Researching business communication - Lirias

10th ABC Europe + 2nd GABC Conference May 27-29, 2010 Antwerp, Belgium

Researching business communication: perspectives from scholarship, education and

practice

Book of abstracts Sylvain Dieltjens, Paul Gillaerts, Priscilla Heynderickx, Geert Jacobs

& Paul Verluyten (Eds.)

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with the financial support of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)

Joint ABC Europe + GABC Conference

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Table of contents ABC GABC Keynotes Papers Panels − Business community and academia: understanding and collaboration − Business genres on the move − Displaying competence − Identity in organizational settings − Integrating research into business and corporate communication degree programs − Publishing in business communication journals − Researching corporate and institutional communication: commonalities and

divergences − Rhetorical style in conference papers and political speeches


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ABC, the Association for Business Communication, is an international organization committed to fostering excellence in business communication scholarship, research, education, and practice. The membership of ABC, like the field of business communication, is richly interdisciplinary, drawing members from such fields as management, marketing, English, speech communication, linguistics, information systems, to name only a few. Membership also includes communication consultants and other business practitioners. ABC has a strong membership base in North America, Europe, and Asia and the Pacific. ABC publishes two quarterly academic journals.

• The Journal of Business Communication (JBC) includes manuscripts that contribute to knowledge and theory of business communication as a distinct, multifaceted field approached through the administrative disciplines, the liberal arts, and the social sciences.

• Business Communication Quarterly (BCQ) focuses on the teaching and practice of business communication.

ABC hosts annual conventions in October or November of each year, where members share research, participate in workshops, network, and contribute to the on-going business of the Association. Several of ABC's regions regularly offer conferences in addition to the annual convention. These conferences, typically held within the region between March and May of each year, provide additional opportunities for sharing research and pedagogy in smaller groups. ABC recognizes members with awards for service to the Association and profession; research excellence; teaching excellence; and outstanding publications. ABC recognizes students with an annual student writing contest. www.businesscommunication.org

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GABC (Global Advances in Business Communication) is the continuation, in a revised format, of the very succesful conferences on Language, Communication and Global management that were organized by Eastern Michigan University throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Within the broad field of business communication, GABC’s focus is on the following:

• International and cross-cultural business communication and negotiations • Global aspects of integrated marketing communications (IMC) • Communication aspects of international law and global business ethics • Languages and business communication • E-Semantics [cross-cultural, language-based international issues associated with

search terms, string searches, web design, web site user friendliness and electronic advertising keywords]

GABC organizes an annual tricontinental rotating conference. Nearly 100 scholars from 16 countries attended the first GABC conference in 2009 at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. After this year’s collaboratively-run conference together with the Association for Business Communication European Convention, the GABC conference will take place in Johore, Malaysia in 2011 before moving to Michigan again in 2012. GABC is also the name of a new Journal that will be launched in 2010. GABC is a joint venture of Eastern Michigan University, the University of Antwerp and Universiti Teknologiki Malaysia and is affiliated with ABC. http://www.ua.ac.be/GABC







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KEYNOTES


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Author: Giuliana Garzone Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) Time: 9h-10h Contact: [email protected] Room: 0.38 Track: Teaching Rethinking genres in business communication: theoretical issues and pedagogical applications In this lecture I shall look at recent developments in genre-based research and genre theory, and discuss their implications for business communication scholarship and teaching. In genre-based research, after a period of relative stasis mainly characterised by the application of previously developed analytical tools (Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993; Freedman & Medway 1994; Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995), the last few years have seen a revival of interest in response to a radical evolution and diversification in discursive practices and generic conventions, both oral and written, triggered by sea changes in social organization and in the media used for communication. In particular, crucial has been the spread of new technologies, and especially the use of computer-mediated and Web-based communication, which has often had unexpected systemic effects, bringing about pervasive changes in social systems (Jackson 2007). Hence the emergence of new genres, some of which are in a position of continuity with pre-existing ones, often being the result of hybridization or mixing (e.g. e-commerce Websites and mail order catalogues), while others – above all in the Web-mediated environment – have been really shaped anew, e.g. Web pages, FAQs, Weblogs, newsgroups and all other Web 2.0 “social computing” applications. In light of the foregoing, in this lecture I shall have a twofold focus. Firstly, I intend to look at the implications of these developments for business communication research. So far it has principally explored emerging genres with a view to describing them individually in a “difference question” perspective (cf. e.g. Bargiela-Nickerson 1999 on various written genres; Fortanet et al. 1999 on netvertising; Gimenez 2000 on e-mails; Garzone 2002 on e-commerce websites; Strobbe-Jacobs 2005; Catenaccio 2007, 2008 on press releases; Garzone 2004, 2005 and Nickerson & de Groot 2005 on ACRs and CEOs' Letters, etc.), while only in fewer cases has it specifically focused on genre variation and the principles underlying it (cf. e.g. the studies in Gillaerts-Gotti 2005 on business letters and those in Garzone et al. 2007 on multimodality). In this context, among the issues explored the question has also been raised of whether these changes have any implications for traditional genre theory and the tenets on which it rests, advocating adjustments aimed at improving its suitability to the current genre scenario (cf. e.g. Askehave I. 1999; Askehave I., Swales J.M. 2001; Askehave-Ellerup Nielsen 2004; Garzone 2007). My second objective is to evaluate the impact of recent evolutions in generic conventions and in genre-based research on the teaching of business communication in English. In particular, I shall argue that reliance on notions developed in investigations on these aspects can play a key role not only in enhancing the learners’ ability to recognize and/or enact linguistic and discursive variations in response to the semiotic co-ordinates of each single communicative event, but also in training them to acquire an adequate command of the methodological tools to be deployed in research on text genres, with a view to their scientific description and categorization, and possibly to an updating of genre theory. Selected bibliography Askehave, I. & Ellerup Nielsen, A. (2004). Webmediated Genres - a Challenge to Traditional Genre Theory. Working Paper nr. 6, Aarhus, Center for Virksomhedskommunication. Askehave, I. & Swales, J.M. (2001). Genre identification and communicative purpose: a problem and a possible solution. Applied Linguistics, 23/2, 195-212. Garzone, G., Poncini, G. & Catenaccio, P. (Eds) (2007). Multimodality in Corporate Communication. Web Genres and Discursive Identity. Milan: Franco Angeli. Gillaerts, P. & Gotti, M. (2005). Genre Variation in Business Letters. Bern: Peter Lang. Jackson, M. (2007). Should emerging technologies challenge business communication scholarship?. Journal of Business Communication 44(19), January 2007, 3-12. Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold.


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Orlikowski, W. & Yates J. 1994. Genre repertoire: Structuring of communicative practices in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 39, 541-574. Swales, J.M. (2004). Research Genres: Explorations and Applications. Cambridge: C.U.P.


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Author: Jo Mackiewicz Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Auburn University (USA) Time: 9h30-10h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 0.38 Track: Practice Transferring research findings to business practice In his Outstanding Researcher Lecture at the 1999 ABC conference, Jan Ulijn (2000) stated, “The business community will trust our ... practical guidelines if they are backed up with sound reliable and valid research.” My talk is not another call for good empirical, including experimental, research in business (and technical) communication. I won’t preach to the choir. Rather, I want to outline some reasons to be optimistic about overcoming the challenge of transferring knowledge from our research to practitioners, including these: (1) Our students use the theoretical goggles that they obtain in our programs in their workplaces; (2) We regularly collaborate with businesses and other organizations; and (3) We who work in academia now often have business and industry experience. I also want to point out some challenges in creating and transferring that knowledge: (1) What counts as evidence and, more specifically, what counts as strong evidence, differs across professional boundaries. In contrast to medical research and its findings, in business communication, “evidence” may come from just one or two studies. This field (and the field of technical communication too) does not have a record of replicating research, and (2) As Dopson (2006) writes about evidence-based health care, people “actively interpret and (re-)construct [the] local validity and usefulness [of research findings]” (p. 85). As researchers, we don’t often enough interpret our findings for a range of potential settings. For ethnographic researchers, the problem is that the application of their findings may appear limited. For experimental researchers, focused, specific findings may appear trivial. I want to end by discussing ways to overcome the challenge of moving research findings and interpretations into practice. For example, business communication needs a mode of interpreting research findings, such as a newsletter or online trade magazine. We can also reach a wider range of people working in business and industry by setting up workshops for instructors who work in vocational and trade schools. We can also do more to reach business practitioners directly through seminars for local business people. With these challenges and possible solutions in mind, I am optimistic about research in business communication and about the opportunities for transferring knowledge stemming from that research into business practice. References Dopson, S. (2006). Debate: Why does knowledge stick? What we can learn from the case of evidence-based health care. Public Money & Management: 85-86. Ulijn, J. (2000). Innovation and international business communication: Can European research help to increase the validity and reliability for our business and teaching practice? Journal of Business Communication, 37(2): 173-187.


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Author: Brigitte Planken Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 14h30-15h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 0.38 Track: Research The changing landscape: developments and directions in research The last few decades have seen dramatic changes in the business communication landscape, and on a worldwide scale. Globalization, advances in communication technology, and the introduction and widespread adoption and use of new media, from email and hypertext to social networking environments such as Facebook and Twitter, have transformed the communication arena for all organizations, profit or non-profit, governmental or NGO. Practitioners in the various corporate communication disciplines face ever more complex strategic choices regarding not only what to communicate when and to whom, but more than ever how to communicate and through what media. Furthermore, with the democratization of communication and information access, the issue of stakeholder influence on organizational reputation has perhaps become more relevant than ever. Corporate communications are no longer the only, primary source of information about an organization for its external and internal, local and global stakeholders. As a result, one of the challenges now and in the near future is what organizations, if anything, can do to manage, curb or put to strategic use what others communicate about them. In keeping with the theme of this convention, the aim of this keynote will be to illustrate how the changing landscape has already transformed the field of business communication research in at least three ways: through the evolution of a strong intercultural orientation, the potential of multi-modality as an analytical approach to account for non-linguistic aspects of communication, and the advantages and challenges posed by multidisciplinarity and multi-methodology (Bargiela-Chiappini, Nickerson & Planken, 2007). At the same time, and with an eye to the continued development of this dynamic field, potential future avenues of enquiry will be suggested. References Bargiela-Chiappini, F., Nickerson, C., & Planken, B. (2007). Business Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.


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PAPERS


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Author: Judith Ainsworth Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Université de Montréal (Canada) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research An investigation into the competitive advantage of learning languages for Specific Business Purposes on student selection of a second/foreign language, on employability and benefits in the workplace This study reports on an investigation into the real and perceived benefits of learning Languages for Specific Business Purposes (LSBP), particularly French and Spanish, as seen through the eyes of university students and alumni. The study sought to determine reasons why students choose to study languages for professional purposes, attitudes towards these courses and the value of having intercultural communicative competence in the workplace. The following research questions form the focus of this investigation: 1. Why do students choose to learn LSBP? 2. What are the real and perceived benefits of students toward learning LSBP? 3. Have alumni received a competitive advantage in their careers from their second/foreign language skills and cultural knowledge? Two electronic surveys were emailed to approximately 330 students. The first questionnaire surveyed 130 students and alumni enrolled or previously enrolled in the Business French program in the Faculty of Arts from 2005 to 2008 at a small Canadian university. The second survey was emailed to 200 students enrolled in a 4th year Policy course during their final term in winter 2009 in the School of Business and Economics at the same Canadian university. Results from the surveys and subsequent interviews find that the majority of students' value second/foreign language skills and cultural knowledge, both of which contribute to a competitive advantage in relation to employability and workplace benefits. Empirical findings show that language skills and cultural sensitivity are highly valued and useful tools. It is evident that it is not enough to use only English, as today’s workplace is plurilingual and therefore places high demands on a graduate’s language skills.


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Author: Deborah C. Andrews Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Delaware (USA)): Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching An object-oriented approach to teaching business communication In my presentation, I will describe how my research in material culture studies grounds assignments and discussion in a basic business communication class. Material culturalists study the relationship between people and their things; they look at all that is made or modified by people as evidence of the shaping culture. One way to understand individuals, groups, and organizations is to investigate what they produce and consume, the things they cherish and discard. Such knowledge is essential for good communication. This approach helps students look analytically at the spaces and objects in their environment. From that evidence they design strategies for communicating that accommodate the values, technological affordances, priorities, biases, and politics of their audience. We center class projects and assignments on a theme, most recently, environmental sustainability, also called “green living.” Students do field work tied to their academic major (for example, testing trash compactors, visiting historic sites, evaluating native grasses for low-water gardens, or collecting clothes for resale) and develop project goals. They then compose documents, websites, interpretive signs, advocacy letters, or other communication products needed to achieve their goals. They balance their often overly mediated lives on screen with serious encounters among real objects.


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Author: James Archibald Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: McGill University (Canada) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Managing ethical behavior in a centralized professional system Managing ethical behavior in a centralized professional system presents a dynamic of disinterested oversight which takes into account the countervailing interests of all parties with a view to ensuring in an independent manner the protection of the public interest. Such regulatory systems put in place a communication dynamic which is at the same time fixed by statute, yet flexible in practice. Such a deontological systems attempt to balance internal self-regulating mechanisms and the independent public oversight of professional practice. By doing so, they establish set communication patterns in a decision-making process which under the best of conditions meet the deontological objectives set by the system, but which under less optimal circumstances may be dysfunctional and fail to meet the system’s objectives. Examples will be taken from the highly original “professional system” adopted by the Quebec government in 1973. The system corresponds to what D. B. Wilkins has referred to as a “legislatively created regulatory agency” (Wilkins, 1992, p. 808), which institutionalizes bureaucratized communication patterns through the adoption of a putatively transparent regulatory process. Professionals themselves are invested with self-regulatory responsibilities and autonomously manage the ethical behavior of their peers. The system also provides for input and oversight by publicly appointed officials from outside professional in-groups. This form of participation and oversight is thought to enhance participatory decision-making and to improve the chances of disciplinary and appeals committees to reach balanced decisions made ostensibly in the public interest. This paper will examine the administrative structures and communication processes involved in the resolution of deontological cases and provide concrete examples of communicative successes and failures in the administration of a structured public system of professional discipline.


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Author: Jolanta Aritz & Robyn Walker Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: USC (USA) Time: 9h30-10h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Leadership across Cultures: an analysis of discursive attributes of leadership styles The proposed paper contributes to the social constructionist view of leadership (Alversson & Karreman, 2000a; Fairhurst, G., 2007, 2009) and studies how leadership is perceived and reenacted in different cultures. From this perspective, leadership is viewed in the context of what leaders do and is thus discursive in nature. Views of the importance and value of leadership vary across cultures. For example, the status and influence of leaders vary considerably as a result of cultural forces (House, Wright, & Aditya, 1997). Still much remains to be understood as to the way in which culture influences leadership and organizational processes. To what extent do cultural forces influence the expectations that individuals have for leaders and their behavior, for instance? What principles of leadership and organizational processes transcend cultures? In an effort to begin answering these questions we developed a communication style oriented measure of leadership attribute preference using six global leader behaviors indentified by the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program (House et al, 2004). Twenty six participants from five different countries, USA, Korean, China, Japan, and Taiwan, participated in a simulated decision-making activity. They were videotaped and their conversations were later transcribed. All participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that included (1) a discursive measure of leadership attribute and (2) questions that were intended to measure the participants’ attitudes about the group experience in two areas, their satisfaction with the group decision-making process (an outward measure – orientation towards other group members) and their perceived sense of inclusion and value in the process, (an inward measure - orientation towards “self.”). The paper discusses our findings and outlines directions for future research. References Alvesson, M. & Karreman, D. (2000a). Taking the linguistic turn in organizational research. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 36: 136-158. Fairhurst, G. Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Fairhurst, G. (2009). Considering context in discursive leadership research. Human Relations, 62: 1607-1633. House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P.W. & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture, leadership, and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. House, R.J., Wright, N., & Aditya, R.N. (1997). Cross cultural research on organizational leadership: A critical analysis and a proposed theory. In P.C. Earley & M. Erez (Eds.), New perspectives on international and industrial/organizational psychology (pp. 535-625). San Francisco, CA: New Lexington Press.

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Author: Angela Bargenda Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Ecole Supérieure du Commerce Extérieur (France) Time: 18h-18h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research The logo-centricity of aesthetic branding at Deutsche Bank Purpose The paper explores the communicational relevance of visual identifiers at Deutsche Bank. It demonstrates how a unified visual discourse, centered on the formal structure of the institutional logo, impacts corporate image and brand value. In the context of increased brand parity and competitive pressure within the financial service sector, Deutsche Bank aims at positioning itself as the “Kunstbank” to achieve competitive edge. The study indicates the multifaceted visual branding strategy of the institution, exemplified by its strategic partnership with the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin. Methodology The paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach, combining corporate branding and advertising strategies, art theory, aesthetics, CSR issues and corporate identity. The study is based on personal interviews with CSR practitioners, curators and leading company representatives at Deutsche Bank in Berlin in June 2009 and presents material from the current exhibition at Deutsche Guggenheim. Findings By means of this innovative CSR initiative, the bank develops a distinct iconographic rhetoric, where multiple visual parameters, such as the logo, art sponsorship, corporate art and architecture, interior design and art in advertising, create a unified and recognizable visual idiom. Implications for business The present case explores the importance of intangibles in marketing communications. Aesthetic representation, corporate and brand personality, have become essential factors of organizational communication in the individualistic, stylized postmodern consumer culture. The articulation of spiritual values conveys competitive edge to businesses by allowing for distinct market positioning and effective reputation management.


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Author: Ildikó Berzlánovich & Gisela Redeker Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Groningen (The Netherlands) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Soliciting response in fundraising letters This paper will discuss the combination of move analysis (e.g. Upton & Connor 2007) with Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST; Mann & Thompson 1988), focusing on the central move in fundraising letters: solicit response. We propose a narrow definition of this move and a strictly sequential analysis (each stretch of text belongs to exactly one move), and show how the mapping of the move structure onto the RST structure reflects the relations between the moves. Our definition restricts solicit response moves to the function of asking for pledge/donation, while Upton also includes stating benefit of support to the need/problem and reminding of past support, which we analyse as supporting moves appearing as Motivation or Justify satellites in our RST-analyses. Upton and Connor report that solicit response moves may contain embedded offer incentives and reference insert moves. Consider this example from the ICIC corpus (Connor & Upton 2001): (1) You will find a contribution form from the IU Foundation. If you have or have not yet contributed to the foundation this year I am asking you to consider doing so. Please fill out the enclosed form […]. As with all contributions made through IU Foundation, your gift is tax-deductible according to federal and state laws. In our analysis, the RI and OI moves are connected to the SR move (the uncoloured text in (1)) as Enablement and Motivation satellites. Other examples in the ICIC corpus and in our corpus involve paraphrases of the central request, e.g. at beginning and at end of a paragraph like (1). Analyzing those cases as one solicit response move with embeddings fails to capture the rhetorical force of repetition. We will discuss advantages and challenges in investigating genre-specific structures by mapping a sequential analysis of non-embedded moves onto an RST-structure.



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Author: Leonie Bosveld-de Smet & Sharon Steringa Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Groningen (The Netherlands) Time: 9h-9h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Can governmental organizations perform better on digital communication? Governmental organizations want their clients to become more digital. For their communication with their target groups, they hope to replace the traditional channels (desk, telephone, paper) with digital ones (website, e-mail) in the long run. The substitution hypothesis turns out to be too optimistic (Teerling et al., 2007; Pieterson, 2008). Despite attempts to direct clients to the internet channel, desk and phone continue to be used regularly; moreover, these channels are most appreciated by clients. The key question then is why this is so. This is a complex issue involving several and diverse influences. In this research paper, we approach the problem from a communicative point of view, and attempt to show that governmental organizations, in order to communicate more effectively, efficiently and client-friendly through the digital channel, should put more effort in reducing incertainties (Daft and Lengel, 1987), and in developing computer-mediated communication competence (Spitzberg, 2006). We have obtained these results by exploring the multi-channelled communication of a large executive governmental organization with its target group of clients. We analysed existing research reports, in order to get an overview of the current communication situation, and its most eye-catching bottlenecks. As the paper channel often turned out to be the reason why clients sought contact by phone or desk, we did a linguistic analysis of the texts in personal letters that are sent regularly by the organization to its clients. Insights into client perception of the communication of the organization have been gained by a comprehensive survey. Our investigation shows that channel choice and use by clients are difficult to control. However, the affordances of the ‘poor' digital channel can be exploited best by carefully attuning message content and form. This requires specific competences, notably client-oriented information suppliance and computer-mediated communication competence. References Daft, R.L. & Lengel, R.H. (1984). Information Richness: a New Approach to Managerial Behavior and Organization Design. Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 6: 191-233. Pieterson, W. (2009). Channel Choice; Channel Behavior and Public Channel Strategy. Dissertatie Universiteit Twente. Spitzberg, B.H. (2006). Preliminary Development of a Model and Measure of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Competence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11 (2): article 12. Teerling, M. (Ed.) (2007). Multichannel Management. De stand van zaken. Rapport, Telematica Instituut.


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Author: Anne Bradstreet Grinols & Earl Grinols Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Baylor University (USA) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Collaborative teaching in a global context A career is one of the most important undertakings a person can conduct during his or her lifetime. In today’s competitive global job market, it is of major concern because employment requires competencies in many areas, including foreign language. Indeed, the ability to communicate in the languages of one’s clients, customers, peers, or counterparts, is crucil in any professional relationship and undertaking. Since many seeking jobs are college students or graduates, knowing what career foreign language possibilities exist and where and how they can be found and shared can be key in landing employment. This multimedia session addresses these issues by providing: 1) a rationale for integrating careers into the business language curriculum; 2) a video clip which narrates how foreign languages have been instrumental in getting jobs in a variety of fields; 3) a rank-order list of career fields where foreign languages are essential; 4) a description of some typical foreign language-related or based jobs in international business and the professions; 5) sample classroom activities showing how career-related topics can be incorporated into the business language curriculum, and 6) a bibliography of electronic and printed matter, indicating where foreign-language career-related resource material can be found.


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Author: Janet Bridgman Brady Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Macquarie University (Australia) Time: 10h-10h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Performance coaching or initiation? The educational role adopted by the supervisor of a novice first-line manager Large commercial organisations with a well-developed HR function design and implement performance and reward systems for managers. These systems and their associated leadership capabilities and practices become institutionalised and managers are assessed through 360 degree performance and other evaluation tools (Shields, 2007) to reinforce the organisationally preferred “way of doing things around here”. This paper introduces a different approach, focusing on a reflective activity designed to introduce the constructs of face and facework (Goffman, 1967) to pairs of novice first-line managers and their supervisors. The activity focuses upon the analysis of a transcript of a workplace interaction between one of these pairs of managers. The paper compares the supervising managers' evaluation criteria, derived from the organisation's performance coaching practices, with that of the researcher as they analyse the communicative performance of the supervising manager in the transcript. The paper then illustrates how their competing interpretations (Sarangi, 2002) enable the educational role of the supervising manager to emerge. The paper argues that the continual evaluation of managers, by their staff and other managers, against a fixed performance and reward system has important disadvantages for an organisation if it prevents that organisation from recognising and utilising the communicative expertise of supervising managers and their key educational functions in the development of novice managers.


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Author: Janet Bridgman Brady Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Macquarie University (Australia) Time: 15h30-16h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Constructing the knowledge base of a novice manager: The communication strategies deployed by the supervising manager Corporate leadership programs frequently incorporate material published in popular management books to illustrate general principles of communication, but fail to address how managers achieve their communicative objectives, inherent in such principles, in the conduct of actual workplace interactions (Sarangi, 2004). This paper explores one such interaction type that focuses on professional development. Drawing on the joint analysis (Sarangi 2007) of interactional data collected from one Global 500 organisation, the paper highlights the communication strategies deployed by a supervising manager as she introduces her novice to the profession of management (Friedson, 1975). These techniques include the discoursal construction of the activities intrinsic to his new role and responsibilities, and narratives that illustrate the interactional work underlying the successful performance of these activities. The paper argues that whilst a reliance on models and general principles may have some value, organisations may be better rewarded if they learn to recognise and exploit the rich communicative resources already regularly deployed by some of their own skilled supervising managers. References Friedson, E. (1975). Profession of medicine: A study of the sociology of applied knowledge. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Sarangi, S. (2004). Towards a communicative mentality in the medical and healthcare practice. Communication & Medicine, 1 (1): 1-11. Sarangi, S. (2007). The anatomy of interpretation: coming to terms with the analyst’s paradox in professional discourse studies. Text & Talk, 27(5/6): 567-584.


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Author: Carmela Briguglio Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Curtin University of Technology (Australia) Time: 16h30-17h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Research Promoting the development of intercultural communication skills for multinational work settings With increased globalisation, communication in multinational teams will become the norm for many business graduates, whether they work in their own country or move around the globe. In these sorts of contexts, what intercultural skills will they require, and how can such skills be developed? A study undertaken in two multinational companies, one in Malaysia and one in Hong Kong, sought to identify the linguistic and cultural skills required by workers communicating in English as a global language in such multinational/ multicultural settings. The study identified the need not only for high level linguistic competence in English, but also for: knowledge and understanding of other Englishes / varieties of English; a high tolerance for English spoken with different accents; knowledge and understanding of other cultures; and skills in intercultural communication. In addressing the conference theme, therefore, this paper will draw on this research to highlight the need for all tertiary students to develop intercultural communication skills. In a world where intercultural encounters in transnational tertiary education and multinational work contexts will increasingly become the norm, rather than then exception, all graduates will need to become better at intercultural communication in order to become good global citizens. The paper then suggests that the very cultural diversity which is growing rapidly in our tertiary classrooms should be welcomed as the perfect vehicle for the development of intercultural communication skills. As academics, we need not only to embrace, but also to build upon such linguistic and cultural diversity to develop in all students valuable global skills. We need to foster opportunities that we can build upon to internationalise the curriculum, and where students can learn from each other. Strategies which promote intercultural learning will be discussed and recommendations made about utilising the cultural diversity that students and staff bring to the tertiary teaching and learning context.


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Author: Anouk Broersma & Carel Jansen Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Trying to persuade South African students to go for VCT In South Africa many people are still unaware of their HIV-status. Consequently VCT (Voluntary Counselling and Testing for HIV) has become an important instrument in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Many South Africans, however, hesitate to get tested. The first aim of the present study was to find which variables influence South African students’ intentions to get tested. Next, a VCT brochure was developed that paid special attention to these variables. This brochure was then presented to a group of respondents from the target group. Its effects on students’ beliefs, attitudes and behavioural intentions were compared with the effects of two existing VCT brochures and also with the responses from a group of students who were not presented with any of these brochures. Data were collected from 263 students at the University of Limpopo, a university in a poor rural province of South-Africa. In the first phase of the study, the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction (Fishbein and Yzer, 2003) was used to identify important determinants for students’ intentions to go for VCT. Regression analysis showed that high levels of self-efficacy and perceived norm positively influenced these intentions. Furthermore, it was found that specifically students with a strong fear of the consequences of living with HIV/AIDS and with a strong fear of being discriminated should the test prove them to be HIV-positive, had a significantly lower intention to get tested than those who feared these implications to a lesser degree. Consequently, it was decided to focus the new brochure, which was tested in the second phase of the study, on reinforcing readers’ perceived self-efficacy in getting tested and on their ability to handle the consequences of testing HIV-positive. Results of the experiment that was carried out to find possible effects of the various brochures, showed no significant differences between any of the groups on any of the relevant dependent variables. Earlier studies in the EPIDASA project (www.epidasa.org) also indicated that it is very difficult to change HIV-related beliefs, attitudes and intentions by means of a brochure. Perhaps it might be necessary to re-evaluate the usefulness of brochures as a medium of communication in VCT promotion.


