Giuliana Garzone

This volume features representative studies focusing on the evolution of text genres in corporate and professional communication. Genre change is explored in various contexts in light of the increasing importance of new media and the profound social changes that have occurred in the last few decades. Major theoretical issues are raised and discussed, highlighting the need to reconsider the repertoire of conventions traditionally identified in each specific genre, and to reassess and update the analytical tools used to investigate them, about three decades after the emergence of genre analysis.

Specialized Discourses Across Media and Modes

Genres and Genre Theory in Transition

Srikant Sarangi

Paola Catenaccio

LCM Journal - Vol 4 (2017) No 1: Professional Practice across Domains: Linguistic and Discursive Perspectives

Cornelia Ilie

Featuring multidisciplinary and transcultural investigations, this volume showcases state-of-the-art scholarship about the impact of argumentation-based discourses and field-specific argumentation practices in a wide range of communities of practice belonging to the media, social, legal and political spheres. The investigations make use of integrative, wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and empirical research methodologies with a focus on argumentation strategies in real-life environments, both private and public, and in constantly growing virtual environments. This book brings together linguists, argumentation scholars, philosophers and communication specialists who convincingly show how interpersonal and/or intergroup interactions shape, challenge or change the argumentative practices of users, what argumentation skills and strategies become critical and consequential, how argumentative discourse contexts may stimulate or prevent critical reflection and debate, and what are the wider implications at personal, institutional and societal levels. Reaching beyond the boundaries of linguistics and argumentation sciences, this book should be a valuable resource for researchers as well as practitioners in the fields of pragmatic linguistics, argumentation studies, rhetoric, discourse analysis, political sciences and media studies.

Multi-disciplinary perspectives

Argumentation across Communities of Practice

Anna Cardinaletti

L'italiano delle traduzioni

In recent years, the use of Web-mediated digital technologies has constantly grown in importance, reshaping the communication landscape in all professional activities. Web 2.0 applications and platforms have evolved dramatically, exceeding all expectations, and have had an impact on all areas of activity, from personal and social to political and economic. A crucial role in this radical transformation has been played by social media, i.e. online resources enabling users to connect, interact, and share contents. They have changed social relations profoundly on an individual level, but also in their professional dimensions, transforming the dynamics of how professionals work, share knowledge and relate to each other and to their clients. This book explores online professional blogging and networking platforms, discussing methodological issues involved in analysing webmediated professional communication in a genre- and discourse- analytical perspective, with a focus on the structural and textual properties of genres on the Internet. The discursive objects investigated include professional weblogs, and in particular law blogs, professional groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, and LinkedIn job ads. Among the aspects examined are continuity with pre-existing traditional genres, generic integrity, and the debated status of social networking sites as platform users’ communities of practice.

Discourse and Genre

Sharing Professional Knowledge on Web 2.0 and beyond

The recognition that identity is mutable, multi-layered and subject to multiple modes of construction and de-construction has contributed to problematizing the issues associated with its representation in discourse, which has recently been attracting increasing attention in different disciplinary areas. Identity representation is the main focus of this volume, which analyses instances of multimedia and multimodal communication to the public at large for commercial, informative, political or cultural purposes. In particular, it examines the impact of the increasingly sophisticated forms of expression made available by the evolution of communication technologies, especially in computer-mediated or web-based settings, but also in more traditional media (press, cinema, TV). The basic assumption shared by all contributors is that communication is the locus where identities, either collective, social or individual, are deliberately constructed and negotiated. In their variety of topics and approaches, the studies collected in this volume testify to the criticality of representing personal, professional and organizational identities through the new media, as their ability to reach a virtually unlimited audience amplifies the potential political, cultural and economic impact of discursive identity constructions. They also confirm that new highly sophisticated media can forge identities well beyond the simply iconic or textual representation, generating deeply interconnected webs of meaning capable of occupying an expanding - and adaptable - discursive space.

Discursive Perspectives

Identities Across Media and Modes

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.

Discourse, Ideology and Specialized Communication

Rita Salvi

Vijay K. Bhatia

This book provides insights into the ways in which legal professionals participate in their day-to-day activities, and critically focuses on how language is used and exploited in everyday professional discourse. It is organised into two parts dealing with topic areas of legal discourse (written and spoken) relevant to professional practice and communication. The innovative research landscape offered by this book covers diverse and complex features of legal discourse construction where socially informed aspects of language use are negotiated by professional practices. Such features provide the wide scope for the critical study of legal language as a tool for social action, and set up a descriptive and interpretive framework for engaging with representations of legal discourses and genres where authority, power, ideology, as well as areas of hybridity, intertextuality, interdiscursivity and recontextualization are involved in legal discourse. This book brings together scholars from a wide academic spectrum around the globe with an interest in the intricacies of language and law as they play out in the real world. The book, therefore, offers both a resource and a stimulus to the wider readership.

Issues and Perspectives

Language and Law in Professional Discourse

Questo volume raccoglie i risultati di ricerche sulla traduzione svolte nel corso di circa due decenni. I primi tre capitoli espongono il quadro teorico e i principali concetti e strumenti analitici che informano i capitoli che seguono. L’impostazione traduttologica, essenzialmente target-oriented, propone una visione che combina alcuni aspetti della prospettiva descrittivista con altri di quella funzionalista, ponendo l’accento sugli elementi comuni tra i due approcci. Questa visione si concretizza nella categorizzazione delle traduzioni come un fuzzy set, cioè come un insieme aperto e fluido che accoglie al suo interno, con un grado diverso di appartenenza, testi trasposti attraverso diversi sistemi linguistici e semiotici con un rapporto variabile con il testo fonte. Accanto a questa idea innovativa, nel volume vengono avanzate per la prima volta altre proposte, come il suggerimento di considerare la lingua tradotta come un vero e proprio sotto-sistema all’interno del diasistema della lingua ricevente e l’ipotesi che l’applicazione della così detta ‘Teoria del Monitor’, mutuata dalla glottodidattica, possa servire a spiegare perché il testo tradotto presenta caratteristiche peculiari ‘universali’, indipendenti dalla coppia di lingue coinvolte. I restanti capitoli sono costituiti da saggi di carattere applicativo in alcuni casi già pubblicati in volumi o riviste, in questa sede aggiornati, rielaborati e riorganizzati. Nel capitolo finale l’attenzione si sposta sul grande tema delle traduzione dei testi specialistici, particolarmente cruciale nel mondo contemporaneo.

Giuliana Garzone

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