great subject i think
I realise it's not core business for us - but if you are interested in language in action - and the ways that people get things done ...
personally i'm a big fan of humour in the workplace, and I was really interested to see the idea of 2 uses of humour
i'm guessing that the existence of the 'relational humour' function is probably not too controversial, even if some folk might not necessarily be as big a fan of humour as some of us
but the 2nd use, "to foster creativity", i think is pretty interesting and maybe a bit more controversial
instinctively i'm sure this 2nd use is out there, and is important

Janet Holmes points out the probs. with finding such data, so I guess it's a matter of data gathering to find some more evidence

examples 5 and 6 for the "foster creativity" role work really well, but for me they need a little bit more, e.g. on p.530 janet says "And because we have data from earlier and subsequent discussions ..., we know that this brief exchange is just one component in a more extensive process of generating constructive ideas about how the anniversary should be celebrated"
maybe that had something to do with word count constraints? maybe the evidence in the earlier and later chat was dispersed across too much transcript to be practical to include - just guessing
anyway, I think it 's a really interesting subject, and the paper alos makes me curious to go and have a look at the Wellington Language in the Workplace project
MegR