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Author: Jordi Casteleyn & Andre Mottart Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Criteria defining the structure of PowerPoint presentations Numerous papers have discussed the importance of PowerPoint slide design, but only recent research has started studying PowerPoint presentations as a whole. For instance, Mackiewicz [1] refers to PowerPoint Slide Sorter view as an interesting topic to cover in classes on presentations. Farkas [2] examined the mediation effects of PowerPoint deck authoring, and Gross and Harmon [3] indicate that there is a lack of research into the structure of PowerPoint presentations: Which principles lie at the basis of authorial choices concerning the structure of a presentation? How do presenters perceive these criteria? Due to the theatre-like and therefore fleeting nature of presentations this is not an easy topic to study. We therefore suggest using the relatively new technology of slidecasting (which could be described as podcasting by synchronising PowerPoint and voice) to analyse presentations. Several websites devoted to slidecasting (such as www.SlideShare.net) have made the process of producing a slidecast much more user-friendly, and a vast number of presentations with high quality slides and accompanying speech is now available, and provides interesting data to study the structure of presentations. We asked 60 undergraduate students of business management at Artevelde university college (Ghent, Belgium) to produce a slidecast. From this group 10 students were interviewed. They commented on their slidecast using a think aloud protocol, and from their responses we deduced criteria that might influence the structuring of the presentation. In addition to this, the influence of the new technology on presenting was also taken into account. Based on these responses, a quantitative questionnaire was sent to all 60 students to check our preliminary findings. Our paper will discuss the results from this data. References [1] Mackiewicz, J. (2008). Comparing PowerPoint Experts’ and University Studens’ Opinions About PowerPoint Presentations. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, vol. 38, no. 2: 149-165. [2] Farkas, D. (2009). Managing Three Mediation Effects That Influence PowerPoint Deck Authoring. Technical Communication, vol. 56, no. 1: 28-38. [3] Gross, A. & Harmon, J. (2009). The Structure of PowerPoint Presentations: The Art of Grasping Things Whole. IEEE Transactions On Professional Communication, vol. 52, no. 2: 121-136.



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Author: Ronald Carl Cere Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Foreign languages and international business careers A career is one of the most important undertakings a person can conduct during his or her lifetime. In today’s competitive global job market, it is of major concern because employment requires competencies in many areas, including foreign language. Indeed, the ability to communicate in the languages of one’s clients, customers, peers, or counterparts, is crucil in any professional relationship and undertaking. Since many seeking jobs are college students or graduates, knowing what career foreign language possibilities exist and where and how they can be found and shared can be key in landing employment. This multimedia session addresses these issues by providing: 1) a rationale for integrating careers into the business language curriculum; 2) a video clip which narrates how foreign languages have been instrumental in getting jobs in a variety of fields; 3) a rank-order list of career fields where foreign languages are essential; 4) a description of some typical foreign language-related or based jobs in international business and the professions; 5) sample classroom activities showing how career-related topics can be incorporated into the business language curriculum, and 6) a bibliography of electronic and printed matter, indicating where foreign-language career-related resource material can be found.


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Author: Pradeep Chowdhry Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Cross cultural communication related challenges: Case study of a hospital in India India’s population has quadrupled in the last fifty years and now has more than 1.1 billion people. In addition to the large urban market, about 600 million individuals in rural and semi-urban areas are a very significant market for food, education, health, housing, water, energy, roads, electric power, communication and information technology. There is a major clash of cultures as the country moves from its old archaic production and distribution structure into the 21st century. Soalni Healthcare is setting up a chain of hospitals in the smaller cities with clinics in the surrounding villages. The firm recently acquired an existing hospital which was operating at 8% of capacity. This case study will show the major challenges in negotiating the transaction and in changing the culture of an organization to make it more effective. Funded by US investors, Soalni had a clearly mandated due diligence process to examine the business before making the acquisition, and then consummate the transaction with appropriate legal documents. However, the uneducated owner was used to a totally verbal agreement way of making a deal. This created major difficulties at several junctures over a protracted negotiation process. In the absence of a proper closing, several issues remained unresolved even after Soalni had taken possession of the hospital. Once Soalni took over the management and existing staff of the hospital, there are major issues to contend with. There is no proper organization structure, job descriptions, accountability or responsibility As Soalni works to create a properly functioning organization by establishing a well-defined hierarchy and processes,, it is experiencing difficulties in several areas. Work culture, ethics, motivation, value system, compensation system, trust, formalization, and compliance to policies are some of the issues to contend with. This case study will highlight some of these challenges in introducing management best practices in this cross cultural setting.



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Author: Luminita Cocarta-Andrei Date: Fri. 28 Mau Affiliation: Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi (Romania) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Teaching Business communication and online linguistic platforms Recent research in Intercultural studies showed that the role of languages at the workplace is increasing because of the internationalization of business at the level of multinationals, but also at the level of small and medium sized enterprises. Employers all over the world became aware of the fact that intercultural communication can make one win or lose a deal. One of the studies undertaken by Europeans (among which a Romanian team [1] too), ELAN[2]-Effects on the European Economy of Shortages of Foreign Language Skills in Enterprises, concluded that “language competences raise the professional profile of the staff, as 73% of the participating Small and Medium Sized Enterprises have a policy of recruiting language-skilled staff and 57% keep track of their employees language skills” ( This is even more obvious in large multinationals of which 94% practise selective recruitment). Therefore, one of the major concerns of educators today is to make learning resources (in our case linguistic platforms) more accessible and flexible to a wide range of learners, keeping in mind the fact that for some students there is a certain anxiety towards computer use and that they have different preferences in what the interface design is concerned. One of the platforms piloted with our students in Business and Administration is the Leonardo Da Vinci – Transfer of Innovation Project [3], whose products and outcomes aim to meet the linguistic and intercultural communication needs of our students, among other categories of possible beneficiaries. The aim of our paper is to share from our experience as beneficiaries of this linguistic platform online. The Business Culture and Personal Development courses that we have piloted with our 3-rd year students in International Relations are available online and present the integrated content in a user-friendly manner. What we are going to focus on in our presentation is the way in which our students and staff understood to use and then evaluate the ELSTI Linguistic Platform. [1] The Romanian team is from the EuroEd Foundation, Iasi, Romania [2] This study was commissioned by the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission in December 2005. [3] ELSTI Project= Eurobusiness Language Skills – Transfer of Innovation


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Author: Mario Cortés & Roger N. Conaway Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) Time: 15h-15h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice The relationship between business communication strategies and health care performance: A case study Our presentation discusses a case study of business communication strategies in a private hospital system located in México. The purpose is to demonstrate a positive correlation between these communications strategies and the final performance in health services. The Hospital de la Beneficencia Española, better known as “La Bene,” is located in a city of approximately one million in population and competes in its services with both public and private hospitals. Public hospitals are supported by the government and give service to more than 60 percent of the population in México. Private hospitals work with the remaining market and implement different communication strategies to reach the various publics. The La Bene has more than 100 years in our city, is well known, but is improving communication because of increased competition with several new private hospitals. The hospital has an established marketing and communication department that in charge of services strategies and consumer relations. The department has effectively built positioning strategies, consumer behavior, services marketing, and overall communication to reach the consumer. New strategies include how to listen and attend to customers. The core product is to offer excellent health care and the different ways to achieve it, but communication strategies traditionally have been converted in a second core product because without it people don´t know La Bene and its benefits. The hospitals are working in all of these situations because there are a lot of hospitals and they offer very similar services and attention. We report on specific integrated marketing communication strategies at the hospital and focus on the positive correlation between these strategies and the final performance in health services at the hospital. The results provide interesting insights into the health care setting and may generalize to the application of business communication in health care internationally. References Hargie, O. & Tourish, D. (1993). Assessing the effectiveness of communication in organizations: The communication audit approach, Health Services Management Research, 6: 276-285. Hargie, O., Tourish, D. & Wilson, N. (2002). Communication Audits and the Effects of Increased Information: A Follow-up Study. Journal of Business Communication, 39 (4): 414-436. Turner, J.W., Thomas, R.J. & Reinsch. N.L. (2004). Willingness to try a new communication technology: Perceptual factors and task situations in a health care context. Journal of Business Communication, 41 (1): 5-26


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Author: Manuela Crespo Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 15h-15h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Audio-Video-Resume: an experience in the use of the new media to practice the oral business communication skills This contribution wants to share the experience in the use of new media (audio and video) for didactic purposes and how this practice can improve the oral skills in a context of teaching business communications. Today digital technology provides a new framework as it is accessible and it simplifies the production process. This paper addresses the role of digital technology as a useful learning tool which, contrary to what might appear at first glance, facilitates teaching techniques both for the instructors and the learners (new literacies, computer literacies). It is a medium through which students develop knowledge (cognitive abilities), oral competencies and skills for application in a real business context. The work will focus on the use of video materials as learning tools and how this practice can improve the motivations and active participation of the student in the learning process. Moreover the integration of audio and video tasks contributes to create meaningful and contextualization learning tasks. Digital video makes it possible to repeat, to move back and forth just as in written text, to pay close attention to the language and to avoid the pressure of real time speech; therefore students can draw their attention explicitly to the linguistic forms (focus on form) and move from comprehension (input) to expression (output). We focus on a case study: the production of video-resumes in a Bachelor course of International Business Communication at the Faculty of Applied Economics of the University of Antwerp. Questionnaires reveal that students in this study enjoy using digital video, particularly as it facilitates self reflection, motivation and it gives them the opportunity to talk about themselves for a real based project.


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Author: Christine Roberta Day & Jean Bush-Bacelis Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Integrating EQ competencies and global negotiation (win-win) strategies In an effort to enhance communication in global business negotiation settings, these researchers have investigated the overlay of EQ competencies and win-win negotiation strategies. Both of these concepts are typically taught and/or utilized separately. In the book Getting to Yes, Fisher and Ury (1992) discuss particular negotiation stages: separate the people from the problem; focus on interests rather than position; invent options for mutual gain; and, determine objective criteria. These concepts are well-known in business communication and global negotiation. However, frequently the resulting exchange could be enhanced by including an additional approach of utilizing emotional intelligence (EQ) competencies to augment negotiation results. The Emotional Competence Framework (Goleman, 1998) includes the personal competence (self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation) and the social competence (empathy and social skills). Business communicators typically wish to meet as many needs as possible of all negotiating parties to avoid lack of agreement, polarization, or anger. Those who endeavor to augment negotiation results may wish to modify their strategies to integrate EQ competencies to better meet the communication challenge of the (win-win) global business negotiation. One of the researchers is certified in EQ.


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Author: Anne De Cort Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research What does it take to be beautiful? Socio-cultural analysis of Belgian and Malaysian print advertisements In this paper I will examine to what extent cultural and social values are reflected by the world of advertising. Most advertisements stress the functional qualities of a product, but simultaneously they also convey implicit messages. Through these messages, advertisers can diffuse socio-cultural values such as the importance of beauty, femininity, virility, pleasure, youth, etc. My research focuses on the content of written and pictorial communications of print advertisements appearing in woman’s magazines. These were selected from three Belgian magazines in French (editions of two years, from April 2005 until March 2006 and from January until December 2008) and four Malaysian magazines in English (editions of April and May 2005, and from January until June 2008). I will perform a content analysis study of print advertisements for facial and body creams for women. They will be content-analyzed in terms of visual signs on the macro-level and lexical choice on the micro-level. On the one hand, this paper will discuss how language and images, used in advertisements, can be manipulated in a strategic way to pass implicit messages on to the receiver and how this indirect aspect of communication is used by advertising agencies to reach their target groups without openly admitting their intention, namely increasing brand awareness and selling the product. On the other hand, I will analyze if Belgian and Malaysian advertisements transmit certain cultural values and if these messages can be used as a way of identifying aspects of different cultures and societies, one European and one Asian. The purpose of my research is to reveal if advertisers transmit totally different or rather similar values in the Belgian and the Malaysian magazines. Are advertising agencies adapting their marketing strategies to the socio-cultural background of the consumers they wish to target? These research questions are intended to be answered.


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Author: Sylvain Dieltjens & Priscilla Heynderickx Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Lessius University College / K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Time: 15h30-16h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Watch and learn! Instructional videos in business communication In earlier presentations and papers we have presented an analysis of instructional texts offered to for example factory workers. We discussed their readability and their comprehensibility and found that they lack in target group orientation. In this presentation we concentrate on another type of instructive material: instructional videos. Those are used both in internal and external communication. In internal communication they are used to inform employees on the correct procedures to carry out their daily task or on the correct behaviour in case of contingencies. Some companies also have (next to or in combination with welcoming brochures) welcoming videos, which give new employees both general and specific information on the company, in order to facilitate their introduction into the company (atmosphere). As far as external communication is concerned, our corpus contains instructional videos for customers. For example, DIY stores sell (or give out) videos or DVDs in which handymen get tips and instructions on how to do DIY jobs like painting or flooring. In our analysis we pay attention to both verbal and visual aspects of the videos. Which characters are used and how are they presented, which language register (formal vs. informal, written vs. spoken) is used, what is the contribution of the voice-over, how are the viewers addressed, how target group oriented are the videos, etc.


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Author: Ronald E. Dulek Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: The University of Alabama (USA) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research The influence of power position and mood on discourse retention This paper will present preliminary results of a series of discourse experiments involving mood, power, and content retention. A brief description of the experiments follows, along with preliminary findings. Experiments The discourse experiments involved presenting to undergraduate and graduate business students written proposals that elicit either positive or negative reactions. The proposals came from power sources that the students perceived either as superior, equal, or below them. Students then filled out an opinion-based questionnaire to respond to the proposal. After the students completed the form, the questionnaire and the original proposal were recollected. After the above mentioned materials were recollected, a content-based questionnaire was distributed to the students. This second questionnaire asked students to recall specific facts about the proposal. These fact-based questions were divided into three categories: 1) facts shared before revealing the proposal; 2) facts about the proposal; and, 3) facts that followed the proposal. These content-based answers provide the insights with regard to mood, power, and content retention.


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Author: Olaf Du Pont, Geert Jacobs & Ellen Van Praet Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) Time: 9h-9h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.06

Track: Research Speed-dating internet start-ups: how research can(not) help bridge the gap between learning and practice This paper looks at an innovative way of integrating state-of-the-art research findings into a master's programme on business communication at Ghent University (Belgium). Our data are drawn from a course in which 11 teams of four students develop an internet start-up, pitch for investment from professionals and, in doing so, practice various advanced communicative skills (incl. writing up a business plan, recruiting new staff, preparing for emergencies etc.). In particular, we focus on a speed-dating session in which, half way in the course, the teams present their innovations to a number of doctoral and post-doctoral scholars in the field of entrepreneurship, social media and high tech corporate spin-offs. Our data include transcripts and video-recordings of 1. selected student presentations, 2. instant feedback from and a subsequent focus group with the scholars, and 3. student responses to a video collage of extracts from the focus group. Methodologically speaking, our auto-ethnographic approach is combined with a fine-grained analysis of some of the discursive features that characterize the way in which teachers, students and scholars talk about the intricate interplay between learning, research and practice. The results of this preliminary exploration clearly demonstrate the added value of inviting researchers to play an active coaching role in the students’ learning process. At the same time, they point to some of the complex challenges involved in using research to bridge the gap between learning and practice.


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Author: Janis Forman Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: UCLA Anderson School of Management (USA) Time: 16h30-17h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Stories across cultures: What travels and what doesn't Business leaders are encouraged to use personal anecdotes and references to literature, history, and culture in their communications, especially in their presentations. But what stories travel well across cultures and what do not? This presentation offers preliminary findings for a book-length project on storytelling and business with an emphasis on challenges in cross-cultural communications. Attendees are invited to consider the following questions: − What cultural narratives are specific to your country, and how do they play out in

business communications? − What specific references to literature and history are commonly made in your

country? Would they be readily understood by outsiders? − Are there universal stories, those that travel across cultures, that are referred to in

business communications in your country?


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Author: Ronald Geluykens & Holger Limberg Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Oldenburg (Germany) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Threat responses in spoken interaction: A contrastive analysis While there is a long-standing tradition in contrastive and cross-cultural pragmatics dealing with the analysis of speech acts and face-threatening acts, the evaluation of potential RESPONSES to such acts remains underinvestigated. Building on previous work by Limberg and Geluykens (2007), we extend the scope of our original study on verbal responses to face-threatening acts in English (L1) by including another language into our analytical scope, viz. German. Our corpus consists of data collected on the basis of standardized production questionnaires in several academic settings in Great Britain and Germany. Participants had to respond to six different situations in which they were faced with highly face-threatening acts (Brown and Levinson 1987). Two socio-cultural variables (i.e. gender and social power) have been systematically built into each scenario of the questionnaire, allowing us to control contextual aspects which might influence speakers’ responses. The results of this empirical study are used for a contrastive analysis of threat-responses across different cultures. Our aim is to compare how German and English native speakers respond (similarly or differently) towards face-threats in informal situations. In particular, participants’ responses are examined along the following three dimensions: i) the general tendency of response category (i.e. tending towards compliance or rejection of the act); ii) the level of directness of the responses; and finally iii) the use of supportive moves with which the ‘head acts’ are furnished (cf. Blum-Kulka et al. 1987). The results of these questionnaires reveal how speakers from different cultural backgrounds respond to highly face-threatening acts, showing among others their disposition towards accepting or challenging the respective face-threat. The implications drawn from this study allow us to consider how certain face-threats are perceived differently across cultures, in particular as far as speaker’s judgements about appropriateness and (im)politeness are concerned (cf. Brown and Levinson 1987; Watts 2003).


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Author: Marinel Gerritsen Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 10h-10h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research The role of Culture in Media Choice: an experimental study in Germany, Morocco, Spain and the Netherlands This paper reports on two experimental studies which investigated whether cultures differ in the communication media that they regard as appropriate for receiving a message from their manager. Based on a combination of the Context Theory of Hall (1976) and the Information Richness Theory of Daft and Lengel (1984), it is expected that high-context cultures prefer media that are high in richness and that low-context cultures prefer media that are low in richness. The expectations are tested through experiments in a between-subject design with 354 respondents from a high-context culture (Morocco), a medium-context culture (Spain) and a low-context culture (the Netherlands). Only a small part of the expectations proved to be true. The results that are not in line with the expectations could be explained by taking account of the fact that the uncertainty avoidance is higher in Spain and in Morocco than in the Netherlands, viz that the respondents from the medium-context culture of Spain and from the high-context culture of Morocco regard communication media low in richness as more appropriate compared to respondents from the low-context culture of the Netherlands. The idea about the role of uncertainty avoidance is also supported by the motivations that the respondents from Morocco and Spain state that they prefer a communication medium low in richness: “It is important to have a written piece of evidence of the message”, “It is more formal and you have the possibility to preserve the message”. In order to get more insight into the role of uncertainty avoidance in media appreciation a similar experiment was performed in a low context culture with a high uncertainty avoidance (Germany) and a low context culture with a medium uncertainty avoidance (The Netherlands). The results show that the culture with the high uncertainty avoidance prefers indeed media low in richness more than the culture with the medium uncertainty avoidance.


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Author: Julio Gimenez Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: The University of Nottingham (UK) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Mediated multicommunication: Redefining our notion of ‘effective communication’ in business settings Multicommunication is a recent phenomenon which has resulted from the exigencies of the workplace- business contexts in particular- and the latest developments in communication technologies (e.g. email, texting, instant messaging) (Gimenez, 2009). It allows communicators to package a variety of media at once in order to meet the communication needs of the workplace. Due to its nature, multicommunication allows for divided attention, low levels of empathy and divided consciousness (Turner & Reinsch, 2007); features which challenge our traditional idea of effectiveness in business communication. Multicommunication has thus started not only to make an impact on the way business people communicate but also to reshape what we consider ‘effective’ in workplace communication. This presentation reports on an on-going ethnographic project that examines multicommunication as a new phenomenon in business contexts, its impact on workplace communication and its influence on our notion of ‘effectiveness’. The presentation will also explore possible theoretical and pedagogical connections between the academic and professional worlds and how practice can inform both scholarship and education. References Gimenez, J. (2009). Typology of the mediated communicator: An emerging picture. Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise (DICOEN), Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Contemporanee, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Turner J.W. &. Reinsch, N.L. Jr. (2007). The business communicator. Multicommunicating, equivocality, and status at work. Journal of Business Communication, 44: 36-58.


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Author: Walter Giordano Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Universita degli studi di napoli federico II napoli (Italy) Time: 17h30-18h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Teaching Teaching the change and the hybridization in the genre of annual reports: a case study from three major American retailers The scope of this research is genre analysis, discourse analysis and business communication teaching. This paper aims at identifying the change in the genre of annual reports through the survey of three American major retailers, and eventually demonstrate the hybridization of the genre of annual reports with the genre of advertising. The study of genres becomes a useful support tool to teach the annual reports writing to the students of economics. After having identified the parameters (a class of communicative events, commonly shared communicative purposes and a complex social setting, such as the use of annual reports to provide information to a variety of stakeholders) (Swales, 1990, Rutherford, 2005) which define annual reports as a genre, and after having referred to the processes of mixing and hybridization studies (Fairclough, 1992, 1995), this analysis will be carried out on a corpus of Wal-Mart, Target and Macy’s annual reports. The corpus consists of the annual reports from 2002 to 2008, taken from the retailers’ official websites. The choice of such retailers is made because of their relevance, measured by their popularity and diffusion on the American territory. A diachronic, qualitative research will be carried out, analysing the genre of annual reports, and the change that such genre has experienced in favour of the hybridization with the genre of promotional communication. It will be shown that this hybridization process has grown steadily from the beginning of the period to the end. The style and the form of the earlier annual reports of the surveyed retailers are typical of the formal business communication to stakeholders (investors, shareholders, suppliers), and parameters of the typical financial discourse will be given (Gotti, 2003, Bargiela – Chiappini, 2007); gradually, as the Corporate Social Responsibility issue has become more and more relevant in American retailers’ business strategy, the discourse has become more self-promoting and it has taken the form of a narrative text type, with a growing number of images which make annual reports more similar to advertising posters rather than financial documents. The main result from the analysis of this case study is the identification of the elements which show the style change in the documents that can demonstrate the hybridization of the annual report genre with the promotional genre. Designing a syllabus for the lessons in business communication based on the study of the genre of annual reports is thus the final aim of this work, as students will be asked to design, following the case study outcomes, models of effective and up-to-date annual reports References Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (2007). Business Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Bhatia, V. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Arnold. Gotti, M. (2003). Specialised Discourse. Bern etc.: Peter Lang. Lester, W, XBRL (2007). The New Language of Corporate Financial Reporting. Business Communication Quarterly, 70: 226 Rutherford B. (2005). Genre Analysis of Corporate Annual Report Narratives: a Corpus Linguistics – Based Approach. Journal of Business Communication, 42: 349 Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis, English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: CUP. Van Leeuwen, T.J. & Kress, G. (1996). Reading Images - The Grammar of Visual Design, London: Routledge.


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Author: Diane Goossens, Sylvie De Cock & Philippe Hiligsmann Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.07

Track: Research Around numbers: Collocational patterns involving numbers in Business English Even though Business English has been a very active field of research over the past two decades (St John 1996, Hewings 2002), little attention has been paid to the study of specific linguistic features of Business English. Linguistic studies may however provide valuable insights into the expression of key notions in business discourse, such as the expression of quantity. One of the methods that can be used to analyze these linguistic features of business communication is corpus linguistics, a computer-assisted method of analyzing large computerized databases of language (Koller 2009). This paper sets out to present the results of a corpus-driven (Tognini-Bonelli 2001) analysis of quantifying expressions in Business English using a corpus of news reporting and a corpus of academic publications on a number of business topics (compiled at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Université catholique de Louvain). This study thus concentrates on language used to talk about business (Nelson 2000). The aim of the research is to explore the various preferred collocational patterns in which numerals tend to occur, and more specifically those expressions that can be used to approximate quantity around numerals (e.g. about, around, approximately; Channel 1994) in the two types of texts. The corpora used in the study have been annotated with the CLAWS part-of-speech tagger (McEnery, Xiao and Tono 2006). As a result, all the instances of numbers in the texts are marked with a specific tag (e.g. MC) and can automatically be retrieved using the corpus analysis software WordSmith Tools (Scott 2004). The paper focuses on the various collocational patterns these numbers are used in and sheds light on both the patterns that are shared by the two genres under study and the patterns that appear to be specific either to business news reporting or academic publications dealing with business topics.


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Author: Diane Goossens, Sylvie De Cock & Philippe Hiligsmann Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Quantification and approximation in business language. A contrastive approach (Dutch, English, French) The notion of quantity, like the notions of time and space, is one of the basic notions that mark human existence. Expressing quantity is a key element in business discourse. The aim of the research project is to identify the different linguistic devices used in business language to express quantity and to approximate quantity (Channell 1994). A contrastive approach will be adopted, as three different languages are investigated: Dutch, English and French. In other words, the project sets out to explore and contrast the contents of the ‘quantification linguistic toolbox’ in three languages. The method that will be used to analyze quantification in business communication is corpus linguistics, a computer-assisted method of analyzing large computerized databases of language (Kennedy 1987, McEnery, Xiao and Tono 2006, Koller 2009). The empirical data used in this investigation include computerized corpora that contain not only what Nelson (2000) refers to as ‘language used to talk about business’ (e.g. business news reporting, academic publications on business topics) but also ‘language used to do business’ (ibid) (e.g. meetings, interviews). The study will make use of existing corpora like the British National Corpus (the business subcorpus) and corpora compiled within the framework of this project. Both a corpus-based and a corpus-driven (Tognini-Bonelli 2001) approach will be adopted in order to uncover the diversity of the various preferred ways in which native speakers of Dutch, English and French express quantity (e.g. a number of, hundreds of, an awful lot of) and approximate quantity (e.g. about, around, approximately). This corpus analysis will be complemented with experimental elicitation designed to tap into native speakers’ perception of some of the more complex expressions used to approximate quantities retrieved from the corpora. Possible applications of the research project (e.g. pedagogical applications) will also be outlined.


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Author: Hadina Habil Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Universiti Teknologi (Malaysia) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Teaching Bridging the gap: teaching business English to engineering students The job market has become more competitive each day and getting a job upon graduation is not a guarantee anymore nowadays. The increase in the number of graduates having the same paper qualifications made job seeking more competitive. Having knowledge and skills that meet the expectation and requirement of the employers and the workplace could provide an extra mileage to the graduates when applying for jobs. Thus, higher education institutions would offer courses that would increase the value of the students when they graduate. English for Workplace Communication is an elective English course offered to students of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. It is one of the five elective courses which the students could choose to meet the required six credits of English language courses before graduation. The course is a two-credit course which meets for two hours each week during the semester. In the course, students are exposed to the workplace demand of giving presentations, conducting meetings, writing minutes of meeting and business correspondence such as writing memos and letters. As a ‘watered down’ business communication class, a few questions need to be raised:

1. Does the course provide the required ‘taste’ of the real working world to students?

2. Are the components useful for engineering students? 3. What further improvement needs to be done to the syllabus to make it

relevant and effective? The paper attempts to seek students’ opinion of the three research questions above through a survey questionnaire. The feedback would be able to improve the delivery of the course in UTM.


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Author: Dorothea Halbe Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Trier University (Germany) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Politeness in the military? Politeness is a pervasive aspect of communication and plays a role in all our interactions (see e.g. Watts 1992, Spencer-Oatey 2000). However, in popular culture, military communication is stereotyped as direct and disregarding all concerns for politeness towards subordinates. Only superiors are portrayed as meriting respect. Yet, in how far this really is the case has so far not been empirically established. Therefore, this paper examines this claim by looking at the language use in a US army battalion. It thereby also helps to fill a gap since language use in the military has not been thoroughly researched. This paper investigates language use in different communicative events in one battalion. It is based on various days of field study, interviews and a questionnaire filled out by members of the battalion. The interpretation and analysis of these data detail how military personnel is supposed to and does deal with both superiors and subordinates in a variety of speech act situations such as how directives are uttered, how complaints are made, how criticism is voiced and how advice is given to superiors, equals and subordinates. The picture of language use that emerges does not conform to the stereotype mentioned above. Instead, respectful behaviour is, on the one hand, prescribed by regulations and institutions (e.g. Army Regulation 600-25 and Field Manual 3-21.5), on the other hand, it is shaped by the individual’s creativity and a very informal and familiar style. So the army has its peculiarities in its language use with regard to rank and various settings that require a very institutionalised and ritualized style (e.g. drill and ceremony commands), which certainly differ from non-governmental workplaces. However, outside of these contexts, typical features of workplace talk such as the mitigation of speech acts are prominent in everyday business communication. A further parallel that can be found to other workplaces is the higher use of expletives in lower ranks with more hands-on tasks. In effect, then, language use in the military is a unique amalgamation of strict prescriptivism in which politeness plays a major role on all levels with one of the most diverse combinations of different communicative events and genres to be found in workplaces. References Spencer-Oatey, H. (2000). Rapport Management: A Framework for Analysis. In Spencer-Oatey, H. (Ed.), Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures. London: Continuum. Watts, R. (1992). Linguistic politeness research: Quo vadis? In R. Watts, SI Ide & K. Ehlich (Eds.), Politeness in Language. Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.


