy workaholic?  Is work more exciting than family or anything else in your life?  Do you often take work with you to bed?  Have your family and friends given up expecting you to be on time because of your work demands?  Do you become impatient with people who have priorities besides work?

Is the future a constant worry for you even when things are going well? Have your long hours at work hurt your personal relationships? Do you think about work while driving, falling asleep or when others are talking? Is your life full of work-related stressors that affect your ability to sleep, diet and health?

Origin

Wayne Oates, a professor of psychology of religion at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. However, it was the appearance of Oates's book Confessions of a Workaholic in 1971 that propelled that term and prompted many writers to start using the suffixes -aholic, -holic, or -oholic to describe "all-consuming obsessions," not all of them so serious.

-holic golfaholic, footballaholic, basketball-oholic, bingoholic, leisureholic; beefaholic, peanuntholic, ice creamaholic; hashaholic (for hashish) or mariholic (for marijuana), tobaccoholic book-oholic, catalogueoholic, eclipsoholic, gambler-oholic, game show-oholic, noteoholic, or phone-oholic.

What is a workaholic? A workaholic is a person addicted to work. This addiction may be pleasurable to the victim or it may be burdensome and troubling. Workaholism is believed by some to be a disease, akin to obsessive compulsive disorder.

II

Text Analysis

Text Structure:  Para 1: introduction  Para2-6: reports how devoted the man was to his work.  Para7-13: describes Phil’s role in his family.  Para 14-16: reports the company president’s inquiry for his successor.

Structural Analysis:  Short Ss+ long Ss (varies their weight and achieves emphasis and impact.)

Rhetorical Features:  details to illustrate the point the author wants to emphasize  Para 9:  Para 10:  Para 11:

Language points:  -precisely: exactly  eg: They arrived at five o’clock ~.  -overweight: weighing more than is normal, necessary, or allowed, esp. having more body weight than is considered normal or healthy for one’s age or build

 cf:

-stout: polite term for fatness. Person with a thickset, bulky figure;  eg: Even slim girls can become stout matrons. -pudgy: short and fat;

 eg: His pudgy fingers look really funny. - plump: pleasing fullness of figure; - eg: Everybody loves Rita, the plump, rosy little girl. - chubby: person who is round and plump; - eg: A chubby toddler; chubby cheeks

-Fat: excessive weight and is generally unfavorable in its connotations  eg: Charlie is not merely overweight but downright fat. 

 

- obese: implies gross overweight



eg: …though stout, not obese.

  

- fleshy: a not necessarily excessive

abundance of flesh  eg: Susan quite likes her boyfriend’s firm, fleshy arms. 

 -survive: to live longer than; to outlive  eg: It’s amazing that she should have ~d all her children and grandchildren.  My father ~d my mother by four years.  -marketable: wanted by purchasers or employers  eg: They have failed to launch a ~ model for years.  It is a good idea to list your ~ skills before heading for the job fair.

-widow: a woman whose husband has died, and who has not married again

 widower:  widow v. : to make a widow or widower of sb.  eg: She calls her widowed mother almost every day.  Straighten out : to solve or settle; to remove difficulties( from sth.) or the doubt or ignorance (in sb.’s mind)  eg: We need someone capable of straightening out all the confusion.

III After Reading Text II