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Discourse and business communication An
New Approaches to Discourse and Business Communication
representations and points of view are, McLaren and Gurau claim, best captured within the complex methodology of frames and patterns of cognition, which, however, will still need interpretive complementa- tion from more formalized approaches. While there is no denial of such a conviction in Burger’s chapter on the French-language television debates, this contribution comes in an even more evident contact with McLaren and Gurau’s text in its follow-up on a twofold role of the media in general. In Burger’s view, the media have to be responsible for the construction of institutional identity, simply because they are anchored in the public sphere. But at the same time, they are economically con- strained enterprises, which often causes them to reshape, reformulate or, at worst, distort information so it constitutes the most efficient way to ‘do business’ – a cynical but accurate conclusion, yet hardly facilitating the job of the analyst. The objectivity factor raised in Burger is further addressed by Piotr Cap, whose contribution on persuasive properties of legal language con- stitutes, in a sense, a meta-theoretical coda to the section on (researching) representation. His main question, informed by cognitive and pragmatic research, is the following: is there a link between a type of business dis- course being investigated as well as the degree of expert knowledge that the discourse analyst has about it, and the methods that are employed in analysis? Using both his own and other analysts’ work on a wide range of legal texts, Cap shows that there is indeed a link: legal discourses invite a combination of deductive and inductive approaches, which are adopted depending on the analyst’s ‘closeness’ to each individual type under investigation. As has been indicated earlier, in between the ‘representation part’ and the ‘interaction part’, there are two chapters, by U-maporn Kardkarnklai and Gago and Silveira, which show most explicitly how the two lines of research feed into each other, thus ensuring an extensive coverage of the field. Incidentally, both chapters arise from organizational set- tings which are potentially conflictual and in this sense they point to conflict studies as contributing ‘upwards’ to global issues of identity and image of the organization, and, at the same time, ‘downwards’ to the understanding of how conflicts are managed and resolved at the level of personal goals and aspirations of the organization members. All-importantly, both chapters make it clear that conflict management within an organization is equally crucial to the personal well-being of the members, and, in the longer run, to the reputation of the orga- nization as a whole. Kardkarnklai illustrates this view in cross-cultural analysis of Thai–Japanese interactions in an international company, April 14, 2009 11:52 MAC/RAMS Page-9 9781403_947369_02_cha01 PROOF Piotr Cap 9 while Gago and Silveira look at conflict talk occurring in a public mediation institution in Brazil. Next, and finally, come five chapters whose primary focus is on vari- ous forms of interaction between the organization members. Presenting the case study of a Brazilian company in the energy sector, Maria do Carmo Leite de Oliveira and Jose Roberto Gomes da Silva explore the model of so-called ‘participative management’, which involves recogni- tion of the many discursive and behavioural ways in which members of the organization contribute to the ‘collective construction of meaning’ at different levels of interaction (employee vs management, employee vs employee, general meetings). The issue of intra-company relationships, reflected in as well as constructed through, discourse, is further investi- gated by Fabienne Alvarez-Pompilius. This time, however, the problem is tackled in a much heated context of organizational change. Look- ing at social consequences of a major company merger in the French health-care industry, Alvarez-Pompilius investigates strategies that could be used to legitimate and implement the change, thus winning support of clinicians towards the new arrangements. Some common themes, such as organizational and technological innovation, resound in the contribution by Attila Bruni and Lucia Parolin, who discuss the role and potential benefits of teleconsulting in working out a medical diag- nosis. They conclude that in order for any medical practitioner to make the most of this technique, he or she must be equipped with not merely professional knowledge, but also specific discursive skills. Lastly, there are two chapters which both deal with minimal units of interaction, yet of a different semiotic nature. Leila Barbara and Tony Berber Sardinha analyse the functionality of language ‘chunks’ in business meetings, studying such forms as collocations, lexical bun- dles and other recurrent lexical choices. The focus is on how fixed sequences of words contribute to role assignment and topic sequenc- ing, which count among the most important of the meeting (discourse) procedures. Closing the entire volume is the chapter by Beverly Sauer, which enriches the material and keeps the reader’s attention by offer- ing a refreshingly visual perspective. Preoccupied with issues of power and race differences in a South African mining workplace, Sauer stud- ies the gestures used by an Afrikaans-speaking trainer in pre-training interviews to disambiguate his ideas regarding the assignment of ‘sepa- rate work-spaces’ to workers, management and trainers. Combining an interest in spoken/written and visual modes of communication, and presenting an adequate body of data reflecting these apparently dis- parate but actually complementary modes, Sauer’s contribution is a clear April 14, 2009 11:52 MAC/RAMS Page-10 9781403_947369_02_cha01 PROOF 10 New Approaches to Discourse and Business Communication voice in favour of extending the semiotic scope of business discourse studies. Notes 1. While accepting the fact that, unlike business discourse, business communication might once imply a pedagogical or vocational focus (Swales, 2000), I use the two terms interchangeably and without any applied orientation. 2. In 1988 Marian Williams published an article reporting on the relationship between the language used by native speakers of English in business meetings and the language taught by business English textbooks at that time for use in meetings. She analysed the language used in three meetings by a total of 12 native speakers of English and then compared this with the language taught for meetings in 30 English textbooks. She found that there was almost no cor- respondence between the meetings and the textbooks and that the speakers’ use of language was far more complex than the way in which it was represented for the student (after Bargiela-Chiappini et al., 2007: 9, italics mine). Download 72.04 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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