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Author: Jeanette Heidewald & Darryl R. Neher Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Indiana University (USA) Time: 10h-10h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Beyond words: PowerPoint as visual argument In our undergraduate honors Business Communication course, students learn to develop PowerPoint as central consideration for argument development. To fully understand the “power” of PowerPoint, students must begin with a strong understanding of audience. In this 30-minute presentation, we will argue for the persuasiveness of the visual to support oral arguments, display effective examples of student-developed PowerPoint slides, and demonstrate how to help students conceptualize the range of possibilities with PowerPoint – from the minimalist approach to a more dense consulting model. Regardless of the approach, students understand that the possibilities of PowerPoint go far beyond the stale “speaker’s notes” of the text-driven PowerPoint deck. This session will add value to your course, your company, or your own presentations.


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Author: Berna Hendriks & Margot van Mulken Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Your language or mine? Comparing effectiveness in ELF and Non-ELF dyadic interactions: an experimental study of communication strategies Business communication research has demonstrated that the use of a corporate lingua franca may facilitate global communication in multilingual settings, but can also present linguistic, cultural and organisational challenges for non-native speakers of English (Rogerson-Revell, 2007; Welch, Welch & Piekkari, 2005). Consequently, for multinational organisations the question is whether they should globalise their communication (i.e. use a corporate lingua franca) or whether (and when) it may be more effective to localise their communication (i.e. use the mother tongue of one of the partners). In a within-subject experimental design, the present study explored the effectiveness of language use in dyadic, computer-mediated communication between non-native speakers of English (ELF) and native and non-native speakers of German and Dutch (non-ELF). In three consecutive chat sessions, 50 participants performed a problem-solving task using either ELF, German or Dutch and were subsequently asked to evaluate their interaction in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and interaction smoothness. The chat sessions were analysed on conversational resources (communication / compensatory strategies) employed by participants in resolving referential conflicts and overcoming linguistic and interactional misunderstandings. Findings indicate that the actual effectiveness and efficiency for the two types of interaction differed and that the use of compensatory strategies differed per type of interaction. References Rogerson-Revell, P. (2007). Research note. Using English for International Business: a European case study. English for Specific Purposes, 26: 103-120. Welch, D., Welch, L. & Piekkari, R. (2005). Speaking in Tongues: The Importance of Language in International Management Processes. International studies of management & organization, 35(1): 10-27.


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Author: Jos Hornikx Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Expressing self-confidence in advertising claims with pledges: effective and perceived as genre-consistent As consumers are skeptical towards claims in advertising, the use of hedges (signaling a probable claim: ‘likely’, ‘possibly’) and pledges (signaling an absolute claim: ‘absolutely’, ‘undoubtedly’) has been advocated. The few studies having compared the effectiveness of both markers had low ecological validity: participants judged a number of product claims without a realistic advertising context (e.g., Berney-Reddish & Areni, 2005, 2006; Hornikx, Schellens, & Pieper, 2008). This study therefore aimed to examine the effects of hedges and pledges in a realistic ad. Also, the reputation of the brand was taken into account. Golberg and Hartwick (1990) demonstrated that extreme claims (e.g., first out of 100 brands) were most persuasive for high-reputation brands, and less extreme claims (e.g., fifth out of 100 brands) for low-reputation brands. As pledges (hedges) can render claims more (less) extreme, this hypothesis was formulated: H1: a hedge is more persuasive for a brand with a low reputation, and a pledge is more persuasive for a brand with a high reputation Finally, as pledges seem more familiar to advertising language, the study also investigated how participants process both kinds of markers: RQ1: How do people perceive hedges and pledges in advertising claims? The study had a 2 (high/low reputation) x 2 (hedge/pledge/no marker) between-subjects design. Participants were given a realistic ad for logistic software and indicated their attitudes towards product, brand and ad, and their purchase intention and noted down their thoughts during reading the ad. The results did not support H1, as the interaction between reputation and marker was not significant (F (8, 416) < 1). Pledges were found to be more persuasive than hedges. Only hedges elicited specific thoughts (RQ1): 21.6% of the participants indicated hedges imply a lack of confidence, suggesting they are less appropriate for advertising language than pledges.


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Author: Ken Hudson Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Loyalist College (Canada) Time: 14h0-15h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching They became what they beheld: Applied training in virtual environments Virtual worlds hold the keys to frontiers in education that only a few years ago were unimaginable. The option to bring students into relevant environments as a component of their lessons has the ability to enliven topics and engage learners in "true to life" experiences. One of the most fertile opportunities in utilizing virtual environments is to replace in-class role-play scenarios with virtually mediated ones. Through observation, it is determined that students identify dramatically with their avatar and with the environmental setting of the exercise. This cathexsis or investment of value is mirrored in learner behaviors, who literally "become what they behold," aspiring to the roles played, and mimicking behavioral attitudes of the rehearsal figure which the exercise intends to instill. This paper will examine the student response to virtual worlds role-plays, comparing learner behavior to traditional in-class role-play experiences and with intended real world outcome behaviors. This paper will draw on first-hand examples, student interviews and evaluations, theoretical models of learned behaviors, and contemporary virtual world research in examining this topic.


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Author: Geert Jacobs & Els Tobback Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Behind the scenes of a broadcasting corporation: bringing newsroom practices out (and taking our research findings back in) In this paper we report on team fieldwork that we conducted in spring 2009 at the television news desk of the Belgian French-language public broadcasting corporation RTBF in Brussels. The data of our newsroom ethnography include transcripts of storyboard meetings that we attended twice a day and of interviews we conducted with a wide range of journalists as well as fieldnotes covering all of the media's daily routines. Drawing on selected case studies we set out to shed new light on the complex discursive processes underlying the conceptualization and construction of TV broadcast news. In particular, we zoom in on the reliance on footage, on the integration of quotes into reports and on the far-reaching impact of related translation issues within today’s globalized, multilingual media environment (including the technicalities of subtitling and dubbing). Next, we use some of the research findings reported above to reflect on the very broad question how research in the field of business communication can help professionals in their daily activities. In particular, we report on how we have shared our newly gained insights into the complex set of entextualisations underlying the natural history of the news with one of the journalists at the newsdesk where we did our fieldwork. Tying in with ethnographic concerns about the condition of reflexivity and interpersonal dynamics of accountability in data collection and interpretation, we will show how our analysis has benefited from this contact with the ‘researched world’ but also how feeding back may in turn have implications on the backstage routines that we have investigated.


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Author: Daphne A. Jameson Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Cornel University (USA) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Selling corporate virtue: Social responsibility reporting and the construction of organizational ethos This study explores how corporations present themselves in the evolving genre of social responsibility reports, a type of business communication that has grown substantially in the past decade. Faced with criticism for damaging the environment, exploiting low-paid workers, and seeking profit above all else, corporations have gone on the offensive by establishing extensive programs to “do good”: save the earth, reduce poverty, and share their wealth with their local communities. Marriott International, for instance, raises money to protect a specific part of the Brazilian rainforest. Starbucks helps small farmers make their coffee cooperatives successful. ExxonMobil encourages employees to volunteer in local schools. To skeptics, these types of programs are mere public relations ploys, more illusion than reality. To believers, these programs are proof that capitalism works. Using a variety of media and channels, corporations communicate about their social responsibility efforts with a variety of constituencies—shareholders, government regulators, employees, customers, and the general public. The resulting reports provide a window into the way in which corporations define their values, goals, ethics, and roles. Through visual as well as verbal elements, these reports try to create organizational ethos: identity built on deeply held values and credibility demonstrated through action. Using a textual analysis of a sample of global corporations’ social responsibility reports, this study explores the rhetorical strategies and narrative themes in the discourse. Then the study compares the expression of organizational ethos in the reports to the often conflicting external record of corporate actions.


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Author: Daniel Janssen & Frank Jansen Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Time: 9h30-10h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Medium choice and the delivery of bad news An important aspect of new media technologies is medium choice. Individuals constantly have to ask themselves: what is the best medium for their messages. Send an e-mail? Leave a voice mail? Post a message on internet? Or stick to the traditional documents printed on paper and sent by mail? Organizations count on communication studies to give them a sound advice. And communication scholars try to answer the question by surveying the medium preferences of senders, and especially receivers (see for example Leene 2009). Results, such as “three out of ten respondents prefer e-mail for all communicative acts” can be used as the fundament for an advice on optimal communication. However, a series of experiments with various kinds of bad news (for example results of medical tests, rejections of insurance claims, and submissions of claims for damages), presented in letters, e-mails and voicemails demonstrates that general preferences like these probably do not exist. Instead, the real medium preferences seem to be dependent on a number of communicative factors. In our paper presentation we will show that people sometimes prefer to get bad news via e-mail, sometimes via v-mail and sometimes simply on paper. We discuss how these preferences might fit in models that explain medium choice, such as the cues filtered out model, or the hyperpersonal model. Our tentative explanation capitalizes on two factors that have hardly been discussed in the context of new media: diverging interests of sender and receiver and the receiver's planned consecutive action after the reception of the message.



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Author: Daniel Janssen, Marielle Leijten & Luuk Van Waes Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) / University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Time: 12h30-13h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Cognitive processes of bad news writers Over the past decades we have seen numbers of studies into 'bad news' communication. Many of these focus either on the linguistic characteristics of bad news (for instance: the use of politeness strategies) or on the perception of bad news by receivers (for instance on the image of an organization). In more recent work by Jansen & Janssen the two perspectives were combined. Jansen & Janssen studied the effects of politeness strategies on the perception of bad news and discovered that most politeness strategies have little or no effect on readers. The question is however: why do writers use politeness strategies in the first place and do they use them as a strategic means of is the presence of politeness formulae only the result of the use of business communication cliches? To answer these questions we had to dive into the cognitive processes of writers at work. In our experiment we have observed professional and student writers writing a bad news letters on the computers. We have logged their composing activities with Inputlog and analyzed pauze behavior and revision activities as indicators for cognitive load. We have compared pauze duration and location and revisions in two different text segments: (1) around the Face Threatening Act (the 'bad news') and (2) other parts of the bad news letter. Furthermore we have compared the writing activities of the experts with the novices. The results show striking effects of expertise and support the idea that profesional writing is highly strategic.


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Author: Daniel Janssen, Frank Jansen, Marielle Leijten & Luuk Van Waes

Date: Thu. 27 May

Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) / University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Time: 11h-11h30

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.07

Track: Research Effects of politeness strategies and directness in Dutch and Belgium bad news letters Brown and Levinson’s (1987) typology of politeness strategies, deduced from the basic wants of a model person, leaves the question unanswered to what extent these strategies are perceived and evaluated as contributions to the quality of the communication. In this paper we discuss the effects of adding and combining positive politeness strategies in bad news letters in Belgium and the Netherlands. Furthermore we explore how a direct or indirect presentation of the bad news affects the readers evaluation.


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Author: Jane Johansen Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Southern Indiana (USA) Time: 9h30-10h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Theory, practicality and the international business communication model Visual models of communication behavior have been created in the United States to describe specific communication problems since the early 1940’s when communication science was recognized as a separate social science. The three-dimensional model presented here describes the intricacies of 21st century international business communication. Its creation rests on three requirements demanded by current speed and technical communication capabilities. The model first treats culture as an innate characteristic of communicators. Second, it describes the dynamism or changes in communicators and the message itself. Third, it also identifies the learning curve of international communicators as they recontextualize their cultures to match each other. The model serves as a practical tool to increase communication research and to encourage discussions about the nature of international business communication.


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Author: Orlando Rene Kelm Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Texas, Austin (USA) Time: 17h30-18h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Teaching business communication via online student database of the LESCANT Model This paper focuses on the presentation of an open access online database where our study abroad students submit photographs that exemplify the cultural differences they have observed while abroad. When they add their photographs to the database, they also include a written analysis of the culture features found. The photos are geo-tagged and the database is searchable by topic or location. The topics in the database are subdivided based on David Victor’s LESCANT Model, which is an acronym that represents seven areas in which cultural issue arise when dealing with international business communication: Language, Environment, Social Organization, Context, Authority, Non-Verbal, and Time. The photographs in the database are extremely informative, and the building of the database serves as a catalyst to help students learn how to look for these cultural differences. The presentation is designed to be highly engaging and interactive, inviting all to share their own perceptions of the cultural differences that will be shown in the photographs and analysis of the database. There are three major take-aways for the participants of this presentation. First, they will learn how to identify cultural issues using the LESCANT model. Second, they can access the database themselves, sorting information by topic or by location. Third, participants learn to apply the same principles to their own cultural experience abroad. Fourth, the information in the database can also be used as pre-departure training for those who are going abroad. This presentation will be of interest to a wide audience, both novice and experienced. The photographs also come from many locations around the globe and will be of interest no matter what part of the world their international activities take them.


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Author: Taira Koybaeva Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Utah State University (USA) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Reseach The role of cultural differences in successful outsourcing of aerospace and software development to Russia and Eastern Europe The author of this paper has been involved in developing joint US-Russian aerospace and software programs for more than a decade and has extensive practical experience as an Executive Advisor to large international aerospace and software development efforts in the area of aerospace and defense. She first noticed conceptual differences between US and Russian aerospace and software development when she served as an interpreter at technical meetings between US and Russian companies. Many issues that arose between engineers and managers on both sides stemmed from different conceptual approaches to design and algorithm development. This paper analyses and illustrates the role of these differences in management approaches between US and Russian aerospace and software development companies and is based on forty nine in-depth interviews of participants of US joint business ventures. Our analysis showed that the break-up in communication was very often accounted for by different technological, government and management cultures. These differences mean life or death of strategically important international endeavors. This paper describes an inherent connection between the country’s language, culture, history, political philosophy and its ways of implementing programs in the area of science and technology. The paper points out several distinct areas that are likely to cause misunderstanding and gives recommendations for solving potential disagreements. The author also dwells on translation problems and the way their impact could be minimized or eliminated.


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Author: Bettina Kraft & Ronald Geluykens Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Trier / University of Oldenburg (Germany) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.07

Track: Reseach Impoliteness in business: Conflictual service encounters This paper focuses on impoliteness in conflictual service encounters. The observations are based on a comparision of naturally occurring discourse and roleplays. Episodes of conflict episodes from a docusoap are compared to roleplays based on the same scenarios. The aim of this approach is twofold: firstly, to investigate the sequential organisation of conflict solving strategies; secondly, to compare data from different sources, which in this instance leads to divergent results. Apparently, with regard to service encounter frames, interactants have preconceived notions about which politeness strategies should be employed. The roles of ‘customer’ and ‘service provider’ trigger expectations about stereotypical behaviours associated with those roles. As can be observed in the roleplay data, interlocutors expect a high degree of ‘other’ consideration, as well as empathy and an attitude conducive to solving the conflict in a mutually acceptable manner. The analysis of the naturally occurring conflict episodes shows, however, that these attitudes are usually overridden by the influence of emotional involvement. Negative emotions, such as anger and frustration, lead to a focus on ‘self’, resulting in the frequent use of confrontational strategies. Face considerations in these conflictual service encounters seem to focus on strategies designed to be competitive and show little regard or concern for the other’s interests, a finding which contradicts traditional insights in politeness theory. This paper therefore contributes to the field of politeness research by observing a paradoxical relationship between, on the one hand, speaker expectations of normative behaviour, corresponding to traditional theories of politeness, and, on the other hand, actual speaker behaviour, which runs counter to such expectations, using (im)politeness as a tool, and showing heightened awareness of impoliteness considerations predominantly for self and not for other.


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Author: Sophie Limbos & Diana Phillips Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Nationalistic sentiments in the financial crisis and its aftermath: prevalence and impact This contribution examines the importance of nationalistic sentiments in Belgium in the context of the financial crisis of 2008. We shall concentrate on how these sentiments were expressed in the Belgian press. In the first part we shall present two case studies. The first concerns Dexia, a Franco-Belgian bank, while the second focuses on the takeover of Belgium’s largest bank, Fortis, by French BNP Paribas. The Belgian arm of Dexia, which - like many other banks – found itself in serious difficulties in 2008, was saved thanks to the intervention of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The price which the Belgian government had to pay was the dismissal of Dexia Belgium’s CEO, Axel Miller. In the Belgian media Miller’s departure was described as another humiliation of a small country by a voracious neighbour, a ‘second Waterloo’. Our second case study concentrates on the nationalistic sentiments inspired by the takeover of the Belgian banking activities of Fortis Bank by the French banking giant BNP Paribas. In both cases public anger was directed against the French, but far more so in Flemish-speaking Flanders than in French-speaking Wallonia. The second part of our contribution focuses on the strength of nationalistic sentiments in a broader European context. Are they prevalent in other European countries as well? Do they affect individual governments’ decision-making in the aftermath of the financial crisis and, if so, to what extent? We shall examine these questions in the light of the attempts made by a number of European governments to formulate a common approach to the thorny issue of variable remuneration for top banking executives, in particular the controversial bankers’ bonuses.


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Author: Olesia Lupu, Madalina Danilet & Elena Cojocaru Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Al. I. Cuza University (Romania) Time: 17h30-18h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Exploring CSR communication practices in Romania Both foreign and Romanian corporations have long recognized the importance of corporate social responsibility and the need to communicate its results to consumers and stakeholders. As noted by Roberts (2003), “the recent explosion of interest in corporate social responsibility can be traced to the emergence of new mechanisms of external visibility” that is part of the technology-driven business setting. Young Romanian corporations have assimilated not only new technologies which facilitate corporate visibility but also a socially responsible role assigned to them. These corporations integrated CSR activities into their image and reputation building. The authors investigate the range of CSR topics Romanian corporations focus on and whether these are connected with the CSR agenda of the general public. For this purpose, we carried out a content analysis of on-line corporate content, annual reports and press releases of main Romanian corporations. The analysis will be used to identify the degree to which CSR good practices adopted by corporations contribute to further developing or re-discovering socially responsible behaviour at the individual level in a post-transition society.


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Author: Minna K. Mars Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) Time: 15h-15h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Strategy talks The present global business environment is highly interconnected and increasingly unpredictable. In response to rapid changes in the business environment, companies need to be able to manage continuous strategy readjustments. From the corporate management perspective, this calls for building strategic agility in the organization. One significant prerequisite for strategic agility is enduring strategy discourse, which enables informed managers and knowledgeable employees. Strategy discourse is the discursive practice that mediates the strategy in the organization (e.g. Knights and Morgan, 1991; Barry and Elmes, 1997; Jarzabkowski, 2005). Strategy is thus mediated by the language, and strategic texts act as sense-making devices for interpreting and producing meaning for the strategy in the organization. Yet, there is only limited academic research on the intersection of strategic management and communication, and very little empirical research has studied how strategy texts are textually constructed and how they relate to the change leadership in the middle of the organization. This paper addresses the gap on the interface of strategic management and communication, and presents a case study examining how strategy narratives – text and talk explaining the strategy – were constructed and how they evolved during a major strategic change in a multinational corporation (MNC). The research was aimed at learning more of the authorized i.e. the leadership strategy narrative: how its textual features and rhetoric structures were employed to achieve communicative purposes, and relate their development with the focal strategic change process. The data was drawn from qualitative interviews with the top management, and focus group discussions with middle management representatives, while using narrative inquiry approach to collect stories of their experiences of the change. Corporate documents delivering the strategy and development programs to the organization were used as secondary data: more than 40 president’s letters to the employees, explaining and sharing the strategic change, and its progress during 2005-2009. Methodology used in analyzing the data establish on techniques of discourse and narrative analysis, drawing on theoretical and methodological contributions of discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2005), sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972) and narratology (Boje, 2001).


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Author: Jean Schiller Mason Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Ryerson University (Canada) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching A global hybrid: Canada’s first graduate degree in professional communication The impact of new digital technologies has revolutionized communication principles and practices in the contemporary workplace. This occupational transformation is evident in the proliferation of related graduate programs worldwide. In particular, North America, Europe, and Australia/NewZealand offer an abundance of English-language based graduate studies that address the growing need for formally accredited communication professionals and reflect the rich interdisciplinarity of the field. These programs are identified with varied designations, departments, organizations, curricula, theoretical frames, and practical components that, despite the diversity, embody the marked commonalities indicative of emergent “models.” This presentation will introduce Canada’s first master’s degree in Professional Communication—a global hybrid that incorporates elements from English-language comparator models worldwide. The Master of Professional Communication (MPC) will receive its first cohort of students at Ryerson University’s Edward S. Rogers Sr. Graduate School for Advanced Communication in Toronto in September 2010. Ryerson is an urban university in the centre of Canada’s business and media capital. As Graduate Program Director of the MPC, my presentation to ABC Europe delegates will include an overview of the designation "professional communication" as a distinctive disciplinary descriptor, the MPC proposal process, the program curriculum, the theoretical disciplines that frame the program pedagogy, and the international models implicit in the MPC. The presentation will be enhanced by visual aids ranging from “at-a-glance” statistical data on comparator programs to images of the Rogers Communications Centre—the state-of-the-art communications facility that will house the MPC. Throughout the presentation, ABC participants will join the presenter in identifying the many natural opportunities for international collaboration between the MPC and its European counterparts. Handouts detailing the MPC program and summarizing the ABC presentation will be distributed.


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Author: Russ Merz & Silvina Diaz Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University / Foresee Results, Inc. (USA)

Time: 17h30-18h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research An exploratory examination of development level and language effects on user satisfaction with websites using a standardized design and localized language Background: This paper empirically explores how users of a website with a standardized design but localized language exhibit different website experiences and satisfaction across economic development level (advanced and emerging) and language group (English, French and Spanish). In an era of growing reliance upon the use of websites to provide information and services on a global scale, clear guidance about how cultural parameters should be considered in the design of these websites is virtually non-existent. Multinational organizations seeking cost efficiencies tend to rely on websites that use standardized design combined with degrees of language localization. The objective of this study was to evaluate how such website designs may influence the performance outcomes desired from the website. Method: In this study, visitors to the website of a multinational aid organization were randomly invited to answer surveys that collected ratings of various website characteristics, satisfaction and future intentions. In addition, each respondent provided information on the reasons for visiting the website, the type of information sought and the degree of goal success. The responses from 20,089 completed surveys were analyzed in a 3X2 factorial design using descriptive statistics, ANOVA and structural equations modeling. Findings: The analysis results revealed: (1) satisfaction and website experience scores were lower for respondents from developed economies; (2) very different patterns of effects across all of the development and language groups both with respect to the relationships between experiences on satisfaction, but also of satisfaction on future intentions; (3) wide differences in reasons for visiting. Implications: For managers of websites with global audiences the implications are that: (1) multinational organizations using websites for business purposes need to consider language differences and economic development in their website design localization efforts; (2) website user segments are quite different across languages and development levels in terms of their visit purposes, website use goals, and expectations.


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Author: Carolyn Meyer Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Ryerson University (Canada) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Tracking Habermasian validity claims in mediatized discourse on email Journalistic writing from the international English language press privileges many claims, both positive and negative, about email and other forms of electronically mediated communication. An early utopianism surrounding the diffusion of email technology has been more recently been all but lost within a mediatized folk (non-specialist) narrative that articulates popular anxieties about email and provides a forum for lay theorizing about the alleged deleterious effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on offline communication and language standards generally. News stories about email may have little foundation in empirical fact yet the journalists and laypeople who write them play a central role in shaping popular understanding. Media characterizations of email are metaphorically and connotatively negative and may re-inscribe and perpetuate misconceptions about the nature of technological change and the trajectory of language change. The journalistic scapegoating of CMC and the anxieties and fears to which it gives rise may in fact prevent a full recognition of the evolving communication practices that are occurring in the new media. The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to assess journalistic (print media) and other influential lay theorizing about CMC generally and electronic mail specifically; (2) to examine non-specialist prescriptions and coping strategies for electroncially-mediated linguistic practice and email usage; and (3) to explore biases and issues of accuracy in news story descriptions of email. To this end, the results of a critical discourse analysis using Habermas' validity claims (of truthfulness, clarity, sincerity and legitimacy) for understanding media discourse as a framework will be discussed.


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Author: Richard E. Neff Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Better Business Writing Ltd. (USA) Time: 15h30-16h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice How do business readers like to READ? Copyright 2009. Better Business Writing Ltd. All rights reserved. For more than 10 years, at the very start of in-company training courses on ”Effective Business Writing”, we have asked trainees to answer the following question in 4-5 written bullet points: “What are the basic qualities or characteristics of a business text that you like to read? By “business texts”, we mean any kind of written text – memos, letters, e-mails, e-mail attachments, minutes, procedures or whatever? For more than 10 years, the answers to this question have been totally consistent. On the basis of this extensive survey, we are confident in stating that business readers today like to read texts that are − concise; − as short as possible, but giving readers the information they need in order to act

effectively; − easy, simple language; − simple but clear structure; − action points clear (“What do you want me to do now?”) − the reader’s involvement instantly obvious (“Why should I read this? How am I

involved?”) − urgency obvious (if there is any)

Often trainees say they like also to receive texts that are grammatically correct, with no misspellings. However, no trainee has ever said they like to read beautiful, elegant or literary language. Our survey, covering some 5.000 people, has been conducted in well-known multinational companies working in English in Europe, the US and East Asia. The survey cuts across various business sectors and includes all ranks in the companies — from Senior Executives to secretaries. The survey also includes a wide range of nationalities; less than 15% of our trainees are English mother tongue. This paper examines the reasons for such consistent phenomena, and then seeks to draw some plausible conclusions. Following the delivery of this paper, small stacks of the original survey responses will be available for perusal.


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Author: Birgitte Norlyk Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Southern (Denmark) Time: 14h30-15h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Discourse at the top: Leadership discourse and Management discourse Organizational discourse has been studied from several viewpoints involving e.g. gender, power structures, conflicting occupational discourses etc. This paper focuses on two conflicting types of discourse represented at the top level of organizations, i.e. the discourse of management and the discourse of leadership. In management, discourse focuses on concrete and tangible matters as measurability, productivity, efficiency, constant optimization of work flows etc. Management discourse in other words focuses on how to get things done in the physical world as managers are concerned with the material and rational aspects of organizational activities. Leadership discourse, on the other hand, is of an abstract and intangible nature and often has semi-religious overtones. Leadership discourse is concerned with communicating the organization as a state of mind and with branding the emotional and ethical values of the organization, i.e its soul, its spirit and its unique personality. Leadership discourse is concerned with the emotional branding of the organization in relation to both present and future organizational stakeholders and talks the walk in the staging of organizational brand, identity and image. Research question, data and theoretical framework: Within a framework of methods used in critical discourse studies and in studies of organisational communication, the research questions of this paper centres on a critical analysis of top level discourse in organizations, i.e. the conflicting discourses of leadership and of management. The data and conclusions are based on close readings of mission/vision statements and organizational value statements combined with studies of modern management literature such as the principles of Lean Production and Six Sigma.


