The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research

The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research

Communicating in Professions and Organizations Series Editor: Jonathan Crichton, University of South Australia Titles include : Christopher N. Candlin and Jonathan Crichton DISCOURSES OF TRUST Christopher N. Candlin and Jonathan Crichton DISCOURSES OF DEFICIT Jonathan Crichton THE DISCOURSE OF COMMERCIALIZATION A Multi-Perspectived Analysis Cecilia E. Ford WOMEN SPEAKING UP Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings Sue Garton and Keith Richards ( editors ) PROFESSIONAL ENCOUNTERS IN TESOL Discourses of Teachers in Teaching Rick Iedema ( editor ) THE DISCOURSE OF HOSPITAL COMMUNICATION Tracing Complexities in Contemporary Health Care Organizations Louise Mullany GENDERED DISCOURSE IN THE PROFESSIONAL WORKPLACE Keith Richards LANGUAGE AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY Aspects of Collaborative Interaction H. E. Sales PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN ENGINEERING Glen Michael Alessi and Geert Jacobs ( editors ) THE INS AND OUTS OF BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE RESEARCH Reflections on Interacting with the Workplace Communicating in Professions and Organizations Series Standing Order ISBN 978 0 230 50648 0 ( outside North America only ) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above.

The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research Reflections on Interacting with the Workplace Edited by Glen Michael Alessi University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy and Geert Jacobs Ghent University, Belgium

Selection, editorial content and introduction Glen Michael Alessi and Geert Jacobs 2016 Individual chapters their respective authors 2016 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-50767-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2016 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-57596-1 ISBN 978-1-137-50768-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137507686 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The ins and outs of business and professional discourse research : reflections on interacting with the workplace / edited by Glen Michael Alessi and Geert Jacobs. pages cm. (Communicating in professions and organizations) 1. Communication in organizations Research. 2. Communication in management Research. 3. Business communication Research. I. Alessi, Glen, 1956 editor. II. Jacobs, Geert, editor. HD30.3.I539 2015 650.0194 dc23 2015021883

Contents List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors vii ix x Reflections on the Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research 1 Glen Michael Alessi and Geert Jacobs Part I In 1 Negotiating Positionality in Ethnographic Investigations of Workplace Settings: Student, Consultant or Confidante? 13 Dorte Lønsmann 2 The Physical Environment for Communication in 21st-Century Work Spaces: A Research Model 37 Deborah C. Andrews 3 Getting Access to Language Data in the Workplace: Role Enactment as a Data-Generation Method 63 Annelise Ly 4 Gathering Linguistic Data from Multinational Companies: Inter-cultural Communication in the Workplace 81 Carmela Briguglio 5 We Never Even Wondered Whether We Trusted Them or Not : From Freedom to Mutuality in a Student Research Project 102 Astrid Vandendaele, Tom Bruyer and Geert Jacobs 6 How Legal Translation Studies Research Might Assist Lawyers with Best Procurement Practice 117 Juliette Scott v

vi Contents Part II Out 7 Knowledge Management in Multilingual Areas: Practical Recommendations for SMEs 141 Elena Chiocchetti 8 Evaluating Topical Talk in Interactional Business Settings: When Testing the Waters with Customers May Not Be Much of a Gamble 161 Chiara Ganapini 9 Crafting the Investor Pitch Using Insights from Rhetoric and Linguistics 182 Peter Daly and Dennis Davy 10 Exhibition Press Announcements: An Evolving or Dissolving Genre? 204 Cecilia Lazzeretti 11 Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports: Linguistic Perspectives on Professional Writing Practices 225 Glen Michael Alessi 12 Dissociative Identities: A Multi-modal Discourse Analysis of TV Commercials of Italian Products in Italy and in the USA 246 Laura Di Ferrante, Walter Giordano and Sergio Pizziconi 13 From Business Letters to Emails: How Practitioners Can Shape Their Own Forms of Communication More Efficiently 272 Franca Poppi Index 295

List of Figures 1.1 LINGCORP information sheet 26 2.1 A 20th-century office: Connecticut General Life Insurance Company 44 2.2 A 21st-century workspace: Johnson Banks 45 2.3 Individual workstations: Johnson Banks 49 2.4 Every surface communicates and stores previous communication products at Johnson Banks 50 2.5 Main floor, Pentagram, with reception, work and storage areas 52 2.6 The Pentagram London office 53 2.7 A view of one cubicle and part of the reception area, the Engine Room 55 4.1 Semi-structured interview for employees 89 6.1 Chronological journey from source text to target text 120 6.2 Infographic showing selected results from the pilot study 134 9.1 The 13 successful pitches from Dragons Den (January February & November December 2005) 187 9.2 Ten-stage discourse framework applied to pitch 5 (Black truffles) 191 9.3 Investor pitch process model 197 9.4 Key questions for entrepreneurs to analyse the dynamics of rhetoric 199 12.1 Gender of the characters in all the commercials distinguished by country 258 12.2 Gender of the voice-over in all the commercials distinguished by country 259 12.3 Settings of the eight commercials 260 12.4 Presence of spoken language in the commercials distributed by country 262 12.5 Presence of written language in the commercials distributed by country 263 12.6 Presence of sung language in the commercials distributed by country 264 12.7 A novel area of options 268 13.1 Conceptual framework for the analysis of professional communication in a global business context 275 vii

viii List of Figures 13.2 Typical layout of a business letter 277 13.3 Email no. 1 (IMG subcorpus) 278 13.4 Moves in email no. 2 (ISMC subcorpus) 280

