Discourse Ideology And Specialized Communication

This book approaches the issue of ideology in specialized communication in professional, institutional and disciplinary settings across domains as diverse as law, healthcare, corporate management, migration, NGOs, etc. What unites the contributors is their commitment to a discourse view of language use, i.e., the view that organisational and professional practices are rooted in social, ideological orders, although a variety of perspectives on the exact nature of the relationship between ideology and discourse can be discerned in individual chapters. The acts of interpretation - by participants and analysts alike - are invested in ideology, explicitly or implicitly. This manifest/hidden duality surrounding ideology-in-discourse constitutes the main focus. Challenging the traditional presumption of objectivity, impersonality and non-involvement that has often characterized research on Language for Specific Purposes, this book demonstrates how the specialized communication setting is a critical site where ideology is intrinsically embodied in discursive practices.

The studies presented in this volume focus on two distinct but related areas of specialized communication professional and academic settings, resting on an anti-essentialist notion of identity as a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society. The authors start from a detailed analysis of discourse practices as evidenced in texts, their production and the professional performance patterns which underlie such practices, and explore the way the actors, roles and identities are constructed in language and discourse. In particular, by highlighting discursive attitudes and aptitudes, they underscore the need to understand discourse in light of norms of professional responsibility, showing that not only do professionals and academics use discourse to create self-identity, but they also use identity constructed through discourse to influence society.

This volume grew out of the 29th International LAUD Symposium, held on March 27-29, 2002 at the University of Koblenz-Landau in Landau. The book represents one of the first modern studies that explores the relationships between language, discourse, and ideology from an international, multidisciplinary perspective. Therefore, it is centrally concerned with ideology and the mutual constitution of social practices and social structures through discourse. Unlike several earlier studies, the volume takes into account a number of linguistic theories and methods, thereby focussing on text and discourse as well as ecolinguistics and language policy. Many of the articles include detailed analyses of political texts and the media from particular socio-historic contexts, and all posit the ideological role of language in the enactment of activities, identities, and perspectives.

This book was born out of the idea that domain-specific knowledge has two major dimensions, since, on the one hand, peer-to-peer communication is primarily intended to further research within specific disciplines, while, on the other, domain-external, asymmetric communication of ‘filtered’ knowledge caters to different types of lay-audiences. Collectively, the chapters in the volume take the reader on a journey through knowledge communication and knowledge (re)presentation strategies that are able to successfully disseminate and communicate. The domains under scrutiny are medicine and health, corporate communication, cultural heritage and tourism. A number of issues are addressed at the interface of corpus linguistics, genre studies and multimodal analysis. The variety of questions posed and methods used to explore corpus data will contribute to further debate among scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, multimodality, media studies and computer-mediated communication.

This second edition reviews the field of business discourse, centring on the investigation of business language and communication as practice. It combines research-based discussions with innovative practical applications and promotes debate and enquiry on a range of competing issues, emerging from business discourse research and teaching practice.

Following the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam on 1 May 1999 and the European Council at Tampere in October 1999, the European Union committed itself to developing a common policy on immigration and asylum to ensure more effective management of migration flows to the EU. From 2001 to 2005, Directives were introduced by the EU in order to guarantee refugees and displaced people civil and human rights and promote a balance of efforts between Member States in receiving such persons, thus improving the process of harmonisation. Nevertheless, EU policy and legislation did not prove to be as effective as expected. For example, Europe’s response to the crisis of displaced Iraqis has been hugely inadequate, with European governments failing to fairly share the responsibility for Iraqi refugees with one another and with other countries around the world. This study aims to investigate the extent to which the language employed in the Directives has contributed to the failure to adopt common procedures for guaranteeing refugees civil and human rights. Particularly, vagueness of lexis and legal concepts were investigated. Vagueness in normative texts is a crucial issue. ‘People may not necessarily and not always be aware of vagueness in language use, while in other cases they choose deliberately to be vague. This holds particularly true for the use of vagueness in normative texts which are usually taken to have a high degree of precision’ (Bhatia, Engberg, Gotti and Heller, 2005). It is worth noting that in EU legislation, Directives represent particular legislative instruments involved in EU harmonisation processes.

This anthology consists of selected papers presented by European scholars at the 21st LSP-Conference 2017 on Interdisciplinary knowledge-making: challenges for LSP-research, held at NHH Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen, Norway. The multifarious aspects of LSP-research publication cover issues on terms and terminology, LSP-texts from a text linguistic approach, training in LSP-settings and translation of LSPtexts. The volume gives an up-to-date selection of the ongoing research endeavours in specialised communication in subject fields ranging from maritime accidents over healthcare and financial accounting to climate change.

Maurizio Gotti analyses the various features of specialized discourse in order to assess its degree of specificity and diversification, as compared to general language. Prior to any analysis of such traits, the notion of specialized discourse and its distinctive properties are clarified.