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Author: Mayumi Okamoto Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Kansai University (Japan) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Teaching vocabulary to business majors: A case study This study aims to see an effective way of teaching business English vocabulary to Japanese business majors learning English as a foreign language. There are two research questions. First, what and how many words should business majors know? Second, what is the average vocabulary size of the Japanese university students? The current study tries to answer the first question by examining a lexical coverage of English texts in business letters, magazines, textbooks and newspapers. The result shows business majors need to know a larger number of low-frequency words in reading business texts than reading general texts. In an attempt to answer the second question, vocabulary tests were given to 60 Japanese university students. The result shows they only have a vocabulary of less than 3000 words in average. These results indicate a need to develop an effective learning method of business English words for the Japanese business majors.


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Author: Kate Oneill Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Zayed University (UAE) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: Kate.O'[email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Zayed University: College of Business Sciences' Arabic and English Business Communication Program As an agent of Emiratization (a nation-wide initiative to integrate Emiratis into the private sector workforce), the College of Business Sciences at Zayed University must graduate students who possess professional-level communicative competence in English, the lingua franca of business in the United Arab Emirates. However, as the students in the undergraduate division of Zayed University are Emirati, the ability to communicate effectively in the professional context in Arabic is equally important. This paper provides an overview of the three-stage, dual language development model used by the undergraduate division of the College of Business at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. First, the presenter will briefly describe stages 1 and 2 of the Zayed University language and professional rhetoric program. Then, she will describe the six course Arabic and English Business Communication program in the College of Business Sciences at Zayed University. And, she will discuss the issues faced in designing and implementing a Business Communication program in this unique cultural and linguistic context and she will provide justification for choices made. Last, she will make recommendations based on the experiences of Zayed University.


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Author: James O'Rourke, Christina K. Vaughn & Adam L. Peeples Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Notre Dame (USA) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Domino’s "special" delivery: Going viral through social media (A) Business Problem The primary business problem in this case study is how to mitigate the negative impact of a social media crisis on a company or brand. On April 13, 2009, Tim McIntyre, VP of Corporate Communications at Domino’s Pizza, received notification of the existence of five damaging videos that had been posted online. The videos showed Domino’s employees taking inappropriate and illegal actions while preparing food that was allegedly being served to customers. McIntyre knew that the five amateur videos filmed in one store could seriously damage the entire Domino’s brand, not to mention put the company at legal risk. The question for McIntyre is how to ensure Domino’s responds in the best way possible to mitigate the negative impact of this social media crisis.


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Author: Henk Pander Maat & Nynke de Boer Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research The usability of mortgage information packages It has never been more evident that understanding your mortgage is vital to your financial health. However, even simple mortgages are extremely complex financial constructions, and the documentation that comes with them is impressive both in terms of size and in terms of the variety of text genres contained in it (brochures, leaflets, the mortgage offer letter, general and specific conditions applying to the mortgage). We report on a study in which we had 60 readers use three mortgage information packages to answer user questions such as the following: − What are your monthly payments? − What charges are due when you want to repay this mortgage because you want to

get another one with another bank? − Is a mortgage life insurance an obligatory part of this mortgage?

To arrive at a correct answer, our subjects need to identify the relevant document(s) for the question, identify the relevant pages and paragraphs within these documents, and to arrive at the correct interpretation of these passages. The chance that all three hurdles are taken successfully are low. Several factors conspire to produce this communication breakdown. First, it takes considerable financial knowledge even to navigate in mortgage documents. Second, the structure of the mortgage information packs is not designed to support the users in their decision making task. In fact, the packages simply reflect the structure the process of selling mortgages (going from general information to personalized offers to the small print that needs to be handed over when a deal nears completion). Third, the relevant passages do often not provide explicit answers. To alleviate these problems, Dutch financial institutions are legally required to provide a so-called Financial Package Insert (Financiële Bijsluiter) with every financial product, including mortgages. This leaflet is too concise however to successfully address user concerns such as those listed above. We are currently exploring a different intervention strategy that we call a Mortgage Information Guide (Hypotheekleeswijzer). This document presents a list of central user questions, followed by either an answer, a reference to relevant information in the package, or both an answer and a reference to more detailed information.


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Author: Henk Pander Maat & Leo Lentz Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Using sorting studies to evaluate the prescriptive genre schema for patient information leaflets Many text genres follow genre schemata (or ‘move structures’), specifying what will be discussed and in what order. Often these schemata have evolved in an interactive process within a certain discourse community of writers and readers. But some schemata are being ‘enforced’ upon writers (and readers) by gate keeping institutions. A particular strong case of genre schema enforcement is provided by the European regulatory efforts concerning patient information leaflets handed out with medicines. These leaflets should comply with a so-called template published by the Quality Review of Documents (QRD) group of the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). Clearly, such a template takes a lot of decisions out of the hands of medical writers. This may be a good thing. It has been shown that medication instructions that follow the users’ ‘medication schema’ are better remembered than instructions with a random order of topics. However, we are not entirely sure that the EMEA template in its present form mirrors the users’ medication schema. In order to investigate this issue, we performed two sorting studies. In the first study, we explored the medication instruction schemata of Dutch readers by means of an open sorting task. The items to be sorted were 75 sentences that could appear in actual information leaflets. We were specifically interested in any divergences between the sorting results and the present QRD template. That is, this template should be considered as a certain sorting imposed upon the information presently covered in patient leaflets. This leads to the second investigation, which can be characterized as a closed sorting task. In this study, subjects were provided with scenario questions on medication use and were asked under which of the template headings they expected to find information on each question. Both studies point to certain problems in the current template. An example would be that the lay notion of ‘side effects’ seems to be broader than the professional concept. For lays, side effects may include interactions between medicines and the effect of the medicine on breast milk production. We will discuss the consequences of such results for the template’s design.


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Author: Stefanie Pohle Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Germany Time: 15h-15h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Interactional patterning of offer communication in business negotiations: Multifunctionality and strategic vagueness This paper explores the interactional structure of offer exchanges and sequences in business negotiations. Are there any characteristic patterns in relation to how Offers are elicited, and to how the interlocutor responds to the Offer? How do the functional elements on the act level relate to the next higher level on the hierarchical discourse rank scale, i.e. interactional move slots? The paper is based on a recently published PhD dissertation which takes an integrative approach by combining different methodologies and theories: linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis. The results are also related to the findings from non-linguistic approaches to negotiation, e.g. business studies, social psychology, or popular scientific manuals. The data consist of transcripts of Irish English dyadic face-to-face business negotiations. Eight Irish businessmen took part in four intracultural negotiation simulations. The investigation is a qualitative in-depth case study. Some statistical aspects (frequency distributions) are also taken into account when interpreting the data. From the analysis of the data, several prototypical and idealised offer exchange and sequence patterns emerge. They tend to be more heterogeneous and complex in terms of length and variation than those in everyday language. Five move types are distinguished: Initiate, Re-Initiate, Satisfy, Contra, and Feedback. Each of these five interactional move slots can be filled by different speech actions (Request for Offer, Offer, Offer response, Acceptance or Rejection finaliser). On the other hand, one particular speech action can fill different interactional move slots – sometimes even several at the same time (multifunctionality). The various possible Offer responses display different degrees of relevance to the offer, a fact which can be exploited strategically in negotiations. Although Acceptances and Rejections are the preferred and dispreferred second pair parts of the adjacency pair Offer – response, the vast majority of observed responses are marked by strategic vagueness. Nevertheless, severe communication breakdowns cannot be observed in the present data. Coherence and mutual understanding are successfully managed, or collaboratively constructed, by the interlocutors.


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Author: Gina Poncini, Michele Rusk, Susan Stehlik & Aline Wolff Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: University of Milan (Italy) / University of Ulster (UK) / New York University Stern School of Business (USA)

Time: 12h30-13h


Room: 2.09

Track: Teaching Design thinking, creativity and communities of practice: Navigating complexity and making an impact This presentation focuses on how approaches like design thinking, inquiry and disruptive innovation can impact on curriculum development at the undergraduate and graduate level. We draw on our research and experience in different institutions to discuss how attention to creativity, investigation and the notion of community can help harness tacit knowledge, contribute to the body of research and enhance teaching. We also relate our experiences in course development as part of our ongoing discussions on design thinking and creativity in research and education. While each of us has had an interest in these areas over the years, we began the present discussion at a meeting on Lake Como in the summer of 2009. Specific examples to be discussed include the pilot of a new course at NYU Stern that Aline Wolff will be teaching in Spring 2010. The course is on innovative thinking for business in turbulent times and involves applying approaches like design thinking, visual thinking, biomimicry, disruptive innovation, and business ethnography. At the University of Ulster, Michele Rusk of the Office of Innovation is currently developing an international “Design Direction” community of interest/practice, the objectives of which are to facilitate flows of design management knowledge and exchange creative business expertise. At the University of Milan, Gina Poncini is applying her research to teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including the development of research communication courses for PhD students. Her current work investigates expertise, knowledge creation and multiple communities in different professional contexts, including an interuniversity master’s degree program. A final example is the NYU Stern course “Organizational Communication in Its Social Context”, taught in New York, Florence, London and Shanghai. One of the main goals of this course, taught by Aline Wolff and Susan Stehlik in New York and Gina Poncini in Florence, Italy, is to provide students with the ability to think independently: the course integrates stakeholder theory, corporate responsibility and sustainability into student team projects and their business research and presentations.


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Author: Amran Rasli, Ahmad Jusoh & Huam Hon Tat Date: Thu. 17 May Affiliation: Universiti Teknologi (Malaysia) Time: 14h30-15h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Supervisor-supervisee communication breakdown This exploratory research based on the sequential mixed method, seeks to understand why non-traditional PhD students fail to have meaningful discussions with their supervisors. Nine non-traditional PhD students enrolled in a full-time doctoral program in management and human resource development programs offered at a premier Malaysian university were selected as participants for a focus group study. They were divided into two groups: those who have completed their proposals and those who have not. The supervisor’s schedule, reputation and competence were found to affect PhD students’ attitudes. Other factors such as the ability to resolve conflicts, availability of communication tools and the presence of “friendly” environment were also found to affect the students’ attitudes. The study concludes that the six factors have varying impacts on attitudes which inevitably will also influence PhD completion. Finally, students from the first group were found to possess better communication skills than those from the second group. Recommendations for students, supervisors and the faculty were given accordingly.


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Author: Sana Reynolds & Deborah Valentine Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: City University of New York / Emory University (USA) Time: 9h30-10h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.06

Track: Teaching Teaching the Net Generation: Challenges and rewards The Net generation, also known as Millennials and Gen Y-ers, are the generation born between 1977 and 1986. Several important and unique characteristics make these young people very different from previous generations we may have encountered in our classrooms. Net-gens are the first generation to have grown up completely immersed in the Internet. They have been shaped by an environment that is information-rich, team-based, immediately-responsive and constantly visual. This “digital immersion” or “digital upbringing” has had a profound impact on the way they think, and, some scientists suspect, even the way their brains are wired. They are multi-task easily, often doing 4-5 things at once. Information finding, gathering and processing holds no mystery for them, nor are they daunted by the gargantuan quantity available. They are naturally team-oriented and collaborative, having grown up in a digital world where everyone shares what they find. They are enormously tolerant; many are multiracial and/or have multicultural and multiracial relationships. They have changed the relationship between generations as they are the experts in something really important — the Internet — and are often placed in the position of instructing their parents and elders. But, most importantly for us, they seem to learn differently from previous generations. The Net generation does not respond well to the traditional, professor-focused, lecture-based, linear model of pedagogy common to many universities. They want learning that is animated, student-focused, interactive and collaborative. How have you responded to this challenge? Professors Sana Reynolds and Deborah Valentine will share their ideas for developing a new pedagogy to empower the Net generation to take control of their own learning. Our presentation will focus on how we have transformed our teaching methodologies and assignments to be student-centered, interactive, and collaborative.


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Author: Pamela Rogerson-Revell Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Leicester (UK) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Pronunciation matters: using English for international business communication Research into English as an International Language (EIL), has demonstrated not only the critical part played by pronunciation in maintaining successful communication between speakers of English with different first languages, but also the ways in which the pronunciation priorities involved in EIL may be evolving. It has also been argued that this recent shift in the use of English for international communication, such that non native speakers now outnumber native speakers (Crystal 2000; Graddol 1997), has serious implications for English Language Teaching (ELT) policy and pedagogy. Key among these is a reconsideration of pronunciation models and targets and the proposal that pronunciation priorities in lingua franca contexts should be limited to what Jenkins (2000) refers to as the ‘lingua franca core’[1]. However, despite recent calls at a theoretical level to reconsider goals, targets and approaches to teaching pronunciation in light of the expanding use of EIL (eg McKay 2002, Jenkins 2000), little research has been done to date into end users’ perceptions and their pronunciation performance. This is particularly true of the international business community which typically takes a pragmatic approach towards the use of English and where a considerable amount of international communication is between both native and non-native speakers of English. This paper draws on research investigating pronunciation perceptions and performance in contexts where English is used for International Business (EIB). The paper summarises some findings from a survey and from video recordings of a series of international meetings in a particular European business organisation. Initial conclusions suggest that pronunciation does matter in such contexts and that effective pronunciation is crucial in terms of intelligibility, fluency and the impact a speaker has in such international events. It is also suggested that in setting pronunciation goals we may need to bear in mind the expectations of both native and non-native speaker listeners in such contexts. The research has both a theoretical and practical goal, on the one hand aiming to build on earlier studies in this field (Rogerson-Revell 2007, McKay 2002, Jenkins 2000, Berns 1995) and on a practical level, to relate the findings to the teaching of pronunciation, particularly in EIB contexts. [1] This refers to Jennifer Jenkins’ recent work on the phonology of English as an international language (Jenkins 2000) and her proposal to teach a restricted pronunciation syllabus in EIL contexts based on a ‘Lingua Franca Core’.


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Author: Kathryn M. Rybka Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Illinois (USA) Time: 10h-10h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Blurring fact-fiction boundaries to open new communication spaces The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical framework to explore the role of fictive text as it relates to academic research and business application. The use of fictional naratives allows for the creation of spaces in which academics and practitioners can tell stories which more closely reflect the lived experiences of the human condition in ways that numbers cannot fully explain - ambiguity, multiple perspectives, positionality, for example. Denison (1994) echoes the beliefs of those who embrace new forms of narrative writing when he tells us that, “Stories are the most accessible form of communication for everyone has a story, everyone loves a story, and everyone can learn from a story” (p. 78). There are diverse and numerous forms of qualitative writing, and new ways to present narrative in social science research, but only four aspects of text will be examined here: ethnographic, analogy, metaphor and hermeneutics. An overview of postmodern influence on the new forms of qualitative writing will be included to provide context for the research question. It is also necessary to think about the broader concept of “text” before addressing these four specific mutative writing constructs. A collection of short stories that represent a spectrum of business start-up themes, for example, can be used to consider outside perspectives. By using a story someone else has written, the personal context can often be deflected. The words of a text can then serve as a source for discussion and not as a site for individual defense or attack. Ideas are explored through lenses that are less self-centered, and even in ways never before considered. Fictional narratives offer an additional set of powerful communication tools to represent the human and political condition more completely than mere facts in scholarly as well as business settings. References Denison, J. (1994). Sport Retirement: Personal Troubles, Public Faces. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).


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Author: Kathryn M. Rybka Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Illinois (USA) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching What movies teach us about real-life business communication The job of the filmmaker is not an enviable one. There is the challenge to represent a subject in align with one’s personal vision, while at the same time balancing it against cinema’s economic and audience realities. Every viewer is a critic, whether they are paid to be one or not. A consequence of these inherent cinematic difficulties is that perhaps no one will ever be able to produce a perfect movie. Going to the movies has long been considered a means to temporarily escape from one’s daily challenges. Movie houses have always created a special environment for their viewers. Patrons sit in the dark and are isolated from the visuals of everyday existence. Heads are tilted toward an oversized screen, and watchers even sit in chairs intentionally designed to be unique to the movie-going event. The dividing line between cinematic fact and fiction is often defined by what a person wants to believe, and how convincing is the representation offered during the movie viewing experience. Lubiano (1997) says, “representation refers to images that are selected from what we recognize as reality” (p. 107). We bring our own frames of reference, experiences and understandings to the system of representation. There is much to be learned about real-life business practice by looking at cinematic clues. This paper will specifically look at how three films, Robocop (1987), What Women Want (2000) and Wall Street (1987), can be used in a classroom setting to enhance learning and discussion of business communication theory and practice. This movie trio is by no means a finite group of all the celluloid products that offer business-related themes. Instead, these three offerings should be considered as catalysts for using film in the classroom to explore business communication themes in new and engaging ways. References Lubiano, W. (1997). But compared to what?: Reading realism, representation, and essentialism in School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and the Spike Lee discourse. In V. Smith (Ed.), Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video (pp. 97-122). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.


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Author: Elizabeth Saatci Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Bilkent University (Turkey) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Combined voluntary disclosures in CEO presentations and the construction of corporate identity Research Questions – Increasingly financial disclosures by corporations, whether mandatory or voluntary, are combined with social and environmental disclosures (both reported voluntarily) in corporate reporting. This study considers the communication of corporate voluntary disclosures to external audiences in quarterly earnings presentations. The purpose of this research is to consider the following questions: RQ1: What is the degree of convergence in the three forms of voluntary disclosures (financial, social, environmental) given by high-tech companies in earnings announcement CEO presentations? RQ2: What are the managerial discursive strategies deployed by high-tech companies in constructing their corporate identity and shaping their corporate image in earnings announcement CEO presentations that combine the three forms of voluntary disclosures? Design/methodology/approach – Based on a corpus of 12 conference call transcripts from two high-tech companies, first, voluntary information disclosed will be classified according to the different forms (financial, social and environmental) and the purposes (proactive or contextual) of disclosure. This will be followed by an analysis of the conference call transcripts using the Critical Discourse framework of analysis proposed by Fairclough (CDA) in order to identify the discursive strategies used by the management teams in constructing their corporate identity and creating their corporate image. Findings – The results will reveal that discursive strategies of expertise, accountability and moderation are mostly used by high-tech companies to construct their corporate identity and build their image in earnings announcement presentations. There will also be clear evidence that information disclosed voluntarily is done in a strategic manner in order to portray the firm’s expertise, trustworthiness and integrity while risk related information and negative words are minimized. Research limitations/implications – The study will be using discourse analysis to determine how identity is constructed in earnings announcement presentations through a selective choice of voluntary financial, social and environmental information disclosures. This study is also limited to high-technology companies whose intangible assets are far more important than their tangible assets and from which additional information is expected to be disclosed. Conclusions – The study demonstrates how discursive strategies for creating a strong image through the strategic use of a combined form of voluntary disclosures can be relevant both to Investor Relations Officers and to academic writing courses.


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Author: Asia Sand, Marinel Gerritsen & Liesbeth Hermans Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.08

Track: Research Impact of culture on internal communication This paper deals with the impact of cultural differences on internal communication of a German and a Dutch police department. Nowadays, police departments near the border must work together to win the fight against cross-border crime. Both countries are working on a more structured way to cooperate in the future. This paper concerns two concepts, culture and internal communication. The research question is: Do cultural differences lead to differences in internal communication?? Based on a literature study of approximately fifteen cultural values, we found a clear difference between the German and Dutch culture, especially for the value masculinity: Germany scores higher on the masculinity index than the Netherlands. Internal communication is addressed in two ways, namely the primary and the secondary approach, and these differ in examining internal communication, which is visible in the objectives, processes and content. The primary approach describes objectives grounded in the primary organizational objectives, processes are asymmetrical and content is all work-related. The secondary approach defines it as social activities of all organization members; the processes are symmetrical and content is both work-related and human-interest. Based on the descriptions of the two concepts we expected that the internal communication of a German police department would be characterized by the primary approach - due to the higher masculinity of German culture - and that the internal communication of a Dutch police department would be characterized by both approaches, due to the lower masculinity of Dutch culture. Results of the field research, based on a triangulation of methods (qualitative interviews and observations, quantitative content analysis and questionnaires), show that the objectives and content of internal communication of the German police department match the primary approach, indeed, while the objectives and content of the Dutch police department display characteristics of both approaches. Contrary to our expectations the processes are quite similar in both organizations and match both approaches. References Hofstede, G., Twuyver, M. van, Kapp, B. & Vries, H. de. (1993). Grensoverschrijdende politiesamenwerking tussen België, Duitsland en Nederland met speciale aandacht voor de Euregio Maas-Rijn. Maastricht: Universitaire Pers. Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, J. G. (2006). Lokales Denken, globales Handeln. Interkulturelle Zusammenarbeit und globales Management. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München. Mast, C. (2006). Unternehmenskommunikation. Ein Leitfaden. 2. neu bearbeitete und erweiterte Auflage. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius. Oudenhoven, P.J. van (2002). Cross-culturele psychologie. De zoektocht naar verschillen en overeenkomsten tussen culturen. Bussum: Coutinho. Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods. 3. Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Putnam, L.L. (1983). The interpretive perspective: an alternative to functionalism. In L.L. Putnam & M.E. Pacanowsky (Eds.), Communication and organizations: An interpretive approach. Beverly Hills: Sage. Putte, M. van (1998). Interne communicatie: van theorie naar praktijk. Bussum: Coutinho. Reesink, R. (2000). Interne communicatie in multinationals. In Olsthoorn, A.C.J.M. Het beste uit … Handbook Interne Communicatie. Een selectie van artikelen. Alphen aan den Rijn: Samsom. Ruler, B. van (2005). Organisaties, media en openbaarheid: ménage à trois. Een maatschappelijk perspectief op communicatiemanagement. Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap, jaargang 33, nr.1.


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Author: Sheila L. Sasser, Russ Merz & Scott Koslow Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) / University of Waikato (New Zealand)

Time: 11h-11h30


Room: 2.08

Track: Research Cross cultural creativity differences in IMC advertising agencies: THE CCI index in Europe Differences in organizational creativity and communications are explored using structural equation modeling and factor analysis quantitative methods triangulated with an ethnographic exploratory phase to extract key cross-cultural findings. An international sample of approximately 1700 campaigns from 600 respondents was collected on site at worldwide agencies in London, Paris, Europe and the United States for comparison purposes. Integrated marketing communication campaigns are examined in conjunction with depth interviews and participant observation research to better understand motivational factors that drive creativity in worldwide ad agencies. Perceptual differences arise in terms of client interactions, communications, and organizational differences including a term denoting “pleasing the client” or “clientisme” in France. British participants insist that the “account planning” model in the United Kingdom is quite different from the American system and findings are statistically significant in support of this hypothesis. A campaign creativity conceptual theoretical framework first illustrates client and agency factors as indicators that impact creativity for SEM estimation. In this hypothetical model, cross-cultural factors including receptivity to new ideas and client sophistication are tested and interact as indicators influencing agency motivation and creative expertise. A sophisticated client who is willing to explore, communicate and trust inspires agency motivation and creative expertise. This three dimensional view of the CCI Campaign Creativity Index, composed of originality, strategy, and artistry, enables the person, place and process P’s (Sasser 2008). The CCI model examines a creativity index beyond earlier subjective and normative indices. Earlier research looked at agency philosophies and risk taking (West and Ford 2001) and other proposals were suggested for control (Kover and Goldberg 1995) of creativity. Recent published research has also forged a greater understanding of the interactive media and consumer impact on creativity (Sasser and Koslow 2008, Sasser 2008), (Sasser, Koslow and Riordan 2007), the 3 P’s of creativity (Sasser 2008), as well as the client factors that impact creativity in advertising agencies (Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2006). In 2003, a creativity index was provided as a basis for defining what is creative to whom and why (Koslow, Sasser and Riordan 2003), while later work continues, the interdisciplinary definitional debate continues. While other conceptual models appear to be stuck in a tug of war between various factions, these findings hold empirically. In recent articles, the client’s willingness to explore new ideas has a profound effect on agency creativity and motivation, as proven in this new model.



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Author: Matthew H. Sauber & Elizabeth A. Edwards Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Research Short-Course study abroad: Prospects and challenges In revamping the undergraduate International Business program, the College of Business International Programs Committee at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), recommended the addition of a required short course study abroad to the undergraduate International Business (IB) curriculum. The short course abroad is intended to provide students with opportunities to experience diverse academic and cross-cultural learning in a global environment, practice their international skills, and enhance their career horizons. Its specific goals are to strengthen cross-cultural awareness, enhance social and emotional development, expose students to foreign language, currency and local Customs, and enhance the global knowledge of economic, political, and legal Systems. These are the competencies that students could not otherwise achieve by studying in the United States alone. After reviewing various options for studying abroad, including semester-long courses in other countries, internships abroad, and placement through tertiary institutions, the committee decided that an intensive, for-credit, short course abroad could provide a solution that best meets the needs of IB majors as well as allowing faculty to participate and oversee the course / student conduct without overly restrictive time commitments. This resolution was deemed suitable for our undergraduate student population, predominantly consists of non-traditional, working adult students. Alternative options such as semester long study abroad and internships abroad will continue to meet requirements for a study abroad experience for our undergraduate IB majors. The purpose of this study is to review, evaluate, and report the experiences of offering the short course study abroad, as part of the IB Program, since 2006. Faculty and students who participated in the study abroad program are interviewed and their experiences benchmarked for continuous improvement. Undergraduate students at EMU are also surveyed to gauge their willingness and ability to take the study-abroad course. The survey results suggest strategies to develop options to overcome student concerns / reluctance to take sort courses abroad.


81

Author: Cristian Sirera Salvador & William Wardrope Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Central Oklahoma (USA) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Social construction of Spain's high unemployment rate Spain, the fifth largest economy in Europe, shares the characteristically high unemployment situation of most of its European—and many world—neighbors. As of 31 October, 2009, the country’s actual rate stood at 18.9% (Global Economics Research, 2009), amidst the high inflation and other economic problems besetting the region and the world. Adding to that scenario, Spain’s somewhat complicated, unique unemployment laws—which, at this writing, are being amended in light of the current economic crisis—the continued joblessness has profoundly influenced various aspects of Spanish culture and life. The hopeless feelings alone, expressed by “Maria” in an interview reveal the depth of the problem: “Nobody thought about the economy exploding in our face, or the few people who did were not heard by anyone…now, nobody knows what to do. Not even the government, or any country’s government, for that matter.” According to Spanish unemployment law, after one year of working for a business, that worker has to be made “permanent.” A permanent worker cannot be fired without a generous premium; is entitled to four weeks of vacation per year, and has a lot more advantages than a temporary one. Store owner “Antonia” is now dealing with this situation regarding one of her employees: “He has been here for two years, and if I fire him, he is entitled to a three month pay, plus an extra one month of pay for each year worked. That means, if I want to fire this guy, I have to pay over six thousand Euros. I obviously cannot afford that…and if I were to do that, he will turn around and, after receiving six months pay, apply for unemployment, and get another six months. The laws in this country do not protect the middle businessmen and women. We are always on the losing end.” The impact of joblessness on Spain’s society also strongly hits young adults. Many youths already intend to forego college educations in a hope just to support their families, whose primary breadwinner may no longer have a job. Other young people, enjoying the full (if temporary) benefits of their country’s unemployment situation, find new social constructions in their free time, while simultaneously living in dread of the time when that compensation runs out. One college student, returning to his home in Spain for a vacation, notes the large number of college-age people hanging out in coffee shops; there are no jobs, thus little reason to look for one, and any activity other than coffee-drinking is too expensive on their limited, temporary incomes. Thus, it has become as one student indicated, “almost like high school again.” This paper is a case study of unemployment in Spain. We first examine Spain’s economic crisis and unemployment statistics, Spanish laws about unemployment compensation, and then we turn to the social impact of extended unemployment periods on the people and businesses most affected by it—business owners and young people. A series of real (not virtual) open-ended interviews with unemployed individuals, business owners, and other stakeholders in Spain profile the communication aspect of joblessness and define it as a social phenomenon, rather than as a mere economic indicator. References Global Economics Research (2009). Spain unemployment rate. Retrieved October 29, 2009 from: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/economics/unemployment-rate/aspx?symbol:ESP


82

Author: Hanna Sledsens & Hilde Hanegreefs Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Lessius University College / K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.07

Track: Research Politeness strategies in service encounters: a contrastive corpus analysis of French and Spanish The present research is carried out within the area of cross-cultural linguistic pragmatics. It focuses on politeness strategies used to modulate interpersonal distance in service encounters in French and Spanish. The theoretical basis of this research is the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1987), in which politeness or facework is seen as a universal phenomenon that aims at preserving a harmonious relation between interactants, amongst other works, such as Haverkate (1994), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1994) and Placencia & Bravo (2009). This paper examines requests in a contrastive corpus of French and Spanish telephone conversations of the national rail companies, respectively SNCF and RENFE. It aims at revealing the different facets at work to measure interpersonal distance in two different languages and cultures. To that end, we studied how person reference is made in both languages (e.g., nominal forms of address, T/V distribution), as well as how request strategies are used. The analysis has confirmed that politeness is language and culture-dependent. As regards request strategies, the French prefer negative politeness strategies: they formulate their requests in a more direct and conventional way. This need for formality is corroborated by the frequent use of nominal terms of address (madame, monsieur) (see also Castillo-Lluch, in press) and the V-form. The Spanish, on the contrary, use more indirect requests that require a common ground between the interactants and, thus, reduces the interpersonal distance. References Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness. Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castillo Lluch, M. (in press). “Étude interculturelle des formes nominales de l'adresse en français et en espagnol contemporains”. Haverkate, H. (1994). La cortesía verbal. Estudio pragmalingüístico. Madrid: Gredos. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1994). Les interactions verbales. Paris: Colin. Placencia, M. E. & Bravo, D. (2009). Actos de habla y cortesía en español. München: Lincom Europe.