List of Tables 1.1 Overview of themes in the data set 21 7.1 Distribution of quantitative sample per number of employees 142 7.2 Distribution of quantitative sample per sector of economic activity (only major sectors) 143 10.1 Main features of the EPA Diacorpus 206 10.2 EPA Diacorpus: general statistics 209 10.3 Generic structure of earlier EPAs: an example 211 10.4 Generic structure of contemporary EPAs: an example 213 10.5 Number of EPAs containing quotations across decades and countries 216 10.6 Number of quotations distinguished by authors 216 10.7 Number of EPAs containing narrative sections across decades and countries 220 10.8 Relevant context of narrative sections across decades 220 12.1 The commercials analysed 253 12.2 List of the categories and variables analysed 255 12.3 Fragment of the database: first 16 shots of the Barilla US commercial 256 12.4 Number of written and spoken words in the commercials 264 13.1 Summary table of what is possible, feasible and appropriate in email interactions 291 ix

Notes on Contributors Glen Michael Alessi is a researcher in the Department of Communications and Economics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. His research interests include corpus assisted discourse analysis, critical genre analysis and inter-cultural communication. His recent works examine the role of inter-discursivity and inter-textuality in forming new or hybrid generic norms in professional and institutional discourse. Deborah C. Andrews is Professor of English at the University of Delaware, USA, and former director of its Center for Material Culture Studies. She has published several textbooks as well as journal articles concerning international professional communication, and is the former editor of Business Communication Quarterly. Her current research examines the physical environment for communication in a variety of professional settings. Carmela Briguglio is Manager of the Communication Skills Centre in the Curtin University Business School, Western Australia. Her research interests include internationalization of curriculum, inter-cultural communication and embedding English language development across the curriculum. Tom Bruyer is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and coordinator of the Advanced Master s Program in Multilingual Business Communication (MBC) at Ghent University. His research interests include ethnography, analysis of news processes and inter-cultural communication. Elena Chiocchetti is a researcher at the Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism of the European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC) in Italy. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Forlì/Bologna with a thesis on multilingual knowledge management. Her research interests include comparative terminology work in the legal domain, terminology standardization, multilingual LSP dictionaries and databases, and multilingual business communication. Peter Daly is Professor of Management Communication, Head of Business Communication and Language Studies, and Director of MSc x

List of Figures xi in Management Studies at EDHEC Business School, Lille, France. His research interests include teaching and learning in management education, pedagogical innovation, creativity and critical discourse analysis. Dennis Davy is an associate professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille, France, and a lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique near Paris. His research interests include the evaluation of lexical competence, discourse analysis in professional contexts, word-formational processes in English and French and the cultures of the English-speaking world. Laura Di Ferrante is Adjunct Professor of English at the Sapienza University of Rome and at the Federico II University of Naples. Her research interests focus on Workplace Discourse, Crosscultural Marketing, Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Learning and L1/L2 Pragmatics. Chiara Ganapini is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her research interests are within the field of Conversation Analysis, both in ordinary and institutional settings, and mainly concern business interaction. Walter Giordano is a tenured researcher of English in the Department of Economics and Statistics, the University of Napoli Federico II, Italy. His research interests include business communication, ESP and genre analysis. Geert Jacobs is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University, Belgium. His research focuses on the study of professional and institutional discourse in a pragmatic perspective. He has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals and has co-edited a number of collective volumes. He is vice-president of the Association for Business Communication as well as co-founder and head of the NewsTalk&Text research network. Cecilia Lazzeretti is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. As a freelance journalist and press officer for an art institution Fondazione Fotografia Modena she is professionally involved in the media community. Her research interest concerns corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and genres studies, with a specific focus on the genre of art press releases. Dorte Lønsmann is an assistant professor in the Department of International Business Communication at Copenhagen Business School

xii List of Figures and a member of the LINGCORP research group. Her research interests include language ideologies, language and identity, and English as a global language. Her current research focuses on multilingual workplaces. Annelise Ly is a PhD scholar in the Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), in Bergen, Norway. Her research focuses on the understanding and the linguistic manifestation of cultural differences in the workplace. Sergio Pizziconi has taught courses in the linguistic and composition areas both in Italian and American universities. His research interests are in cognitive linguistics, languages for specific purposes and second language acquisition and teaching. Franca Poppi is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, where she is also a director of the Master Course in Languages for Communicating in Enterprises and International Organizations. She has written on various aspects of teacher learner interaction and business and legal discourse. Her current research centres on English as an international lingua franca. Juliette Scott has 25 years experience of providing legal-linguistic and corporate services, in the fields of translation, interpreting and training. She is completing a PhD at the University of Bristol in the UK on legal translation. Her key areas of research are, inter alia, genre theory, fitnessfor-purpose, corporate agency theory, Skopostheorie, and functionalism. Astrid Vandendaele is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics, Ghent University, Belgium. At present, she is preparing a doctoral dissertation on the role of the newspaper sub-editor in the newsroom. Her research interests include media discourse, intercultural communication and business communication.