83

Author: Denise L. Tanguay, John Lawrence Waltman & Sandra M. Defebaugh

Date: Fri. 28 May

Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.09

Track: Practice Communicating and reinforcing transformational change: An ethics program assessment Numerous recent examples of ethical missteps by organizations and their executives (most recently bank failures brought on by wrong-doing and poor ethical decision-making) call for decisive action. Motivated by this, we and other College of Business faculty, administrators, and students participated in a dynamic process highlighting ethical development while communicating and reinforcing our college’s Ethos statement. This presentation shares a program and process evaluation of the communication strategies we used to present and institutionalize this collegiate cultural change. Using John P. Kotter’s transformational change model, this presentation examines the stages and evaluates the tactics for leading transformational change within the college. It provides examples of what worked well, what did not and what was missed or ignored. The discussion will cover: − Kotter’s Eight Stages and Application Examples − Establish Sense of Urgency: Faculty meetings focused on pressing need to address

ethical classroom issues (including plagiarism), and meet AACSB’s new guidelines incorporated ethics into the curriculum.

− Form Powerful Guiding Coalition: Top administrators and most faculty members convened to move the process forward.

− Create Vision: The team spent over a year carefully crafting an Ethos statement and generating widespread by-in.

− Communicate Vision: Multiple approaches included the Ethos statement on all syllabi, Ethos Week, an Ethos Pledge, the Ethos Honor Society, etc.

− Empower Others to Act on Vision: A model instructional unit explored the Ethos statement’s elements while a student group developed and organized Ethos Week.

− Plan for and Create Short-term Wins: With outside funding, an ethicist in residence worked with students and faculty.

− Consolidate Improvements and Produce More Change: An Ethos Week raised awareness culminating in signing the ethos statement.

− Institutionalize new Approaches: The ethos statement is now part of most COB faculty members’ syllabi; Ethos Week is an annual event.

The close explores lessons learned, possible transfer to workplaces and suggestions for further study.


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Author: Jantien Van Berkel, Marinel Gerritsen & Frans J. Meijman Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen / VU University Medical Center Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Time: 12h30-13h


Room: 2.08

Track: Research Patient information leaflets: cultural influences in spite of uniform European guidelines The European Union has issued directives for content and structure of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) regarding medication in the EU in order to enlarge the readability and comprehensibility. The cultural differences between the countries have not been taken into account. However, these differences do exist; even in areas where the same language is spoken. The Netherlands for example have a lower Uncertainty Avoidance Index (Hofstede, 2001) than the Dutch speaking part of Belgium (Flanders). A high level of Uncertainty Avoidance makes people feel threatened by unknown situations. A way to deal with this uncertainty is to write instructions as accurately as possible. Information about medication use entails information about risks and uncertainties and could therefore very well be influenced by uncertainty avoidance. As appears from a corpus analysis, carried out with PILs of painkillers containing Ibuprofen from the Netherlands and Flanders, differences between the leaflets do exist. Dutch leaflets appeared to be much shorter than the Flemish PILs. Specialists terms were more frequently used in Flanders than in the Netherlands. The Dutch PILs mentioned less risks than the Flemish ones. But would people prefer the PIL from their own country and would it lead to more adequate intentional drug use? To get answers to these questions, face-to-face interviews have been held amongst elderly (N=46). The results showed that both Dutch and Flemish elderly preferred the Dutch PIL, because it was shorter and easier to understand. However, it was the Flemish PIL with its extensive instructions that lead to the most adequate intentional drug use. But which PIL is better? Well-liked but lacking information or complete but not read?



85

Author: Paul van den Hoven Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice The immutable judicial formats This paper discusses the text format of judicial and semi-judicial decisions. The text formats that judicial and semi-judicial institutions use to communicated and motivate their decisions turn out to be very resistant to a substantial change. However the very consistently adopted conventional formats do not optimize comprehensibility. The macro structure legitimates a very loose, cohesive argument structure with a large amount of repetitions, paraphrases and with an easy insertion of many non-functional elements. The micro-structure in the argumentative kernel shows a strong preference for an argument conclusion order, and seems to avoid the standpoint argument order, a preference that challenges the skills of the writer who attempts to present a verifiable explanations of the reasoning on which the decision rests. Based on a large amount of observations during interventions in several Dutch judicial and semi-judicial institutions these claimed characteristics will be illustrated. Based on remarks made by the actual authors of these texts, a threefold explanation for the resistance towards change of this non optimal practice will be put forward. The conventional text format signifies a strongly preferred ideology, that of a real time, non prejudiced, and - most important - objective, deductive process. However, although they show to understand this ideology on the macro level, often the authors do not fathom the format sufficiently to be able to practice it on the micro level. Thirdly particularly the semi-judicial institutions are often non consistent in this ideology.


86

Author: Anouk van Eerden Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Hanzehogeschool Groningen, University of Groningen (The Netherlands)

Time: 17h30-18h

Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research The measurement and maximization of basic writing skill of first-year students Nowadays Dutch first-year students experience often difficulties in writing short texts in their native language. This is visible by the number of errors in texts these students produce and in results on tests. The main question of my research is: is it possible to improve this basic writing skill of freshmen at universities and polytechnics in a cost-effective way and what would be the most effective program to do this? The lack of basic writing skill might be obvious, yet at the same time it isn't exactly clear what students should master and how this should be measured or observed. Furthermore, there are a lot of commercially available methods/programs to improve basic writing skill, but the effectiveness of these programmes is unknown because evaluation research is lacking. The goal of this research is to develop an instrument to measure basic writing skill, to develop a program to maximize it and finally to investigate the effectiveness of this program. I will discuss some results of the second part of this research in which I focused on the errors in a sample of 30 short texts (mean length: 279 words) written by first-year students from polytechnic and university. The total number of errors four judges, independently working, signalled was 310 errors per thousand words. So about every third word contained an error according to at least one of the judges. When demanding that at least two of the four judges had to signal the same error to accept it as a 'true' error, the error rate dropped tot a still respectable 135 errors per thousand words. About every seventh word contained such an error.


87

Author: Andreu van Hooft Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 11h-11h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research The absence of added value on using English in product advertisements in Hong Kong There have been several studies on the use of English in advertising in countries where English has no official status (Gerritsen et al., 2007; Görlach (Ed.), 2002; Martin, 2002; Van Meurs, Korzilius, Hermans, 2004; Van Hooft, 2006; Piller, 2003). However, there are few quasi experimental studies on the impact of use of English in ads in countries where English is a co-official language. We will report the results of a quasi-experimental study conducted in Hong Kong where we studied to what extent the use of English predicts a positive product image as well as predicts a positive attitude towards the English text of three product ads from the English version of the Hong Kong edition of Cosmopolitan glossy magazine. Product image was measured on three sub dimensions: 1) Modernity (more vs. less modern, 3 items), 2) purchasing intention (2 items) 3) price (1 item). Secondly, we measured participants’ attitude towards the use of English and Cantonese in the ads. Finally, we measured participants’ attitude to Cantonese and English language in general. A total of 96 Hong Kong women with Cantonese as mother tongue and English as second language, participated in this between groups experiment. One group (N= 47) evaluated three product ads in the original English version and the other group (N= 49) evaluated an identical version of the ads, but in Cantonese. The young Hong Kong women that participated in this study evaluated the use and social prestige of English and Cantonese equally positively. The use of English did not lead to a more positively product image than the use of Cantonese. Finally, although the English version led to a more positive attitude towards the English text of one of the three ads texts in English, the use of Cantonese also led to quite positive attitudes towards the text of all three ads in Cantonese. It appears that in post-colonial Hong Kong, the use of Cantonese in product ads has almost the same effect as the use of English. For young Cantonese bilingual women in Hong Kong, in other words, the use of English in product ads has not always an added value.


88

Author: Margot van Mulken & Berna Hendriks Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Time: 9h-9h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research The language of power – An analysis of a corpus of CEO letters Due to globalization, corporate communication executives are increasingly faced with the challenges of effectively addressing their diverse and dispersed internal and external audiences, which has prompted a heightened interest in research investigating (cross-cultural) variability in style conventions in corporate communication genres such as, for example, annual reports (de Groot, 2008) or CEO letters (Hyland, 1998). For internal audiences, CEOs are supposed to lead the way and to devise the policies of the organisation with regard to the future. Consequently, CEOs not only need to walk the talk, but to talk the walk and, perhaps more importantly, to talk the talk, so as to persuade the organisation’s employees to follow the directions the CEO wishes the organisation to take. In social psychological research on language and power, a powerful communication style is generally operationalized as lacking the characteristics of ‘powerless language’. Powerless language is laced with intensifiers (‘so’, ‘very’), hedges (‘I think’, ‘sort of’), questioning forms and polite forms (Parton et al. 2002). The purpose of the present study was to analyse the language of power in relation to message content in a corpus of 158 ‘ Letters of the CEO’ addressed at employees of a large multinational. In the corpus analysis we combined a quantitative and qualitative analysis to investigate the occurrence of high-power and low-power linguistic elements of CEO speak. Findings suggest that the language of CEOs can indeed be characterized as powerful due to the high frequency of high-power linguistic modifiers and the relative absence of low-power linguistic modifiers and that CEO employ a variety of strategies to talk the talk. References Groot, E. de (2008). English annual reports in Europe. A study on the identification and reception of genre characteristics in multimodal annual reports originating in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Utrecht: LOT. Hyland, K. (1998). Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO's Letter. Journal of Business Communication, 35: 224-244. Parton, S., Siltanen, S., Hosman, L. & Langenderfer, J. (2002). Employment Interview Outcomes And Speech Style Effects. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21: 144-161.



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Author: Ellen Van Praet Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Business communication training: ethnography as a teaching resource Recent studies of language learning show it is a social endeavour, often most effective when it is the result of activities in social situations. Still, business communication courses often focus on language behaviour, without considering the practices and knowledge which give meaning to this behaviour. Through a case study of developing a meetings and negotiations skills course and resulting student projects, this paper explores the value of utilizing ethnographic research tools for facilitating situated learning. It argues for a more creative approach to business communication training which encourages students to reframe, view existing knowledge/practices in different contexts, and give different meanings to it. As a final assignment to the course, students were asked to complete an in-depth participation/observation of a business meeting at an institution/corporation, interview a participant of the meeting, make a photograph of the board room, draw a sketch of the seating arrangement and write an ethnographic, reflective account. Their stories cover meetings at major corporations such as Philips (Brugge), Arcelor Mittal (Zelzate), Bekaert (Zwevegem). Discussing vignettes of their accounts and triangulating it with the research literature, the paper argues that by way of immersion within and investigation of corporate culture, business communication training can highlight language learning as a social practice, and in that way become more meaningful and motivating.


90

Author: Ludwina Van Son Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Incomprehension: a new way to deal with multilinguism and intercultural communication Although the concept of Intercomprehension is not very recent, it has only been actively introduced in language teaching since 1990 by teams of European researchers who explored the notion of IC and elaborated various applications in projects financed by the European commission. Intercomprehension is to be defined as the process of developing the ability to co-construct meaning in the context of the encounter of different languages, and to make pragmatic use of this in a concrete communicative situation (Capucho, 2004). It relies on the transfer of skills, strategies and knowledge from known to unknown languages and from experienced to unfamiliar cultures. This implies that IC does not focus exclusively on the verbal aspect of communication but also on discursive and representational practices as a result of lived experiences and conceptualizations of reality by the learner. The aim of Intercomprehension is twofold: raise the learner's awareness about his/her proper cognitive, cultural and communicative resources and competences which enable him/her to take part in foreign and/or multilingual encounters and subsequently motivate the learner to interact with another language, another culture without fearing failure. The reliance to common sense and situational experience also indicates that the concept of IC holds a strong social dimension, facilitating interaction and communication for every individual in an internationalized world. The intercomprehensive approach is not only a very resourceful strategy in the evident internationalized context of business today, its experience-based methodology is also a perfect tool to learn efficiently language for specific purpose Most European projects dedicated to Intercomprehension and foreign language education explored Intercomprehension between related languages. Yet other projects have been working on Intercomprehension beyond related languages as a strategy for language learning and cultural awareness or are developing a network to sustain the development of Intercomprehension. The activities and experiments elaborated within this frame will be presented and discussed.


91

Author: Kathleen Ann Vance Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: British Columbia Institute of Technology (Canada) Time: 15h30-16h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Teaching with technology: a decision based on business communication research and teacher experience In Blended Learning in Higher Education (2008), Garrison and Vaughan claim that technology is causing the greatest transformation in education since the 1940’s. In Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace (1999), Palloff and Pratt identify the phenomenal growth of the Internet as raising new issues and problems in education. Tracing the growth of business email, Louhiala-Salminen in From Business Correspondence to Message Exchange: The Notion of Genre in Business Communication (1999), identified further research into computer mediated communication as vital for the field of business communication. While not specifically investigating teaching, Louhiala-Salminen viewed the contextualized email message as ideally replacing the model business documents so often taught in business communication classrooms. The business communication classroom has meanwhile become a site of blogs, wikis, podcasts, YouTube, twitters and text messaging. The interest of my paper is the convergence of these three research areas in the business communication classroom: 1) general research in technology in education, 2) specific research in the use of technology in the teaching of business communication, and 3) research in the influence of technology on business communication practices. Specifically, my paper raises the question of the degree to which teachers of business communication base their practices in adapting technology to their classrooms on these three areas of research and the relative weighting each area holds for them as they go about their daily activities in their real and virtual classrooms. Following a review of the literature of the use of technology in teaching business communication, the paper uses a case-study approach to explore the ways in which teachers in one communication department are using technology in their teaching and the extent to which they view their practices as drawing upon the research findings of their field, more general research findings on technology in education, and on their own experiences.


92

Author: Wim Vandekerckhove & Jos Leys Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Greenwich Business School (UK) / HIVA - Catholic University Leuven (Belgium)

Time: 12h30-13h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Dear Sir, we have a meta-fact on you. Investor engagement in the context of socially responsible investment With the financial crisis, socially responsible investment (SRI) has gained attention. SRI designates a variety of rationales and techniques for including non-financial criteria into investment decisions. One technique of SRI consists of investors engaging with investee corporations on issues of concern. The aim is twofold. First, the investor hopes to get more information on corporate policies and practices with regard to allegations of improper behaviour, made by third parties (NGOs, unions, press). Second, the investor tries to influence these practices by signalling investor concern to top management over certain issues. However, the engagement process itself remains opaque, especially in Europe where shareholder activism (SRI activists voting at AGM) is relatively unknown, and where ‘soft engagement’ (behind-closed-doors-dialogue) is more popular. This paper uses data from the Portfolio21 (see www.portfolio21.info) engagement process (letters to and from management and boards of investee corporations) to show that: − factual claims in third party allegations are heavily disputed and quite easily

neutralized by corporate management, − the allegation itself is a fact that cannot be denied nor neutralized. It is a meta-fact –

the allegation is a fact and makes factual claims – that can be used in SRI engagement regardless of the truth-value of the factual claims made in the allegation,

− engaging with corporate management on these meta-facts ironically renders the engagement dialogue more concrete and allows investors to better forecast future corporate behaviour and practices.


93

Author: Lieve Vangehuchten, Willy Van Parys & Alison Noble Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp / Antwerp Maritime Academy (Belgium)

Time: 12h30-13h


Room: 2.07

Track: Research CCMAR: A research project on corporate communication for maritime purposes Miscommunication in the maritime world often has serious consequences for safety. Central to this research project is the ambition to determine the features of maritime communication (linguistic, intercultural) that hinder or aid the quality of work onboard a merchant ship (impediments, threats, facilitators, drivers). More concretely the objective of the research is to establish the possible connection between communication and levels of effectiveness during professional maritime activities by examining which factors characterise communication, be it successful or unsuccessful, in the maritime world. The project thus intends to make a structural and sustainable contribution to the achievement of successful professional communication for maritime purposes. In a preliminary investigation based on the existing research literature and consultation with maritime professionals, some possible variables that might influence communication were inventoried. Survey based research in combination with selected in-depth interviews will determine the relative importance of these variables, establishing which variables prove to be particularly dominant. To this end, three surveys at the first stage of this project will be carried out exclusively amongst captains and deck officers: one on linguistic features, one on (inter)cultural features and one on the use of SMCP (Standard Marine Communication Phrases). The present paper will focus on the results of the first survey, examining the extent to which linguistic features such as insufficient knowledge of vocabulary and/or grammar in general, insufficient knowledge of technical vocabulary, poor pronunciation and weak oral skills, listening problems (misinterpreting oral information/statements/instructions/orders), poor reading skills (misinterpreting written materials), writing problems (writing errors leading to unreadable reports/notes/instructions) etc., influence the quality of communication in the maritime sector.


94

Author: Heidi Veplaetse & Birgitta Meex Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Lessius University College / K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research German and English corporate mission statements as hybrid internal/external communication: the expression of competence and HR competencies Many different participants are involved in the text type of mission statements, both as referred parties as well as addressees (cf. Stallworth Williams 2008). In these terms the question concerning intended readership arises: are mission statement texts to be interpreted as external or as internal communication, or both? (cf. Cheney and Christensen 2001). In this respect the positive organizational identity claim in mission statements is often aimed at a corporation’s (future) employees, as a guideline for behaviour as well as shared identity. Following Ran & Duimering (2007: 174-175) we argue that identity claims in mission statements may take the form of static existential statements of being or that of dynamic representations of becoming. We will investigate to which extent this process of identification may be complemented by insights from Human Resources Management which screen prospective employees in terms of their competencies, i.e. the dynamic process of adopting a specific corporate identity and the static perspective of identifying with this identity (cf. Lucia and Lepsinger 1999, Van Beirendonck 2001). It is argued in this respect that longer mission statements texts represent a dynamic hybrid form between internal and external communication, i.e. respectively as an identifying device and as a recruiting device. Our analytical methodology is based on a threefold linguistic typology of competence markers, (viz. the interplay between volition and ability as means for achievement on the one hand, and social participant based competences on the other), and their subcategories. The analysis will be complemented by insights concerning competencies for (prospective) employees from Human Resources Management in daily corporate practice. The analysis is based on a corpus of approximately 15,000 words of German and English corporate mission statements. References Cheney, G. & Christensen, L.T. (2001). Organizational Identity: Linkages Between Internal and External Communication. In F.M. Jablin & L.L. Putnam (Eds.), The New Handbook of Organizational Communication. Advances in Theory, Research, and Methods. London: Thousand Oaks / New Delhi: Sage. Lucia, A.D. & Lepsinger, R. (1999). The Art and Science of Competency Models: Pinpointing Critical Success Factors in Organizations. New Jersey: Wiley & Sons. Ran, B. & Duimering, P.R. (2007). Imaging the Organization: Language Use in Organizational Identity Claims. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21-2: 155-187. Stallworth Williams, L. (2008). The Mission Statement. A Corporate Reporting Tool with a Past, Present, and Future. Journal of Business Communication, 45, 2: 94-119. Van Beirendonck, L. (2001). Competentiemanagement. The essence is human competence. Leuven: Acco.


95

Author: Hans Verboven Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 16h30-17h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Pragmatic approaches to fostering goodwill through mission slogans and image campaigns in the chemical industry The environmental externalities of the (petro)chemical industry strongly affect its general image and perception. Furthermore, its B2B-nature - chemical companies in general sell raw materials to other companies and do not produce end-consumer products - limits opportunities to create goodwill among the general public through product satisfaction. Public opinion is thus very much aware of the (environmental) externalities of the industry but not of the many benefits it can create. In this paper we will discuss the strategies which such companies adopt to address these issues. We will do so by analyzing the various semantic strategies of self-presentation in their mission slogans (tag lines). We will then test the findings by applying them to image campaigns launched by these companies and by relating them to the concept of “desired perception”. Although a number of mission slogans still provide some proof of a more self-centered approach all image campaigns reveal a preference for the stakeholder-oriented approach. The campaigns focus either on corporate social responsibility (CSR) or attempt to illustrate the positive influence which the company exerts on people’s lives (CSR branding). Finally we will ask ourselves to what extent the strategies in question are testimony to a pragmatic approach to CSR. We will address this question by confronting the libertarian Friedmanite views with the popular image of CSR and stakeholder theory. While the majority of the leading European and American players within the chemical industry feature in our corpus we will focus on BAYER and BASF, two giants in the sector.


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Author: S. Paul Verluyten Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 18h-18h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Hofstede's followers: nothing new under the sun? In our presentation we will perform a comparative analysis of Hofstede’s four dimensions and the various dimensions proposed by four of his followers: Trompenaars, Pinto, Schwartz and the Globe study. It will appear that nearly all their cultural dimensions are identical to, or subcomponents of, Hofstede’s four original dimensions. The most ‘popular’ of Hofstede’s dimensions clearly is Individualism-Collectivism. All four of his followers use it. Four out of Trompenaars’ seven dimensions fall under that heading. The first is identical to Hofstede’s, the next three are subcomponents of it: − Individualism-Communitarianism − Universalism-Particularism − Specific-Diffuse − Achievement-Ascription

Contrary to what Hofstede himself seems to suggest, that does not make the three ‘sub-dimensions’ useless. A position on the Individualism-Collectivism dimension represents a cluster of values which are correlated, i.e. which usually go together. In other words, these values sometimes do not go together. In those cases, it may be useful to ‘unzip’ (Magala 2005) the original dimension, to decompose it into various subparts. Power Distance is taken up in two of the frameworks examined (Globe, Schwartz), Uncertainty Avoidance in two (Trompenaars, Globe), Masculinity-Femininity in only one (Globe; decomposed into ‘Performance orientation’ and ‘Gender egalitarianism’). Only four or five dimensions that do not originate from Hofstede are proposed in the four frameworks we examine here. Most have to do with time orientation, notoriously absent from Hofstede. These non-Hofstede dimensions are by no means new or original. They draw back on older work, such as Hall’s monochrony-polychrony (which Trompenaars turns into ‘Sequential-Synchronic’), or Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s value orientations. Other than the interest of unzipping the original Hofstede dimensions in some cases, nothing really new has been added by the cultural frameworks we examined here. Hofstede’s old study remains the basis for most of the research in this field that is carried out today.


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Author: David A. Victor Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 9h-9h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Repositioning business communication, international business and information systems within an interdisciplinary approach to higher education in business This presentation reviews and then attempts to reposition the role that business communication, international business and information systems have played in common in the traditional business school. None of these fields fits easily into the discipline-based silos that solidified in business schools. The position posited is that this failure to fit in a pre-existing discipline is based on two factors. First, all three fields are by nature interdisciplinary. Second, all three fields flowered only after business schools had adopted field-based disciplines which in their rigidity represent the antithesis to interdisciplinary research and teaching. Both as new fields and as interdisciplinary subjects, all three have much to offer to the changing nature of business education. Far from viewing themselves as orphans without a home in an existing discipline, business communication, international business and information systems studies can help shape the future nature of the increasingly interdisciplinary business school of the future.


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Author: John Lawrence Waltman & Sandra M. Defebaugh Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 14h-14h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Practice Effective training for multinationals using interactive modules The most effective communication is usually one-to-one; similarly learning through one-to-one, individualized training is desirable, yet this is a luxury few organizations can afford! The expensive and complex logistical challenges multinational businesses face when assembling trainees and trainer in a central site to ensure effective, consistent training multiply with the travel and lodging expenses required by trainees located from remote locations. This presentation addresses an adaptable, cost effective, one-on-one set of training modules proven to deliver quality training with minimal disruption. Driven by the Sarbanes-Oxley and the Corporate Sentencing Guidelines mandates, strict ethical compliance is crucial for domestic and multinational businesses, yet multinationals are sorely challenged when developing and delivering effective, uniform training in this and other subject areas to busy or remotely located employees. Our presentation explores a set of successful, self-paced, multimedia, interactive training modules we developed to train businesspersons in business professionalism and ethics. Conference attendees will find this flexible digital model has wider applications, particularly in training in international business communication. The presentation first explores the strategies used for delivering content, followed by tools chosen for delivering content as well as the incentives built in to motivate learning/completion of the training material. The varied types of learning styles found in a pool of trainees were met in part by backing up written text with podcasts as well as relevant new case studies, with all designed to reinforce the modules’ conceptual framework. The built in online interaction throughout reinforces the concepts and tests understanding periodically. Where individuals make wrong choices, the program provides them with targeted review material. The modules’ suitable capstone case studies test the most significant concepts. Conference attendees should find this approach to be relevant, cost effective, and yet truly personalized, a very attractive combination in training in the attendees’ fields today.



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Author: David Ward Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Wisconsin (USA) Time: 18h-18h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Teaching Many hands and bad work: the underperformance of modern teams There are few more firmly entrenched beliefs in the 21st century workplace than the value of teamwork. As one popular textbook notes, the small group is “the workhorse of the modern organization” (Cragan, Wright, and Kasch). And many of the defining trends of our times, such as the flattening of company hierarchies and the globalization of business, are premised on the idea of effective team communication. But, even so, recent business history is replete with examples of ineffective communication within and between groups. Indeed, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has been construed by some as a massive series of communication breakdowns. This session will explore the major challenges to achieving effective team communication and what value the scholarly literature on teamwork has for classroom approaches to this issue. Questions examined include the following: (1) How has the flattening of company hierarchies altered group dynamics? (2) How have recent changes in workplace technology and the rise of social media influenced team behavior? and (3) What are the most common causes of failed teams?



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Author: William Wardrope, Jean MacDonald & Stuart MacDonald Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Central Oklahoma (USA) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.09 Track: Research Krafting a takeover: Kraft Foods' attempted takeover of Cadbury, Inc. Earlier this year, U.S. company Kraft Foods, Inc., began a corporate takeover attempt of Cadbury, a British candy company (Yahoo! Finance, 2009), known across the world for its “Cadbury Eggs.” The bid, which has been widely perceived as hostile (Wiggins, 2009) has prompted a series of statements and counterstatements by both organizations, by mainstream media, and other public sources of information, all of which give potential insight into the rhetorical nature of the corporate struggle. News reports and op-eds about the ongoing battle have appeared in media outlets across the globe with increasing frequency as a deadline date approaches. Large sums of money are no doubt fueling the fight - the latest offer stood at approximately £10 (Wiggins, 2009), a significant amount, even for large corporate entities during a worldwide economic crisis. A decision is expected to be rendered by November 9, 2009. While the legal aspects surrounding the takeover bid are clearly technical and financial in nature, to what extent do the players (each of the organizations and the media as a whole) perpetuate their own rhetorical messages through the news? What underlying messages can be extrapolated from the way news articles are constructed, organized, and presented to the public? This study attempts to answer those questions by examining a convenience sampling of news releases/articles from three sources: (1) Kraft Foods, (2) Cadbury, Inc., and (3) public news outlets in both the United States and the United Kingdom. We ask the question, “What image/message do each of these three sources attempt to develop using language and syntax, i.e., what rhetorical forces are at work behind the construction of messages related to a business struggle? We attempt to address that question using Centering Resonance Analysis (CRA), a relatively new software program which takes streaming media and text, parses the words reducing them to noun phrases, and weights the influence/importance of the noun phrases, thus measuring the intent of the conversants. The influence of the words is graphed by weight and then mapped showing the interconnectedness and the hierarchy of importance (Crawdad Technology, 2005). A sophisticated form of content analysis, CRA plots the relationships of words in a text to develop conclusions about the subtext of any seemingly straightforward message. Our analysis then compares, using descriptive and basic inferential methods, the rhetorical intent suggested by each of the three groups. We then apply cultural analysis as a basis of comparison in an effort to identify any subtle differences signaled by the different approaches. Inasmuch all of the data appear in English, no lingual translation efforts existed to impede our results. Based on our study, we offer suggestions for expanding this line of research to various corporate, public, and commercial contexts. References Crawdad Technology (2005). Centering Resonance Analysis. Retrieved October 29, 2009 from: www.crawdadtech.com/pdf/PR20050920.pdf Wiggins, J. (2009). Cadbury braced for Kraft £10bn hostile bid. Ft.com. Retrieved October 30, 2009, from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2bf9b600-c592-11de-9b3b-00144feab49a.html Yahoo! Finance (2009, Sept. 7). Kraft food launches Cadbury takeover attempt. Retrieved October 29, 2009 from: http://yahoo.com/finance.

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Author: Rosemary Weston Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Eastern Michigan University (USA) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching What linguistic and cultural competencies is an international prospect seeking in an overseas business representative or partner? Successful international business transactions depend more on pluri-linguistic/language and cultural skills than have been previously reported, but what linguistic competencies is an international prospect seeking in an overseas representative or partner? What language and cultural competencies are likely to seal the deal? Stevens (2005) reports that a thorough search (spanning 1990-2002) of Business Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Management Communication Quarterly resulted in uncovering very few studies businesses’ perception of communication skills needed and that, during the years searched, “business communication journals seem to have moved away from examining business needs” in this arena. However, among the desired skills reported, the most valued competencies are oral communication, conversational skills and listening skills (Maes, Weldy & Icenogle 1997). These are the skills required of native or native-like speakers. This present study was undertaken to serve as a step in determining the language/linguistic skills desired by CEO’s and upper management officers who are seeking to expand the international scope of their businesses. Business leaders in Italy and Venezuela in the sectors of manufacturing for export, telecommunications and travel/hospitality were asked to complete a short survey rating the importance and relevance of linguistic and cultural competencies of non-native speakers, and whether these competencies have a bearing on doing business with the companies represented by the non-native speaker.


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Author: Kinga Agnes Williams Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Mensana (UK) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.06 Track: Teaching Culture shock or uniformity shock? In the present cultural-political climate most business-communication is bound to be cross-cultural. Various cultures create their world-views by construing reality in particular ways, while rendering alternative world-views threatening. The resulting Cultural Diversity gives rise to Culture Shock, and thus is inherently stressful (Furnham & Bochner 1982). Lack of Cultural Diversity, however, is just as acutely stressful. Globalization, aka "McDonaldization" (Pieterse 2004), creates what could be termed Uniformity Shock (Williams 2009) - a concept considerably less well-researched, albeit no less timely. The paper proposes to delineate how both, diametrically opposing, processes result in the same, cognitively and (socio-)psychologically negative, outcomes - ultimately giving rise to ideologies like Fundamentalism and behavioural correlates like Terrorism. It is concluded that, if functional solutions are to be found, mindfulness of these causal connections is imperative.


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Author: Miao-Chi Wu Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: National Kaohsiung Hospitality College (Taiwan) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research The diversities and significant difference observed from translation performance of print advertising Print advertising has been studied in the fields of visual communication design and media design for a long time. However, few papers have discussed the relationship between translation and print advertising using a quantitative approach in Taiwan. Thus, this study hopes to initiate such studies in future. Menu is a type of print advertising and this research focuses on the translation of menu taken from a hospitality-oriented college. It attempts to investigate the diversities of translating menu with or without images from English to Chinese and to look into the levels of satisfaction of menu translation (LSMT). A questionnaire with open-ended questions was formulated to collect the data to observe the diversities of translation performance from 25 respondents majoring in Applied Foreign Languages (English group) at National Kaohsiung Hospitality College (NKHC). With regard to LSMT, a questionnaire with a-five-point Likert scale, consisted of 10 questions that were arranged in pairs to allow the respondents to compare the different translation that came with or without images was given to 102 respondents from different strands of NKHC. The findings showed that there were significant differences in LSMT between paired samples and between respondents of different ages. In contrast, there were no significant differences in LSMT between genders and strands.


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Author: Catharina Wulf Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: IESEG School of management (France) Time: 18h-18h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.07 Track: Research Cross-border virtual team building The last decade has witnessed a fervent debate about the criticality of future managers acquiring the appropriate soft skills in the fields of team dynamics and leadership and, above all, in the domain of cross-cultural communication in order to establish fruitful long-term relationships with international business partners and stakeholders. Rather than looking at the acquisition of soft skills from a theoretical perspective, this article argues the importance of using experiential exercises or project-based learning, to ensure that students hone their soft skills while interacting with each other across borders in an international environment. Using a social constructivist approach to learning, the author presents a unique pilot project that was organized at ESG Paris Business School in Paris France and the University of California at Riverside in the US. International Business MBA students from both universities were divided into virtual teams from different cultural contexts. Each team had to use specific 2.0 web tools to build an original module for expatriate services. Students had to interact with their peers on both sides of the Atlantic. The aim of the project was to have students experience first-hand the advantages and shortcomings of virtual communication and teambuilding in a cross-cultural context and to critically reflect on the collaborative process. Results were mixed as not all students equally participated in the project.


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Author: Yan Zhao Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: China University of Geosciences (China) Time: 17h30-18h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.08 Track: Research Intercultural study on nonverbal communication in computer mediated communication: Case China, Finland and United States Based on the data collected from three nations: China, Finland, and the United States, this study compares interpersonal nonverbal communication with CMC nonverbal communication Through comparing the functions of nonverbal communication (NVC) in CMC and NVC in face to face communication (FTF) which are evaluated through several cases and statistics collected from real computer mediated communication environment, the study tested the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: NVC in CMC could share the same functions that NVC plays in FTF communication. Corresponding to 6 types of NVC functions (repeating, highlighting, complementing, contradicting and substituting) in FTF communication, the questionnaire tested the recognition and acceptance of NVC function in CMC environment. By exploiting the underlining correlation between the national NVC recognition and acceptance and the culture dimensions, the study further quantitatively tested another two hypotheses that are related to Hofstede’s UAI Culture Dimension on the same examples and cases, which are employed by testing the hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2: The nation having lower uncertainty avoidance relates to more openness for nonverbal communication in CMC, while higher UAI side relates to more conservative tendency in using nonverbal communication in CMC. Hypothesis 3: Uncertainty avoidance in communication negatively relates to the degree of accuracy in understanding nonverbal communication in CMC This study is a theoretical and quantitative pilot study which systematically examines the differences and underlying values suggested both in an intercultural and inter-group sense. The implication of the study could be interesting and valuable in an academic or in a practical way, especially for people working in the video game industry and E-business, as well as daily business or for personal online communication when negotiating and exchanging information.


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PANELS


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Business community and academia: understanding and collaboration Panel convenors: Sylvain Dieltjens & Priscilla Heynderickx Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Lessius University College/K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Time: 11h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.10

Presentations: Utilizing workplace interviews to empower business students with written and verbal communication skills Author: Arlene O. DeWitt Affiliation: Assumption College (USA) Contact: [email protected] This pedagogical approach of workplace interviews empowers students with written and verbal communication skills and provides the context for: analysis of management and organizational behavior concepts, awareness of tacit knowledge principles and research into career options. This semester project is student driven and incorporates the following business writing formats: proposals, statement of purpose, formal business reports and letters. It also provides students with informational interviewing experience and has resulted in their career choices and changes. Internship approach at Lessius Author: Sylvain Dieltjens Affiliation: Lessius University College/K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Contact: [email protected] A link to the employment market Author: Evelyne Vos-Fruit Affiliation: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Contact: [email protected] The International Business Communication course at the Radboud University Nijmegen equips students with the skills to be professionals in the field of International Business. One of the aims of the course is to prepare students to conduct independent research into both the theoretical and practical aspects of an organization’s internal and external communication problems. In order to achieve this goal fourth year students are required to take the module "Applied Research" and third year students are encouraged to choose a business placement (B.A.). The module "Applied Research" has at its core the conducting of research in a practical context. In this type of research the questions that the study attempts to answer arise from an actual problem being experienced by an organization (government, profit, non-profit, commercial). This problem should be related to inter-cultural, international, internal or external communication. The research question is placed in a scientifically sound context, whereby theoretical insights are translated into a practical context: the idea is to solve practical problems by applying scientific theory. An advantage of the minor placement (stage minor) is that it offers many different learning strategies and outcomes. On completion students will be equipped with a greater understanding of the workings of an internal organization and the external business environment together with an increased sense of self. In short, students will acquire the confidence and skills that increase their marketability in the business world. Carrefour Academy Author: Jean-Marc Molon Affiliation: Carrefour Belgium Contact: [email protected] Carrefour Belgium gives its employees without a college degree (or even without a secondary school degree) the opportunity to participate in a training programme. In this way they can obtain an officially recognized degree. It also creates the possibility to advance into a position of daily management based on their professional experience. This project is set up in collaboration with an Flemish governmental employment agency and a university college. Carrefour wants to promote continuous training. Collaboration between the academic world and enterprises


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Author: Vera Janssens Affiliation: Siemens Belgium Contact: [email protected] Cooperation between academics and enterprises is a cherished tradition at Siemens. For years now, we have been heavily involved in partnerships with schools and universities and truly believe in the knowledge transfer via collaboration between the two parties. Through our global Siemens Generation21 program, we help both students and teachers stay up to date in science and technology and stimulate their interest in technical professions. Since the economic future of a society depends to a large extent on the quality of the university-level education available in technology and the natural sciences, we believe that companies – the future employers of these young people – must get involved in order to ensure that academic institutions can fully realize their potential. We believe that collaboration between academics and enterprises can be mutually beneficial and result in a long term win-win relationship. By working together on specific projects, education and business sectors can help each other in resolving problems, creating new products or exploring new ideas and at the same time becoming more competitive and more profitable. Working with enterprises gives educational institutions space for practical experience and enhances their prestige and attractiveness while giving the companies an opportunity to tap into a wealth of knowledge and expertise residing in these institutions. Partnership between businesses and educational institutions contribute to the development of a modern knowledge society.


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Business genres on the move Panel convenors: Elizabeth De Groot & Paul Gillaerts Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Radboud University College (The Netherlands) / Lessius University College/K.U.Leuven (Belgium)

Time: 11h-16h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 1.33 Presentations: Critical genre analysis, interdiscursivity and professional practice Author: Vijay Bhatia part 1 (am) Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Contact: [email protected] It is generally accepted that professional genres are constructed, interpreted, used and analyzed in the contexts of the professional practices that they invariably co-construct (Bhatia, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010); however, in genre literature, they are often analyzed in isolation, thus undervaluing the role and function of interdiscursivity in professional practice. Drawing on the analyses of a variety of professional genres from a range of relevant professional practices, I will argue for a more comprehensive and critical understanding of discursive and professional practices, thus illustrating how these interdiscursive processes and practices are cleverly exploited by professionals in different corporations and disciplines to achieve their individual corporate objectives. References Bhatia, V.K. (2004). Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View. London and New York: Continuum. Bhatia, V.K. (2006). Discursive Practices in Disciplinary and Professional Contexts. Linguistic and Human Sciences, 2(1): 5-28. Bhatia, V. K., (2008). Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice. English for Specific Purposes, 27: 161-174. Bhatia, V.K. (2010). Interdiscursivity in Professional Communication. Discourse and Communication, 4: 1. Working with genre systems: Accommodating multiple interests in the construction of organisational texts Author: Stephen Bremner part 1 (am) Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Contact: [email protected] Approaches to the teaching of workplace genres tend to treat them as stand alone entities, with few considerations beyond their generic integrity, and often they are seen as tasks to be tackled by individual writers. Yet research suggests that genres cluster together in sets or systems in order to facilitate particular objectives (Devitt, 1991; Bazerman, 1994; Zachry, 2000), and that writing in workplace settings is a collaborative endeavour. Not only this, the construction of workplace texts, given that it takes place within contexts that have their own personal and organisational exigencies, requires writers to pay attention to their own interests as well as those of the organization. Attempting to address these dual needs makes particular demands on workplace writers, who need to consider issues such as accountability to the organisation and their relationships with colleagues; such demands have a considerable impact on the way that they go about the everyday business of writing. This paper draws on a longitudinal study of writing in an institutional context, and looks at the interplay in a cluster of genres that served a wider institutional process. It examines how the genres combined to serve the purposes of the institution, and focuses on the ways in which participants interacted with and exploited these genres in order to protect or further their individual interests and objectives within the institution. The paper concludes by considering the pedagogical implications that arise from the interconnected nature of genres and their potential influence on other activities surrounding the writing process. References Bazerman, C. (1994). Systems of genres and the enactment of social intentions. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp. 79-104). London: Taylor & Francis.


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Devitt, A. (1991). Intertextuality in tax accounting: Generic, referential, and functional. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual dynamics of the professions: Historical and contemporary studies of writing in professional communities (pp. 336-357). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Zachry, M. (2000). Communicative practices in the workplace: A historical examination of genre development. Technical Writing and Communication, 30(1): 57-79. Downplaying the downturn: A critical analysis of interdiscursivity in earnings conference calls Author: Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli part 1 (am) Affiliation: Facoltà di Economia, Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy)

Contact: [email protected] The periodic reporting of earnings results via teleconferencing has become a routine event in corporate communication. During earnings conference calls, teams of top executives present financial information to professional investment analysts who are connected via telephone. The presentations are followed by question and answer sessions that allow the analysts to interact directly with the executives. Earnings conference calls are usually webcast, with corresponding audio files posted on company websites, and thus are also available to a larger base of stakeholders. Unlike mandatory written financial documentation (e.g., annual and quarterly reports), earnings conference calls are organized on a voluntary basis in order to proactively engage investors in a cost-effective way, while achieving greater visibility and promoting an image of transparency at the same time. From a generic perspective, earnings conference calls have a dual purpose: to report information about the current financial status of a company and to persuade potential investors of its worth and soundness, utilizing a combination of monologic, dialogic and visual forms of communication. This study investigates a small corpus based on the transcripts of earnings conference calls that all refer to the third quarter of fiscal year 2009, and therefore in a still-suffering global economy. The analysis takes a critical perspective, aiming to determine: 1) whether the executive speakers may attempt obscure the negative by drawing attention to the positive, with particular reference to interdiscursivity, i.e., the appropriation of generic elements of other discourses, and 2) which linguistic features and patterning may be privileged to accomplish this. Corpus methodology was used to analyze occurrences of lexical items that describe negative economic trends and phenomena (e.g., down, flat, slow, challenging). This served as a point of entry for follow-up qualitative analysis to shed light the strategic usage of these items to juxtapose information and promotion, thus reflecting the interdiscursive nature of the earnings conference calls. Preliminary results indicate that the company executives shift between the agentless objectivity of standardized reports to communicate negative results and the interpersonal language of promotional rhetoric to emphasize their successes (despite unfavorable economic conditions) and to express optimism for the future. These findings contribute to a heightened understanding of how companies may manipulate financial disclosure to distract from their weaknesses in this spoken genre that now plays a vital role in the corporate world. References Bhatia, V.K. (2005). Interdiscursivity in business letters. In P. Gillaerts & M. Gotti (Eds.), Genre Variation in Business Letters (pp.31-54). Bern: Peter Lang. Bhatia, V.K. (2008). Towards critical genre analysis. In V.K. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew & R. Jones (Eds.), Advances in Discourse Studies (pp.166-177). London and New York: Routledge. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2009). ‘Just wondering if you could comment on that’: indirect requests for information in corporate earnings calls. Text & Talk, 9 (6): 661–681. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2010). Discourse connectives in genres of financial disclosure: earnings calls vs. earnings releases. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(3): 650-653. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2009.07.007. Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2007). Conference calls, the business meetings of the 21st century: A multi-layered approach to an emerging genre. In P. Bou Franch, A. E. Sopeña Balordi & A. Briz Gómez (Eds.), Pragmática, Discurso y Sociedad. Quaderns de Filologia Estudis Lingüístics XII (pp. 57-75). València: Universitat de València. Gibbins. M., Richardson, A. & Waterhouse, J. (1990). The management of corporate financial discourse: opportunism, ritualism, policies and processes. Journal of Accounting

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and Economics Research, 28 (1): 121-143. Hyland, K. (1998). Exploring corporate rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s letter. Journal of Business Communication, 35 (2): 224-245. Saatchi, E. (2007). The discourse of voluntary disclosures in quarterly conference calls: Implications for investor relations. In M. Bait & M.C. Paganoni (Eds.), Discourse and Identity in Specialized Communication. Conference Proceedings, Gargnano di Garda, June 25-26 2007 (pp.100-103). Milano: Lubrina Editore. Who’s to blame? A cross-cultural analysis of attribution in international financial press releases Author: Elizabeth de Groot part 2 (pm) Affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) Contact: [email protected] Both the United States and Russia are important markets for the Dutch economy (Statistics Netherlands, 2008). Large Dutch corporations such as Akzo Nobel have divisions in the US and Russia, whereas large US and Russian companies such as Johnson & Johnson or Gazprom are located in the Netherlands. To communicate topical performance details with their international financial stakeholders, these companies commonly rely on the genre of the financial press release. Financial press releases are often aimed at investors, analysts and journalists. In addition to accounting details, financial press releases include text portions with messages from senior executives and descriptions of financial and operational results. They are generally intended to inform as well as persuade the audience: “the informational purpose is to impart facts about the company’s performance, and the promotional (…) purpose is to favorably influence readers’ views of that performance” (Henry, 2008: 368). A recurrent rhetorical strategy in financial press releases is the ‘blame theme’, which expresses the company’s way of presenting causes for its performance. Henry (2008) illustrates this with an example where bad performance (lower sales) is ascribed to external forces (unwilling customers, unfavorable weather conditions and a challenging economy). In social psychological terms, the ‘blame theme’ involves attribution tactics. Attribution theory assumes that people make meaning of their environment and their position within this environment on the basis of construing cause-effect relationships. Effects may be attributed to internal causes that can be controlled or to external causes that are beyond personal control or controllability (Ployhart & Harold, 2004). Research has indicated that companies in particular tend to use attribution creatively in their business texts; they “take personal credit for successes and deny responsibility for failures by ascribing them to internal and external causes, respectively” (Hooghiemstra, 2008: 618). This creative use of attribution tactics is called self-serving attributional bias. Cross-cultural studies of eastern and western business cultures have also pointed out that there may be differences in attribution and self-serving attributional bias. Presumably, such cross-cultural distinctions are caused by differences in cultural values and norms, e.g. individualism versus collectivism (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). The present paper contains a cross-cultural study of attribution in English financial press releases originating in the Netherlands, the US and Russia. With the help of a corpus-based analysis, it seeks to determine if international financial press releases reflect different ways of making meaning, i.e. in terms of cause-effect relationships. As such, it focuses on the culture-specific design of a genre that holds a crucial position within the mix of Investor Relations genres available to multinationals. References Henry, E. (2008). Are investors influenced by how earnings press releases are written? Journal of Business Communication, 45(4): 363-407. Hooghiemstra, R. (2008). East—West differences in attributions for company performance: a content analysis of Japanese and U.S. corporate annual reports. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39(5): 618-629. Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L.Y., Hyde, J.S. & Hankin, B.L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130(5): 711-747. Ployhart, R.E & Harold, C.M. (2004). The Aplicant Attribution-Reaction Theory (AART): An Integrative Theory of Applicant Attributional Processing. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 12(1-2): 84-98.


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Statistics Netherlands. (2008). Internationalisation Monitor 2008. Voorburg/Heerlen: Statistics Netherlands. The BPO workplace, academia & genres relations Author: Gail Forey part 2 (pm) Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Contact: [email protected] The growth, development and expansion of the Information Technology Enabled Services industry (ITES) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) represents a new form of work. Call centres are one part of this booming industry, with India and the Philippines leading the English language call centre market. The development of call centre work has very significant social, political, educational, economic and linguistic consequences for these offshore destinations. One of the linguistic consequences is the impact of the BPO industry on academia. Genres and practices of the BPO industry are influencing changes in curriculum planning, subjects and material found within university programmes in India, the Philippines and elsewhere. This paper focuses on the relationship between academia and the BPO workplace and the reinstation of meanings found in both contexts. Through an investigation of the genre and lexico-grammatical features found in telephonic customer services call centre discourse, and the findings from interviews with various stakeholders from the workplace and academia, I outline some of the shifts which have taken place. References Forey, G. & Lockwood, J. (Eds.). (2010). Globalization, Communication and the Workplace. London: Continuum. Martin, J.R. & Rose, D. (2008). Genre Relations: Mapping Culture. London: Equinox. Martin, J.R. & White, P.R.R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave. Embedded emails as reflections of professional practice Author: Julio Gimenez part 1 (am) Affiliation: The University of Nottingham (UK) Contact: [email protected] The last decade has witnessed a substantial change in the way mediated business communication (MBC) has come to be conceptualised and investigated, giving birth to what may be called ‘the discourse turn’ in MBC in which ‘studies have adopted more complex views of the roles of new media in corporate settings’ (Gimenez, 2009: 134). By the same token, genre studies have experienced a similar change in the way genres are being thought of and examined, with more ‘attention [being] devoted to the complexities of professional genres rather than to a convenient selection of ideal examples of such genres’ (Bhatia, 2008: 166). This paper examines embedded emails as reflections of the practices of a group of professionals at the regulatory and policy department of a multinational based in London in the United Kingdom. The paper adopts a practice-oriented ethnographic approach and analyses embedded emails both as textual representations of communicative activity and, more importantly, as embodiment of professional practices. The presentation particularly focuses on how the discursive practices of the department, involving different genre sets and systems and processes such as genre mixing and embedding, can be better explained as reflections of its professional practices in an attempt to illustrate what Bhatia (2008) has called ‘critical genre analysis’. References Bhatia, V. (2008). Towards critical genre analysis. In V. Bhatia, J. Flowerdew & R.H. Jones (Eds.), Advances in Discourse Studies (pp.166-177). Oxon: Routledge. Gimenez, J. (2009). Mediated communication. In F. Bargiela-Chiappini (Ed.), The Handbook of Business Discourse (pp.132-141). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Emails in an organizational context: genre analysis and gender-correlated usage Author: Paul Gillaerts & Nadine Van den Eynden part 2 (pm) Affiliation: Lessius University College : K.U.Leuven (Belgium) Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Since emails emerged as an important genre in business communication, they have


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attracted wide attention in both, business education (e.g. Bovée & Thill 1997, Ewald & Burnett 1997, Lehman & DuFrene 1998) and research (e.g. Gains 1999, Louhiala-Salminen 1999, Gimenez 2000, 2005 & Nickerson 2000). Still, research into emails has been hampered by the semi-private character of the messages, even in business environments. For this paper a corpus of 200 emails has been used; the study comprises data from a banking and an industry organization, equally distributed in the corpus. Paul Gillaerts conducts a genre-analysis, focussing on the metadiscourse used in the corpus. Two hypotheses have been tested: 1. the email communication shows a preference for interactional metadiscourse; 2. the email communication by women shows more interactionals than that by men. Nadine van den Eynden expands on some other differences in email usage between men and women, from the perspective of the elaborated sociolinguistic research literature on genderlects. References Bovée, C.L. & Thill, J.V. (1997). Business communication today. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Ewald, H.R. & Burnett, R.E. (1997). Business communication. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Gains, J. (1999). Electronic mail: a new style of communciation or just a new medium? An investigation into the text features of e-mail. English for Specific Purposes 18, 1: 81-101. Gimenez, J.C. (2000). Business e-mail communciation. Sime emerging tendencies in register. English for Specific Purposes 19, 3: 237-251. Gimenez, J.C. (2005). Unpacking business emails: Message embededness in internationa business email communication. In P. Gillaerts& M. Gotti (Eds.), Genre variation in business letters (pp. 235-255). Bern: Lang. Lehman, C.M. & DuFrene, D.D. (1998). Business communication. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing. Louhiala-Salminen, L. (1999). From business correspondence to message exchange: The notion of genre in business communication. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Nickerson, C. (2000). Playing the corporate language game. An investigation of the genres and discourse strategies in English used by Dutch writers working in multinational corporations. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi. Textual patterns as a window on interdiscursivity: a corpus-linguistic approach to business genres Author: David Lee part 2 (pm) Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Contact: [email protected] Business genres have been analysed from a number of linguistic points of view, including discoursal-pragmatic (McLaren-Hankin, 2007), cross-cultural (Hamp-Lyons & Lockwood, 2009), and genre-analytic (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990). Corpus-linguistic approaches to the analysis of business genres, however, are comparatively new (Crawford Camiciottoli, 2007; Nelson, 2000, 2006; Rutherford, 2005), due largely to the relative newness of the theoretical paradigm and the technologies that drive it. The computational aspects of corpus analysis have much to offer genre analysts, not least of which is the objectivity of looking at texts first and foremost as strings of identifiable words and phrases rather than as collections of voices, arguments, moves, and ideologies. This paper outlines a corpus-linguistic approach to the analysis of business texts, starting from basic principles, moving on to "n-gram" phraseological analyses, and ending with the more comparison-based corpus approaches known as keywords and key domains analyses, which are, at heart, simply more empirical and computational approaches to stylistic analysis, encompassing notions such as "norm" and "deviations from the norm", as well as "characteristic words/ phrases / conceptual domains". These methods are described through illustrative case studies of various business genres (e.g., financial press releases, annual reports, print advertisements), as well as non-business genres (e.g. casual conversation, news reportage, fiction), and will showcase the kinds of insight that corpus techniques can offer the business genre analyst. Insofar as discursive practices are manifested in actual language patterns that can be searched for and counted, some aspects of interdiscursivity can indirectly be approached through corpus-linguistic methods. The advantages of a computational approach are that computers are ruthlessly efficient at processing text, and can quickly and easily pick up resemblances and differences between texts, with current techniques being sophisticated enough to pick up even 'family resemblances' rather than exact similarities. Corpus-linguistic methods also pick up many patterns that analysts cannot intuit themselves or obtain through raw observation. This paper illustrates these points by looking at how


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words, phrases and lexical semantic sets work to define what discourses are unique to or characteristic of a genre (generic integrity) and what are common to more than one genre (genre mixing), and in so doing help characterise the lexicogrammar of the multiple voices that feed into an interdiscursive genre. Naturally, corpus-linguistic methods have both affordances and drawbacks, and these will be explored in the paper. The point of view taken is very much one of complementarity: adding to and supplementing the current repertoire of tools and approaches rather than replacing or supplanting them. References Bhatia, V.K. (1993). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. London: Longman. Crawford Camiciottoli, B. (2007). The language of business studies lectures: A corpus-assisted analysis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hamp-Lyons, L. & Lockwood, J. (2009). The workplace, the society and the wider world: The offshoring and outsourcing industry. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 29: 145–167. McLaren-Hankin, Y. (2007). Conflicting representations in business and media texts: The case of PowderJect Pharmaceuticals plc. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(6): 1088-1104. Nelson, M. (2000). A Corpus-Based Study of Business English and Business English Teaching Materials. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Manchester: University of Manchester. Nelson, M. (2006). Semantic associations in Business English: A corpus-based analysis. English for Specific Purposes, 25: 217–234. Rutherford, B. A. (2005). Genre analysis of corporate annual report narratives: A corpus linguistics-based approach. Journal of Business Communication, 42(4): 349-378. Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tennis, anyone? On the uptake of PR discourse in news production Author: Tom van Hout part 1 (am) Affiliation: Ghent University College (Belgium) Contact: [email protected] This paper takes a performative approach to genre and examines how news discourse travels across semiotic spaces. Specifically, I apply the notion of uptake (Freadman 1994) to news production. Uptake is a tennis metaphor that captures how, in natural histories of discourse, texts in one genre (e.g. a press release) can be seen as ‘serves’ that invite ‘returns’ or ‘volleys’, i.e. they elicit a responding text in another genre (e.g. a newspaper article). How is news textually mediated? Which “systematic transformations from genre to genre” (Fairclough 2003: 31) make up news production? How does news discourse tumble from one genre into another? Data are drawn from a completed research project on journalists’ writing practices. I present a case study documenting a micro-trajectory from the moment a news story enters the newsroom up to the point it is filed for copy-editing. The news story in question is concerned with increased government funding of biotechnology and nanotechnology research. During ethnographic fieldwork at the business newsdesk of a quality newspaper in Brussels (Belgium), I was able to observe the reporter in question throughout the production process: I overheard him taking a call from a government spokesperson, I sat next to him at the story meeting, I was able to record his writing process online with software, conduct an interview with him shortly afterwards and collect the source material that was emailed to him. The findings attest to the theoretical currency of uptake by showing how the ‘information subsidy’ (Gandy 1982) relayed by the spokesperson makes the leap from a fleeting telephone conversation to notes scribbled on a notepad, survives the 2:00pm story unscathed and re-emerges as an email attachment that finds its way onto the reporter’s editing window and into his news article. References Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Freadman, A. (1994). Anyone for tennis? In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric (pp.43-66). London: Taylor & Francis. Gandy, O.H. (1982). Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidies and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.


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Displaying competence Panel convenors: Geert Jacobs & Craig Rollo Date: Fri. 28 May &

Sat. 30 May Affiliation: Ghent University / University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 16h-18h30

10h30-13h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.10 Presentations: Exploring the genre of 60-sec business networking speeches Author: Hana Blazkova Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Birmingham (UK) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 Both current trends and current economic climate make it increasingly difficult for a small business to build and sustain clientele. Traditional peer networks have become insufficient and many small businesses turn towards organized networking to ensure sufficient marketing support. In the small business segment the phenomenon of organized networking and the tendency to gather in Business Development Networks (BDNs) is clearly on the rise, attracting increasing numbers of small business owners. BDNs are a fast growing phenomenon and form a new community of practice with a distinct rhetoric. This paper will draw on an ethnographic PhD study analyzing BDN discourse practices and will focus on the integral part of BDN meetings, a 60-second infomercial delivered by individual participants. The participants are limited to a single minute in which they need to present their business so as to win over the trust and recognition of their fellow members and establish relationships. The project addresses the question of how the small business owners, through their 60-second rhetoric, stimulate their fellow BDN members to spread positive word of mouth. Using a multi-disciplinary approach combining ethnography, interactional sociolinguistics and insights from cognitive linguistics, the project studies the primary verbal strategies in use that are characteristic for, and thus define, the genre of 60-second networking speeches. This paper focuses on the strategies that communicate competence and credibility or are inherently relational, such as schematic and figurative language or narrative. The dataset used as the basis for analysis and discussion in the overlying ethnographic study is taken from recordings of meetings of 5 networking groups in Birmingham that supplied data over a period of three years. Recordings were supplemented by on-site ethnographic observation, interviews with the members in the primary group, and detailed organizational information gained through internal materials and online surveys. The language of competence @ corporate history(ies) Author: Maria Cristina Gatti Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: University of Verona (Italy) Time: 11h-1h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 This paper discusses how the genre of corporate histories offers rhetorical resources and effective meaning-making strategies which are functional to the persuasive discourse about competence. It is argued that de facto the retrieval of the past is multi-scope: besides its perlocutionary function of asserting the sources of organizational traditions and cultures, the past narrative presents a repository of images and facts in progressive scale, mainly structured in timeline text form. As a matter of fact, the mental-space mappings (projection) set up by the timeline, as cognitive and textual framework, allow for the retrieving of meanings associated with the building of the company’s credentials. The methodological path takes the form of a systematic reading of verbal and non-verbal historical narratives provided by the web-pages of the top 25 companies ranked in the 2008 Fortune Global 500. Corporate history is referred to as the pervasive historical discourse produced by and about organizations reporting on the past of the company and following a typically successful paradigm covering the years from its foundation to the present. The analysis highlights the rhetorical means and the lexicogrammatical features deployed for the building of an image of competence. In order to provide a thorough description of the data for the understanding of meanings represented at different planes, as typical of hypertexts, an extensive cross-modal excursus is followed. Referring to Lemke’s (2002) three sets of interdependent meanings (i.e. organizational, orientational and presentational), the analysis is limited to the organizational meanings (achieved through the ordering of signs in larger units, whether structural or cohesive). Because of


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the foregrounding role attributed to the timeline at organizational level, the prototypical features of the structural combination of time and space at cognitive scale are represented and discussed. That is, the concept of mappings between domains (i.e. time and space) as a core process in the cognitive faculty of producing, transferring, and processing meanings (conceptual blending). Lastly, it becomes evident that in the present approach competence acquires a two-faceted dimension. Besides corporate competence, conveyed by discourse strategies and logico-semantic resources, the receiver’s competence is at stake, namely, its ability to identify and read the core message delivered among the incommensurablity of meanings (both explicit or implicit) and trajectories offered by the web-based text. Company earnings guidance: Could an investor reliably detect an unduly positive bias on the basis of the textual strategies employed? Author: Kristian Hursti Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the credibility of publicly-listed companies’ earnings guidance. The two global economic crises of this past decade have only highlighted this need as it has become increasingly evident that companies can use these disclosures to mislead investors even on a scale detrimental to the entire globe. However, so far most of the research has been done in the fields of finance and accounting, with little heed to the communicative aspects affecting the credibility of these messages. With the help of Stephen A. Toulmin’s Claim-Data-Warrant model, designed for analyzing management messages, this paper aims to establish a deeper link between forecast credibility and the textual strategies employed. In tackling the key question of how important a measure the strength of the warrant, i.e. the logical link between forecast claims and the data offered to support them is in the assessment, the paper argues that in the final analysis this measure may be a crucial determinant of forecast credibility. This approach derives in part from the notion that a company’s share price is effectively a reflection of the company’s earnings potential, and thus the so-called ‘outlook’ section in a company’s financial statement can be seen as the company’s main venue for bolstering this reflection – an opportunity the company can be expected to seize and build the strongest possible case for. Methodologically the paper takes a case study approach, focusing on two positive earnings forecasts released during similar economic conditions by two companies operating roughly in the same field. The forecast with strong warrants was successful, while the other with weak warrants led to a huge profit warning. Based on the findings, textual strategies employed to describe a company’s earnings potential, and especially the strength of this argumentation, could be a reliable indicator of whether the forecast should be deemed credible or not. Communicating competence through pecha kucha presentations Author: Miikka Lehtonen Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) Time: 16h30-17h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 The main purpose of this study is to investigate how individuals can communicate their competences to others by using pecha kucha presentations. Furthermore, competences will be analysed from product development’s perspective by utilising a semiotic theory of the knowledge-creating firm. Current literature on knowledge management has mainly focused on written and oral communication, thus neglecting visual communication almost completely. However, few exceptions do exist: Eppler & Platts (2009), for example, have studied the use of visuals in strategy-formulating processes while Whyte, Ewenstein, Hales & Tidd (2008) investigated how visuals could be utilised in project environments. Therefore the purpose of this study is to bring visual knowledge communication as a means to convey complex ideas and emotions from the margins to the centre. Furthermore, pecha kucha, a form of PowerPoint presentation originally devised by Tokyo-based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, has not been used in organisational settings to share knowledge or to assist in product development processes. Consisting of 20 slides for 20 seconds apiece, pecha kuchas could turn out to be a potential tool for individuals to communicate their competencies to others. Thus, the research question of this study is as follows: Given that we as individuals possess unique cultural backgrounds, how can we visually communicate our competencies to others by using pecha kucha presentation as a means to harness cultural diversity to aid in product development?


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For data gathering purposes, I will be utilising both semistructured interviews and surveys supported with on-site observation. “Your future in safe hands”: the commercial pension saving discourse as a display of banking competence Author: Sophie Limbos Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 17h-17h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 The Belgian discourse on pension saving has one main purpose: to convince the potential customer of the bank’s sole competence to financially secure his future retirement. In Belgium, where retirees benefit from a public pension system, banks compete against a rather unusual competitor: the State. The banking rhetoric aims to undermine the credibility of the State’s competence in order to take ownership of this competence. This takeover of competence to provide future retirees with a safe financial future is realized through an extensive authority shift from State to bank. The authority shift is performed in complementary ways: the first method consists of creating a negative State image, the second consists of relying on the State’s own competence to emphasize this negative image. Due to the legal restrictions under which Belgian banks and insurance companies operate the ‘battle for competence’ is restricted to two combatants: the banks and insurances companies on the one hand, and the State on the other. Using a pragmatic approach combining CA and descriptive business ethics, we analyze a conversation between two customers and a bank employee selling the advantages of a pension saving product. Our analysis reveals little information is given about the bank’s own competence. The bank’s competence is mainly built on the incompetence of the other parties involved. We demonstrate how this destruction of the competing parties’ competence is based on the foregrounding of the information asymmetry between employee and customer: the employee’s supposed knowledge regarding the context and content of pension saving versus the less informed or uninformed customer. Our analysis shows that, at least in this particular conversation, information asymmetry is used as a tool for persuasion. On the level of descriptive business ethics, this analysis reveals some possible ethical conflicts in banking communication. Guiding without steering. Self presentation and the display of competence in coaching interactions Author: Sabine Rettinger Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Germany) Time: 17h30-18h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 In recent years, coaching has become a new field of personal and professional development services that provides clients with guidance in their daily lives as well as at work. While over the past two decades, personal coaching was mainly offered to executives to help develop leadership skills and enhance performance, it currently holds several discrete fields with different histories and methods - ranging from upper management to everyday life. All these fields nevertheless share one main criterion: Following the established concepts of coaching, the professional is supposed to help the client find new strategies for meeting his specific challenges without prescribing a solution. In order to do so, the coach faces the discoursive task of guiding the interaction without steering it while at the same time he must present himself as a competent partner in order to gain the client's trust. How the coach manages to do so is one of the main questions addressed in this talk. Competence in this context seems to be intimately connected with notions of trustworthiness as well as of the ability to show empathy and active listening. Utilizing a multi-disciplinary approach of discourse studies combining conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and discoursive psychology the presented research project analyzes data from coaching sessions in both English and German with a focus on self presentation strategies of both the coach and the client. In this talk, I will provide insight into self presentation strategies in coaching interactions as well as in the complexity of the techniques used by coaches to display competence while at the same time trying to give off an air of trustworthiness and interactional equality. The successful 2008 presidential candidate: How political weblogs have contributed in shaping the American electorate’s preferences


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Author: Giorgia Riboni Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: University of Milan (Italy) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 With the advent of the Net political organizations have acquired the possibility of avoiding traditional media influence and establishing a direct connection with the public. During the 2008 American presidential campaign political parties and their members exploited the Internet - and the relatively new webgenre of blogs in particular - to try and shape the electorate’s preferences. This paper investigates the discursive strategies deployed in weblogs belonging to political parties and congresspeople. For a political blog to be successful it has to be able to persuade undecided citizens to cast their vote for the promoted candidate, therefore during the campaign bloggers represented their preferred aspirant president as more efficient and right for the role than his competitor. Emphasizing the candidate’s competence proved crucial in a difficult moment such as the economic crisis the USA was experiencing during the last phase of the campaign. In order to investigate the representation of the presidential candidates two parallel corpora have been collected from the Web: one consists of Democratic and the other one of Republican blogs published online during the eighteen weeks before the elections and in the following two. Each corpus consists of approximately 50,000 tokens. The methodological tools of Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics have been used synergically in the analysis of the selected material to reduce the shortcomings of both methodologies. Findings underline the frequent resort to negative campaigning on part of both Democratic and Republican party members, who tried to demonstrate that their adversary was not to be trusted because he lacked the necessary political vision and competence. By contrast, the preferred candidate was represented as having a deep understanding of the problems of the country and its people. Bloggers of both political creeds attached much importance to the American people: in fact, by casting a vote for the candidate they support, they could partake in a successful enterprise and give their own contribution to it. WWF Finland Green Office-program: effective 'Greening for dummies'? Author: Christa Uusi-Rauva Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Helsinki School of Economics (Finland) Time: 18h-18h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 To increase our understanding of how offices, which have a significant ecological footprint, could be made greener, it is important to critically examine initiatives that claim competence in this process. To reach this end, this paper examines how Finnish firms have implemented the Green Office -program, which is developed by WWF Finland to aid in greening offices in an easy, practical manner. Based on interviews with the Green Office coordinators of 13 Finnish firms as well as an employee survey (N=141) in eight of these firms, the study examines how these companies have first, set goals regarding the greening process, and second, communicated about these goals and the Green Office -program to their employees. The study also explores the challenges these companies have faced in the process. The findings of the study reveal that at first sight, the Green Office -program indeed seems to offer firms an easy way to greenness, as the interviewees exhibit strong satisfaction with the program and its results in their respective companies. This is to some extent supported by the survey findings that indicate employees also consider the program to have been effective. However, the findings also suggest that some of this greening might in fact have taken place more on paper than in the office, as the goals set by some of the companies fall far short of the kind of radical action that is deemed necessary to solve the current ecological crises we are facing. In addition, it seems that there is further development potential in the program, as companies feel they have not always received relevant support from WWF. Self-representation in a cross-border acquisition: The case of Repsol’s acquisition of YPF Author: Jasper Vandenberghe Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: University College Ghent (Belgium) Time: 11h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 This paper reports on an ongoing PhD project in which I investigate the intercultural representation of Spanish companies in Latin America, focusing on the case of the acquisition of the Argentine oil company YPF by the Spanish oil company Repsol. In the mid-1990s, Spanish companies made big and eye-catching investments, especially in Latin



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America. This economic and financial expansion brought back memories of the Spanish conquest and colonization of the continent. Mergers and acquisitions are often associated with a potential threat to the identity of the companies involved in the operation, especially for the acquiring company. Obviously, this has consequences for the way in which the acquiring company constructs its changing identity in its official communication (both internal and external). My interest lies in the self-representational strategies an acquiring company uses in its press releases at times of a major organizational change. It is of course in the company’s best interest to protect its identity by, for example, projecting positive aspects of its corporate identity when confronted with a situation that may be detrimental to the corporate image and reputation of the company. Typically, as earlier research indicates, the acquiring company will emphasize that everything will be done to make the integration process swift and painless. Pursuing an M&A strategy is always going to be ‘risky business’, but even more so in cross-border mergers and acquisitions, in which the acquiring company faces a possible clash of both corporate and ‘national’ cultures. In this paper, I investigate the press releases the Spanish company Repsol issued in 1999, the year of the acquisition of YPF. Using qualitative discourse analytic tools, I will investigate the self-representational strategies Repsol used in its communication in order to see if the Spanish origin of the company is an issue in these narratives of identity construction.


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Identity in organizational settings Panel convenors: Jonathan Clifton & Dorien Van De Mieroop Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Lille 3 (France) and Ghent University (Belgium) / Lessius University College and K.U.Leuven (Belgium)

Time: 11h-16h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

Room: 2.10

Presentations: Expertise and status in problem solving and decision making meetings Author: Jo Angouri Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of the West of England (UK) Time: 12h30-13h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 The paper discusses processes of identity construction in corporate meeting talk. The meeting is an interactional site in which many aspects of workplace communication are instantiated or performed. It is typically seen as the very ‘stuff of work’ for corporate businesses (Holmes & Stubbe, 2003) and the microcosm of an organisation’s communication. As such the meeting provides the context for the negotiation and construction of identities, including expertise and status in the corporate workplace. Special attention is paid here to the role meetings play for work related problem solving and decision making. The paper draws on data from multinational companies collected over the course of five years. The dataset consists of audio recordings of meetings, ethnographic observations and interviews. I take a Communities of Practice (CofP) standpoint and discuss excerpts of data featuring employees interacting in different CofP in their workplace. Research has shown that CofPs develop specific discourse repertoires that distinguish one community from others. I analyse here how interactants perform “particular acts and display particular kinds of epistemic and affective stances” in doing identity work (Ochs, 1993:289) according to the norms of each CofP they interact with. The analysis of the data suggests that the same person constructing themselves as ‘experts’ in different meetings will enact their identity in different ways depending on the local context of the interaction and the norms of the CofP. Hence the study lends support to other research which suggests that identities are dynamic in nature, co-constructed and negotiated in discursive practices. The paper closes by discussing the dynamic intersection of the macro- wider and the micro- local context in identity construction processes. References Holmes, J. & Stubbe, M. (2003). Power and Politeness in the Workplace. London: Pearson Education. Ochs, E. (1993). Constructing Social Identity: A Language Socialization Perspective. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26(3): 287-306. Constructing social roles in German business meetings by altering repair initiation Author: Tobias Barske Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (USA) Time: 15h30-16h Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 In this paper, I describe how meeting participants initiate repair sequences during the delivery of reports in German business meetings and how this repair initiation differs from ordinary conversations. I show that in the delivery of reports, meeting participants mark sequential slots where repair may be initiated by other participants. Specifically, these slots are marked by utilizing an intonation pattern rising to a high level. Additionally, I demonstrate how the meeting facilitator and participants orient to these slots differently. This study thus describes a way to distinguish between social roles based on the mechanics of repair initiation and where repair is initiated. My analysis is based on 6 hours of non-elicited conversations during business meetings in a German company and consists of a corpus of 60 reports where repair sequences are regularly initiated. Interactions in institutional settings differ from ordinary conversations in that participants of institutional interactions alter the basic mechanics of ordinary conversations to accomplish institutional tasks (e.g., Drew & Heritage, 1992). In my analysis, I draw on previous research on repair by Schegloff (2007) and Egbert (2009) who demonstrate that repair in ordinary conversations may either be initiated by the speaker or by other



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interlocutors. Whereas interactions in ordinary conversations display a strong preference for self-correction over other-correction (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977), interlocutors in business meetings orient to intonation patterns as signals to override this preference and to invite repair initiations by other meeting participants instead. My research adds to previous findings by showing that in German business meetings, interlocutors specifically co-construct sequential slots inviting other-initiated repair through a specific intonation pattern. This paper extends our understanding of repair, the role of intonation for the organization of repair, and the way in which social roles are co-constructed in one setting of institutional talk. References Drew, P. & Heritage, J. (1992). Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings (Vol. 8). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Egbert, M. (2009). Der Reparatur-Mechanismus in deutschen Gesprächen. Mannheim: Verlag für Gesprächsforschung. Schegloff, E.A. (2007). A Primer in Conversation Analysis: Sequence Organization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53(2): 361-382. Facework, identity, and structures of talk in performance appraisal interviews Author: Jonathan Clifton Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Lille 3 (France) and University of Ghent (Belgium)

Time: 15h-15h30

Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 Performance appraisal interviews have been a ‘hot topic’ in Human Resource Management literature for many years. However, despite this, and as Asmuß (2008) points out, thick descriptions of what actually goes on in appraisal interviews are relatively rare. Using transcripts of naturally-occurring video-recorded data of an appraisal interview and conversation analysis as a methodology, this paper explores how participants negotiate the delicate balance between, on the one hand, protecting their own face and, on the other hand, not threatening the face of the other. This paper therefore takes as its starting point the suggestion by researchers (e.g., Heritage 1984, Levinson 1983, and Chevalier 2009) that face can be conceptualized in interactional and dialogical terms and that it is made visible in the structures of talk as a members’ accomplishment and resource. Findings indicate that one way in which facework is achieved is through the use of preference structures in talk. This allows participants to construct identities for themselves and project identities onto the other that make relevant predicates (i.e., expectable and accountable characteristics) that protect their face and the face of others. Participants thus construct identities for themselves and others in a way that enables the successful negotiation of a delicate situation in which the threat to face is never far away. Key words: face, identity, conversation analysis, performance appraisal interviews References Asmuß, B. (2008). Performance Appraisal Interviews: Preference Organization in Assessment Sequences. In Journal of Business Communication, 45(4): 408-429. Chevalier, F. (2009). The facework of unfinished turns in French conversation. In Discourse Studies, 11: 267-284. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Professional and other intersecting identities in research interviews Author: Marlene Miglbauer Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt (Austria)

Time: 11h-11h30

Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 Identities are displayed and constructed in each interaction in professional and private life. Focussing on identities in the workplace is relevant and fruitful because each organisation has its own culture with specific values, norms and kinds of accepted and required behaviour. This presentation draws upon 16 semi-structured interviews that were conducted with South-Eastern employees at 7 either Croatian or Serbian multinational companies. By working in multinational companies, employees are confronted with two challenges: first,


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working in a goal-oriented and performance-driven environment in which English is used as a working language and second, being the first generation to be employed at multinational companies and thus having no role models since such workplaces did not exist during the era of state socialism (1945 – 1991). The aim of this presentation is to analyse the construction of professional identities with particular reference to intersecting identities such as postsocialist and gender identities in research interviews. By discussing the construction of identities in interviews, the construction of identities does not occur ‘on site’ but is put on a meta-level. The primary identity displayed in interviews is the identity of interviewee. But interviewees take up various positions in the narratives that are told, which consequently leads to other identities being disclosed and constructed. Drawing on Positioning Theory (Harré/ van Langenhove 1999), the findings show that by using metaphors and the strategy of ‘othering’ (Baumann/ Gingrich 2004), professional identities are constructed particularly in combination with postsocialist and gender identities and by doing so, two kinds of professional identities emerge: the committed as well as sacrificing employee. References Baumann, G. & Gingrich, A. (Eds.) (2004). Grammars of Identity/ Alterity: A Structural Approach. New York: Berghahn Books. Harré, R. & van Langenhove, L. (Eds.) (1999). Positioning Theory: Moral contexts of Intentional Action. Oxford: Blackwell. Multiple identities in interaction: The case of multinationals in Central Europe Author: Jiří Nekvapil & Tamah Sherman Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Charles University (Czech Republic) Time: 16h-16h30 Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.10 Part 1: Theoretical and methodological framework This paper is based on research conducted in multinationals with branches or plants in the Czech Republic and outlines some theoretical frameworks for the examination of how participants make their identities relevant in interactional settings (such as meetings) in organizations. Given that identity is a complex phenomenon, individuals construct multiple identities for themselves and for others, and must manage the various aspects of these identities for different functional purposes. One way to exploring identities is to use Membership Categorization Analysis in the vein of Sacks (1992; see also Lepper 2000), who claims that categories are constituted by category-bound features. We are interested particularly in one of these features, namely ‘speaking a particular language’ and address the question of the extent to which this feature is bound to the categories ‘local employee’ and ‘expatriate’. Furthermore, we devote attention to the question which concrete languages are bound to these two categories and in which situations. Finally, we demonstrate that while making relevant some identities, the employees may become aware of this process, evaluate its results or even correct them, put briefly, in the vein of Language Management Theory (Nekvapil and Sherman 2009), they may ‘manage’ the producing of their identities. This proves that identity is a very sensitive matter which largely contributes to the shape of social relationships in a company branch or plant. References Lepper, G. (2000). Categories in Text and Talk. A Practical Introduction to Categorization Analysis. London: Sage. Nekvapil, J. & Sherman, T. (2009). Language Management in Contact Situations. Perspectives from Three Continents. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Part 2: Empirical aspects Political, social and economic transformations in given settings have important implications for the producing of identities. In Central Europe, the 1990s and beyond have been characterized by an influx of foreign capital and with it, foreign infrastructures and individuals. One realization of this has become multinational companies, which are dynamic by nature, constantly undergoing processes such as mergers and acquisitions, as well as a certain degree of turnover in staff. Given the framework introduced in the previous contribution, this paper focuses on some empirical data collected in multinational companies in the Czech Republic as a part of the FP6 project LINEE (Languages in a Network of European Excellence) and the multiple


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identities managed within them. These include national identity, which remains relevant in this region, in particular when nationals of one country come to work in another country, e.g. Germans in the Czech Republic (cf. Nekvapil 1997). On the other hand, multinationals make efforts to promote corporate identity, which may include promotion of a particular personal identity (i.e. a person can be categorized as a German as well as a German colleague or an employee of Company X). Additionally, among employees, professional identity is manifested as well (e.g. a white collar worker vs. a blue collar worker). In all of this, we use the frameworks described above exploring the issue of what can be called ‘linguistic identity’. That is, employees in the companies may speak different local and foreign languages and on different levels (based, among other things, on generational factors). Participants orient to this identity and must manage it on an ongoing basis. References Nekvapil, J. (1997). Die kommunikative Überwindung der tschechisch-deutschen ethnischen Polarisation. In S. Höhne & M. Nekula (Eds.), Sprache, Wirtschaft, Kultur. Deutsche und Tschechen in Interaktion (pp.127-145). München: Iudicium. Problem solver, knowledge broker, facilitator, therapist: Doing identity in the management consultancy process. Author: Craig Rollo & Katja Pelsmaekers Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: University of Antwerp (Belgium) Time: 14h30-15h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.10 Studies of management consultancy practices have traditionally focused on the role of the management consultant, their knowledge and influence. Sturdy (1997: 400), for example, reports from interviews and the literature that consultants are “offering managers the prospect of a sense of reassurance and of being in control through normalizing problems and solutions, delivering a sense of ownership, and obscuring uncertainty and ambiguity”. In these studies, however, the role of client organizations and the different client roles within organizations which use consultants have been under-examined and have been made subordinate to the view of the consultant as experts and agents of change for clients in need (Sturdy et al. 2009). Moreover, recent studies have detected an evolution in the consultant-client relationship, in which the client is more accustomed to using consultancy services, uses them to their own ends and often has insider-knowledge of consultancy services. In this study we assume a social constructionist perspective and thus presuppose the centrality of language in the construction of identity and reality (Burr 1995). In an exploratory study of internet sites used by Dutch and Flemish consultancy firms, analyzing how these firms use discursive means to display themselves as having the ability and willingness to perform problem-solving project tasks at a superior level, we observed that consultants’ firms preferred to underplay their formal knowledge in favour of their experience-based and “dispositional” knowledge (cf. Lowendahl et al. 2001) and identity. Following up on that text-based study and the call for more attention to the client in the management consultancy process, we now study how these ‘digital shop windows’ construct the consultants’ self-identities as well as projected client identities. The outsider status of the consultant and the impermanent nature of their relationship with clients necessitate such an explicit, consciously-presented identity (website). Using a primarily empirical, discourse analytical and linguistic-pragmatic approach, we describe emerging profiles of consultancy and client identity and the language tools that are used to achieve this. We also discuss how these profiles compare to those emerging from a small number of semi-structured interviews with consultants. References Burr, V. (1995). An Introduction to Social Construction. New York: Routledge. Holmes, J. (2006) Workplace narratives, professional identity and relational practice. In A. De Fina, D. Schiffrin & M. Bamberg, Discourse and Identity (pp.166-187). [Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 23]. Cambridge: C.U.P. Løwendahl, B.R., Revang, Ø. & Fosstenløkken, S.M. (2001). Knowledge and Value Creation in Professional Service Firms: A framework for analysis. Human Relations, 54(7): 911–931. Sturdy, A. (1997). The Consultancy Process – An Insecure Business? Journal of Management Studies, 34(3): 389-412. Sturdy, A., Werr, A. & Buono, A.F. (2009). The client in management consultancy research: Mapping the territory. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 25: 247-252.


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Constructing cultural identities in multicultural workplaces in Hong Kong Author: Stephanie Schnurr & Olga Zayts Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: The University of Warwick (UK) / The University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong)

Time: 11h30-12h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 2.10 Identity is increasingly recognised as an important issue in organisational communication (eg Holmes 2000; Kendall & Tannen 1997; Angouri & Marra fc). In this paper we focus on a particular aspect of professional identities, namely cultural professional identities. While the link between culture and identity is much researched (eg Kim 2007), the construction and performance of cultural identities in workplace contexts are generally neglected. This gap is particularly surprising considering the globalisation of the work domain and mobilization of the workforce (Roberts, 2006), which often require professionals to construct and negotiate their various identities in increasingly multicultural contexts where notions of culture often become particularly salient. This paper aims to address this research gap and explores some of the ways in which culture and identity influence and constitute each other. We focus on multicultural workplaces where, we believe, this intricate relationship between culture and identity is particularly well reflected because members are on a daily basis exposed to culture-specific perceptions, assumptions, expectations, and practices which are ultimately reflected in workplace communication. In order to achieve these aims, we explore how expatriates who live and work in Hong Kong construct, negotiate and combine aspects of their professional and their cultural identities. Our data comprises of in-depth interviews with expatriates in a range of different workplaces, ranging from small privately-owned companies to large international financial corporations; and more than 20 hours of participants’ authentic workplace discourse. This combination of interview and authentic discourse data results in a rich and multi-facetted picture of the complex (and often contradictory) processes involved in identity construction in organisational settings. Our findings provide new insights into the complex processes of identity construction from two different but complementary perspectives: i) the ways in which participants portray themselves as adapting to, negotiating or rejecting the new culture in which they work and live; and ii) the ways in which these perceived identity construction processes are actually reflected in participants’ workplace discourse. A combination of these perspectives provides a comprehensive picture of some under-researched but highly relevant aspects of the construction of cultural identities in organisational settings. Self-categorization in interviews with immigrant career women Author: Dorien Van De Mieroop Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Lessius Antwerp and University of Leuven (Belgium) Time: 12h-12h30 Contact: [email protected] Room: 2.10 Drawing on ethnomethodological research on membership categories, many researchers have focused on the way people construct and negotiate their membership of ethnic groups as opposed to other ethnic and social groups (e.g. De Fina, 2006). This becomes particularly interesting in institutional contexts, which typically entail the construction of a specific kind of professional identity, potentially guided by workplace norms and expectations. In such contexts, membership of a professional group may interfere with these other group memberships, which may then lead individuals to draw on other identities and renegotiate the construction of their identities. For this presentation, my data consist of narratives. These form excellent data for identity analysis, since ‘it is precisely in narrative that people’s individuality is expressed most obviously’ (Johnstone, 1996, p.56). More particularly, the data consist of four interviews with young (age ranges from 26-33), highly educated women of Moroccan descent who have a very active professional life. In these interviews, I look into the way the interviewees categorize themselves and shift these self-categorizations throughout the interaction when constructing several different out-groups, like for instance non-immigrant professionals, but also men of their own ethic group. From these findings, conclusions are drawn regarding the typical self-categorizations of these interviewees, but also concerning the construction of identity in interview data, which have been criticized in narrative analyses for their reflexivity and construction of a ‘rehearsed self’ (Georgakopoulou, 2006, p.128).


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Integrating research into business and corporate communication degree programs Panel convenors: Geert Jacobs & Leena Louhiala-Salminen Date: Thu. 27 May Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) / Aalto University School of Economics (Finland)

Time: 16h30-18h

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 1.33 Presentations: Master’s program in International Business Communication at Aalto University School of Economics Author: Anne Kankaanranta Affiliation: Aalto University School of Economics (Finland) Contact: [email protected] This presentation introduces the IBC Master’s Program at Aalto University School of Economics (Helsinki), which has operated for five years. After a brief overview of the studies, I will focus on how we integrate research into our various courses. Finally, our thesis projects will be presented from the point of view of theoretical and methodological approaches. Degree programmes in corporate communication at the Aarhus School of Business: integrating research and teaching/learning Author: Martin Nielsen Affiliation: Aarhus School of Business (Denmark) Contact: [email protected] The Centre for Corporate Communication at the Aarhus School of Business offers several degree programmes within the field of corporate communication. This paper presents an overview of those study programmes as well as the aim, structure, and content of some of those study programmes. Additionally, the presentation will highlight and discuss the idea of taking students from “craftsmen to architects”, the challenge of combining general (methodological) academic knowledge with technical skills needed in the business world, and the integration of an internship in the programme. The presentation ends by giving an outlook at the Centre’s experience with attracting PhD students, thus closing the circle of integrating research with studying. Master’s program in multilingual Professional Communication at the University of Antwerp (Belgium): A master course on quantitative and qualitative research techniques Author: Daniel Janssen & Luuk van Waes Affiliation: Utrecht University (The Netherlands) / University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Before the students in the master in multilingual Professional Communication start with their master thesis, they have to take a course on ‘Research methods and techniques in Professional Communication’. In the course the students get acquainted with different types of qualitative and quantitative research: they get introductions to different types of research from a team of researchers, read and analyze journal articles, set up small research cases, report results in a portfolio, and explore research tools (e.g., Inputlog writing process logging and analyzing software). Both academic research and more applied research are dealt with. During the second part of the course the students start their own master project (first in small groups, then individually). Who says so? Integrating practice and scholarship in a master’s course on job applications Author: Olaf Du Pont, Geert Jacobs & Ellen Van Praet Affiliation: Ghent University (Belgium) Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

This paper deals with our master’s programme on Business Communication at Ghent University. More specifically, we look at the way in which a bottom-up, learner-centred approach (drawing on peer feedback and open-ended classroom discussion) is combined with a top-down strategy, in which we present do’s and don’ts based on professional


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advice and research findings. We focus on a blended learning course on job applications and, based on questionnaires as well as video recordings of classroom sessions and simulated interviews, we analyse our learners’ reactions to the course in general, and to the integration of practice and scholarship in particular. Using creativity and innovation to integrate research into master’s programs Author: Gina Poncini, Michele Rusk, Susan Stehlik & Aline Wolff Affiliation: University of Milan (Italy) / University of Ulster (UK) / New York University Stern School of Business (USA)


In this presentation we draw on our research and experience in different institutions to discuss how attention to creativity, design thinking, and innovation can enhance the integration of research into master’s programs. Our involvement in course development and graduate programs is intertwined with our research interests, which encompass creativity, communities of practice, design thinking, knowledge sharing, innovative thinking, and projecting credibility – all key for business and communication today. Experiences to be woven into the discussion will relate to different courses, processes, and initiatives developed by the speakers, including a new course on innovative thinking at NYU Stern School of Business. Another example is the development of the University of Ulster’s “Design Direction”, an international community of practice with the aim of facilitating flows of design management knowledge and the exchange of creative business expertise. Other initiatives incorporated into the discussion include research involving an interuniversity master’s degree program in Italy and graduate programs at the University of Milan, and the process of creating a memorable team experience in organizational communication courses at NYU Stern. Processes trigger our interest, and we’ll also focus on the processes of building trust and sharing in educational contexts: sharing our thinking, our teaching and our research as part of our ongoing discussion on design thinking, innovation and creativity in research and education.


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Publishing in business communication journals Panel convenors: Melinda Knight Date: Sat. 29 May Affiliation: Montclair State University (USA) Time: 10h30-12h Contact: [email protected] Room: 1.33 Presentations: Publishing in business communication journals Author: Melinda Knight & Robyn Walker Affiliation: Montclair State University (USA) : USC (USA) Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]

This session will feature the editors of two ABC-sponsored journals, Business Communication Quarterly and Journal of Business Communication. Audience members will have the opportunity to meet the editors and discuss how to navigate the manuscript review process. Editors will discuss strategies for successfully transforming research into articles suitable for publication, including ways to avoid common pitfalls.


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Researching corporate and institutional communication: commonalities and divergences Panel convenors: Paola Catenaccio & Giuliana Garzone Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: University of Milan (Italy) Time: 9h-13h Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 1.33 Presentations: Live well, live longer: communicating healthy eating tips for elders Author: Miriam Bait Part 1 Affiliation: Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) Contact: [email protected] The aging of the population in industrialized countries is one of the most remarkable traits of the 20th century. As a result of advances in medical and social care, life expectancy has lengthened and, at the same time, the health of persons in their 60s, 70s, and 80s has improved considerably (Aldwin/ Gilmer 2004; Coupland/Coupland/Giles 1991). This demographic trend has caused a fundamental change in the age structure of many western societies. In these societies it is now common for nearly a quarter of the population to be retired. Fewer babies are born to sustain the size of the population and life expectancy exceeds eighty years old. The importance of good eating habits throughout life has been widely recognised and promoted in recent decades and it is significant that both private and public organisations have increasingly targeted their social and marketing initiatives to specific age groups (Abbott 1977; Featherstone 1991; Scollon 2005). This study presents a preliminary analysis of a selection of websites providing old age dietary and nutrition-related communication (Fairclough 1995; Hunston/Thompson 2001; Bhatia 2002). The websites under examination are maintained by different kinds of organisations, from corporations to government agencies, from academic institutions to health organizations (Bozeman 1987). The main purpose is to identify and analyze salient linguistic and pragmatic features, including the use of personal pronouns, specialized lexis and evaluation. More specifically, as a part of an ongoing research project on the representation of different age groups in health and dietary communication (Bait forthcoming), this study explores how seniors are constructed through language, giving attention to the interplay between social and corporate issues, and roles and relationships. References Bhatia, V.K. (2002). Professional Discourse: Towards a Multi-dimensional Approach and Shared Practice. In Candlin, Christopher (Ed.), Research and Practice in Professional Discourse (pp.39-60). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Coupland N., Coupland J. & Giles H. (Eds.) (1991). Language, Society and the Elderly. Oxford: Blackwell. Coupland N., Coupland J. & Nussbaum J. (Eds.) (1993). Discourse and Lifespan Identity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman. Featherstone, M. (1991). Consumer, culture and postmodernism, London: Sage. Green B.S. (1993). Gerontology and the Construction of Old Age. A Study in Discourse Analysis. New York: De Gruyter. Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. (Eds.) (2001). Evaluation in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scollon, R. (2005). The Discourses of Food in the World System. Toward a Nexus Analysis of a World Problem, Journal of Language and Politics, 4/3: 465-488. Interdiscursive collaborative construction of business genres in public relations contexts* Author: Vijay Bhatia, Stephen Bremner, Rodney Jones & Anne Pierson-Smith

Part 1

Affiliation: City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong) Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Interdiscursive collaboration in professional contexts is generally viewed as the basis for the construction of professional genres (Bhatia, 2004, 2010; Bremner, 2006; Smart, 2006); however, considered within the framework of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and





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Wenger,1991), this can also be viewed as a useful instrument for developing writing expertise to initiate novice writers into the conventions of corporate genres. Drawing on evidence from public relations writing contexts, particularly from the analyses of drafts and finished products and interviews of professional and novice writers, this paper will identify and discuss some of the important contributors to the construction of specialist genres to draw conclusions about the acquisition of writing expertise in and for collaborative corporate contexts. References Bhatia, V.K. (2004). Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View. London and New York: Continuum. Bhatia, V.K. (2010). ‘Interdiscursivity in Professional Communication’. Discourse and Communication, 4: 1. Bremner, S. (2006). The construction of workplace writing: Texts, contexts and interaction in an academic administration. Unpublished PhD dissertation, City University of Hong Kong. Lave J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning- Legitimate Peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smart, G., (2006). Writing the economy: Activity genre and technology in the world of banking. London: Equinox. *The paper will draw extensively on the work being done under an RGC, HKSAR funded GRE project (No. 9041281), led by Dr. Rodney Jones, and entitled Collaborative writing in the Creative Communication Industries: Professional and Pedagogical Perspectives From “Communities of Practice” to “Communities of Learning”: The private and public faces of internal corporate messaging Author: Janet Bowker Part 2 Affiliation: “Sapienza” Università di Roma (Italy) Contact: [email protected] Discourse analysts are increasingly aware of the limitations of treating genres and domains as monolithic, autonomous and distinct: on the contrary, inter-textuality and inter-discursivity are the norm, (Bhatia, 2006, 2008). This study attempts to trace the overlapping and embedding of one discourse domain into another, namely that of education and learning within the discourse of internal corporate communications. Arguably, there is a new need for “Communities of Practice”, characterized by collective sets of shared knowledge and beliefs, to be perceived by all stakeholders as “Communities of Learning”, the sites for personal and collective professional growth and development. This convergence reflects changing corporate strategies, at a time when corporate social responsibility, CSR, (in both the external and internal projection of organizational culture) has become an unavoidable business priority. Moreover, despite (or arguably due to) the current economic conjuncture, the creation and sharing of knowledge in business practice, at global and local levels, together with trust creation via timely, relevant and transparent communications, have become central to what may be considered the “internal branding” processes of an employer. The data comprise an original corpus compiled by myself of in-house oral presentations in “webinar” mode, a form of audio-conferencing between managers and employees. Currently there are around 40 hours of presentations by a large U.S. multi-national group specializing in management and organizational consulting. The focus for analysis is on the “learning sub-text” as displayed in systematic linguistic and pragmatic choices, and, secondly, on the “pedagogic” discourse management strategies used in the display and construal of a multi-dimensional corporate identity. My methodological approach is multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary: the tools of corpus linguistics, with particular attention to semantic and grammatical patterning; metaphor studies describing the structure and interactivity of metaphorical networks and their cognitive impact; business organizational studies; ethnographic data obtained through interviews and questionnaires with participants. Theoretically, the study attempts to lay the foundations for a dynamical model to investigate the relationship between language systematization and language variation and change. References Bhatia, V.J. (2006). Corporate identity and generic identity in business discourse. In Fortunet, Gòmez, I, Palmer Silveira, J.C. & Ruiz Garrido, M. (Eds.), Intercultural and


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International Business Communication. Theory, Research and Teaching (pp.265-285). Bern: Peter Lang. Bowker. J. (2009). Building out the business: the dynamics of metaphor in the construction of corporate identity in business audio-conferencing. In N. Vasta & C. Caldas-Coulthard (Eds.), Identity Construction and Positioning in Discourse and Society. Textus, English Studies in Italy (pp. 23-42). Genova: Tilgher. Bowker, J. (2009). Descriptive processes in business audio-conferencing: Telling the corporate story. In S. Radighieri & P. Tucker (Eds.), Point of View: Description and Evaluation across Discourses (pp.175-193). Roma: Editore Officina. Fairclough, N. (2007) (Ed.). Discourse and Contemporary Social Change. Bern: Peter Lang. Hofstede, G. (1998). Identifying organizational subcultures: an empirical approach. Journal of Management Studies, 35/1: 1-12. Spencer-Oatey, H. (2007). Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics, 39: 639-656. Van De Mieroop, D. (2007). The complementarity of two identities and two approaches: quantitative and qualitative analysis of institutional and professional identity. Journal of Pragmatics, 39: 1120-1142. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwill online? Rhetorical strategies in financial, political and educational website discourse: commonalities and divergences Author: Maria Isaksson & Poul Erik Flyvholm Jørgensen Part 2 Affiliation: Norwegian School of Management BI (Norway) & (Aarhus University (Denmark)

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Organizations have always sought to build goodwill and trust among their customers by giving illustrations of their competencies, their dependability and their inherently benign nature. Today, organizations have many more active audiences wanting to scrutinize their activities and expecting transparency and accessibility. This is the new business reality irrespective of type of industry or type of customers serviced. To satisfy stakeholders’ growing demand for information and knowledge, organizations must seek out the media and genres best suited for reaching diverse audiences with messages matching different needs and requirements. The Internet, with its facility for constructing home pages, seems the obvious solution to this challenge, allowing each organization to globally address its stakeholders with information and knowledge about a register of different themes. Corporate communication increasingly thus operates through technical systems that complicate the establishment of trust online with audiences. To meet these communicative exigencies, businesses seem to have adopted socially-oriented communication strategies, which according to Miller (2004) prompt an ethos of sympathy. On the assumption that the building of social relationships of organizations is significantly relevant for studies of online rhetoric (Hoff-Clausen 2008:218), this project analyzes the rhetoric of goodwill in financial, political and educational website discourse. Goodwill emphasizes the Aristotelian ethos component of eunoia; it focuses on the interest that a rhetor has in the audience’s feelings, needs, interests, and well-being. We find the focus on goodwill all the more interesting as a recent study of PR agencies’ corporate ethos on the web (Isaksson & Jørgensen 2010) showed that PR agencies by far prefer explaining their expertise than expressing their goodwill to clients. Thus, we want to test whether and to what extent goodwill is a rhetorical strategy used by financial corporations, political organizations and educational institutions. Secondly, we want to determine whether the rhetoric of goodwill shows signs of convergence or divergence across the website discourse of these corporations, organizations and institutions. The ‘valueisation’ of business discourse: Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Disclosure in Annual Reports Author: Paola Catenaccio Part 2 Affiliation: Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) Contact: [email protected] Over the last three decades much research has been devoted to what Fairclough (1993) has called the “marketization of public discourse”. The starting point for this strand of research, which has predominantly been carried out in a CDA framework, was the observation that public discourse was being progressively colonized by market-based




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discourses. These studies focused initially on the field of higher education, but the phenomenon was soon found to be wide-ranging, with all domains of public discourse being affected (cf. Mautner forthcoming), primarily as a consequence of the rise of New Public Management theories (Kettls 1997), which advocate the adoption of market values for policy creation and management. While the encroaching of market discourses on public discourse can hardly be disputed, a parallel phenomenon has also emerged over the same period which points in a different direction. Starting from the 1980s business discourse has been engaging more and more frequently with issues of social responsibility and corporate citizenship. Increasingly, CSR is becoming a ratified component of business strategy. This has been leading to the inclusion of discourses that can be best described as belonging to the sphere of civil society into business discourse, with CSR featuring prominently in financial reports. This paper looks at the way in which social and business/financial discourses are deployed in interrelated and mutually reinforcing ways in the annual report and other external communication materials issued by the Swiss pharmaceutical multinational Roche, with a view to finding evidence for – and describing the discursive modalities of – what I have called the ‘valueisation’ of business discourse. References Fairclough, N. (1993). Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities. Discourse and Society, 4(2): 146-168. Kettl, D. (199. The Global Revolution in Public Management: Driving Themes, Missing Links. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 16(3): 446–62. Mautner, G. forthcoming Language and the Market Society. London: Routledge. “The necessary balance between sustainability and economic success”: an analysis of Fiat’s and Toyota’s Corporate Social Responsibility Reports Author: Donatella Malavasi Part 2 Affiliation: Università di Modena (Italy) Contact: [email protected] Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has recently become a fashionable item on the corporate agenda, and a central plank of corporate communication (Goodman, 2000; Christensen, 2002). Traditionally, companies have been involved in disseminating detailed information about their performance, goals, priorities and developments. Nowadays, however, firms have embarked on more frequent and ambitious initiatives focussed on issues such as sustainability, ethics and CSR (Lantos, 2001; Dahlsrud, 2006), which are commonly ascribed to the public, institutional and not-for-profit sectors. Firms’ pledge of support for economic development, environmental preservation and community welfare has evolved into a promotional strategy adopted in business settings to reinforce actors’ positive image, increase credibility, and gain consumers’ confidence. In the automobile industry two leading companies are exemplars of the integration of long-term social and environmental aspects into their business and (self-)promotional activities, Fiat and Toyota. The paper sets out to examine a small database of CSR reports and to identify some of the core sustainability-oriented values. With the support of corpus linguistics tools (Sinclair, 2003, 2004) and the software package WordSmith Tools 4.0 (Scott, 2004), the two sub-corpora of documents published by Fiat and Toyota will be analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The study of wordlists, key-words and their phraseological patterns (e.g. environmental, employees, safety, energy, training, recycling, research) will highlight some argumentative strategies adopted by the two manufacturers to demonstrate their accountability to stakeholders, and will shed some light on the crucial role played by CSR in corporate communication. References Christensen, L.T. (2002). Corporate Communication: the challenge of transparency. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 7/3: 162-168. Dahlsrud, A. (2006). “How Corporate Social Responsibility is defined: an analysis of 37 definitions”. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. (in press). Goodman, M. B. (2000). Corporate Communication: the American Picture. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 5/2: 69-74. Lantos, G. P. (2001). The boundaries of strategic corporate social responsibility. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 18/7: 595-630.


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Scott, M. (2004). Wordsmith Tools 4.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, J.M. (2003). Reading Concordances. London: Longman. Sinclair, J.M. (2004). Trust the Text. Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge. Farmers Markets and Local Food Marketing: Building Support for a Renaissance Author: Gina Poncini Part 1 Affiliation: Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) Contact: [email protected] The last few decades have seen a renewed interest in local food and farmers’ markets in a range of countries. The revival is especially noticeable in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Canada and the U.S., which had abandoned this traditional form of food retailing when supermarkets came onto the scene. But even in countries such as Italy, where green markets never actually disappeared, growing attention is given to farmers’ markets along with heightened interest in local foods and the concept of food miles (km 0). Business groups, community groups, and government agencies in different countries around the world have shown interested in developing and supporting farmers’ markets. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. General Services Administration report that in the United States, 4,900 farmers’ markets now operate across the nation compared to fewer than 1,800 only 15 years ago*. A major reason for this resurgence is consumers’ increasing demand for locally produced food. However, there are also economic advantages and other benefits for producers, consumers and communities: farmers’ markets can renew neighhorhoods, enhance social interaction, improve the local economy, and provide a supplemental source of farm income for many growers. This paper reports on a study that identifies and analyzes the strategies and discursive practices used to represent different aspects of farmers’ markets and local food marketing in a set of informational documents, guidelines, research reports and websites of selected governmental departments, agencies, community organizations, corporations, universities and other associations, based mainly in the U.S. and Canada but also in Europe, and in particular Italy. A qualitative approach is used, with methods drawn from discourse analysis and pragmatics. The analysis focuses on evaluative language, personal pronouns, participation frameworks, and the use of multimodal resources. Attention is given to the way the benefits and limits of farmers’ markets are presented and the way food security, environmental issues, community involvement, and collaborative efforts and partnerships are portrayed. The paper also examines the representation of the concept of food miles (“km 0”) and the role of government agencies, agricultural associations and corporations in reports of km 0 initiatives in Italy. * Beach, K., Giblin, F. & Lakins, V. (2009). Opening a Farmers Market on Federal Property: A Guide for Market Operators and Building Managers. A joint publication by the U.S. General Services Administration and General Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved from: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5079490&acct=wdmgeninfo Blurring boundaries of the future in the EU nanotech debate Author: Paul Sambre Part 1 Affiliation: Lessius Antwerp and University of Leuven (Belgium) Contact: [email protected] How to deal with popularization of technology is a chief preoccupation in effective policy-making. According to the EU 7th Framework Program, ongoing research on nanotechnology should simultaneously popularize its findings on a large scale in order to reduce the initial reluctance of the general audience (Comunità Europee 2006) and market the acceptation of future industrial applications. This contribution aims at unraveling the complex semantics where current Italian nanotech actors or enunciative stances, like governmental or academic institutions on the one hand and industrial players like districts and major research companies on the other discursively present potential current and future specialized or everyday applications, products and services, in the fields of medicine or materials for instance, and dismiss actual objections (about health, environmental or privacy threats) as conjectures and false or Luddist technomyths. In the nanotech debate marketing and civil society meet (De Acetis 2007). The theoretical framework used is that of cognitive discourse analysis, i.e. Langacker’s (2008) epistemic model and causality in Talmy (2006). A descriptive model is proposed, which captures both the static and

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dynamic aspects of the enunciative, temporal and modal nanotech dimensions involved. Continuous transitions occur between static present and future positions (Sambre 2009) attributed to enunciative stances, which are sometimes combined with the expression of (intentional or unintentional) goals and causal links related to other static positions. The corpus is composed of the Italian version of some official EU science popularization texts. The descriptive outcome of this research may act as a blueprint for integrating conceptual considerations on time and modality in more effective popularization strategies for future communication campaigns. References Comunità Europee (2006). Le riposte di domani cominciano oggi. http://ec.europa.eu/research/fp7/pdf/fp7-factsheets_it.pdf (2 ottobre 2009) De Acetis, M. (2007). Le nanotecnologie in Italia: aggiornamento da Nanoforum. TorinoScienza, http://www.torinoscienza.it/articoli/apri?obj_id=245 (20 ottobre 2009) Langacker, R.W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar. A basic introduction. Berlin: Mouton. Sambre, P. (2009). La futurità delle nanotecnologie: per una visione dinamica della definizione terminologica. Mediazioni, Rivista online di studi interdisciplinari su lingue e culture, 7: 1-38. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a Cognitive Semantics. Cambridge: MIT.

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Rhetorical style in conference papers and political speeches Panel convenors: Jaap de Jong & Bas Andeweg Date: Fri. 28 May Affiliation: Leiden University / University of Technology Delft (The Netherlands)

Time: 16h-17h30

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Room: 1.33 Presentations: Humor in Conference Papers of communication researchers Author: Jaap de Jong & Bas Andeweg Affiliation: Leiden University / University of Technology Delft (The Netherlands)

Contact: [email protected] / [email protected] Several studies have shown that the use of humor in all kinds of communicative genres may have positive effects (Greatbatch & Clark 2003; Martin 2007). But what about the use of humor in conference speeches, especially in conference speeches of communication researchers? A new corpus of 14 presentations at the VIOT 2008 conference of communication researchers has been analyzed with a humor model (Hopstaken & De Jong 2009) which we adapted from Cicero’s De Oratore and Berger (1993,2006). As a comparison corpus we used 30 speeches of PhD-candidates just before their doctoral defense (Hopstaken & De Jong 2009). How much and which forms of humor do these two groups of speakers use? Presenting conference papers with PowerPoint Author: Brigitte Hertz Affiliation: University of Wageningen (The Netherlands) Contact: [email protected] Does the ubiquitous criticism of the use of PowerPoint also apply to presentations of conference papers?14 presentations at the VIOT 2008 conference of communication researchers have been analyzed on the use of visuals and texts as stylistic means and on the behavior of the presenter (contact with the public, changing and glossing slides). We have compared the findings to general communication rules and we will discuss whether PowerPoint has changed the way researchers present their papers for the better or the worse. Geert Wilders and the language of under belly Author: Daniel Janssen Affiliation: University Utrecht (The Netherlands) and University of Antwerp (Belgium)

Contact: [email protected] One of the most debated Dutch politicians at this moment is Geert Wilders. Wilders is a (radical) right wing member of the Dutch parliament who had made a reputation out of controversial statements about islam and its followers. From a rhetorical point of view his contributions to the political debate are well worth studying. Critics of Wilders accuse him of appealing the ‘under belly feelings’ of citizens for political gain. With this, they mean that Wilders uses ‘emotional appeals’ in debates for instance in stead of argumentation in order to settle political disputes in his advantage. The question is, however, in how far Wilders use of emotions differs from that of other outspoken politicians. To answer this question we compared the contributions of three well-know Dutch members of parliament: Geert Wilders, Femke Halsema and Alexander Pechtold to discover that there is little (but maybe significant) difference in the use of rhetorical strategies between the three. In the presentation I will elaborate on the similarities and the differences between the politicians. An effective style: the case of Dutch MP Geert Wilders Author: Maarten van Leeuwen Affiliation: Leiden University (The Netherlands) Contact: [email protected] ‘Insane’, ‘completely nuts’: the Dutch populistic politician Geert Wilders has used words like these to characterize his opponents in parliamentary debates, and he has been fiercely criticized for it. At the same time however, Wilders is also praised for the clarity of his style. What linguistic factors underlie such an impressionistic judgment? In my presentation, I will go into this question by analyzing a representative Wilders’ speech. I


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will make a comparison with former minister of integration Ella Vogelaar, who was fiercely criticized in the media for her ‘woolly’ or ‘veiled’ language. My method of analysis will combine insights from classical rhetoric and stylistics (Leech & Short (1981)); I will especially argue that ‘style’ is more than for instance foregrounded rhetorical figures and tropes or conspicuous use of words: it is also a matter of grammatical text features, that are neglected in most stylistic analyses.

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