(Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics) Vijay Bhatia, Stephen Bremner - The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional Communication-Routledge (2014)

The Handbook is multidimensional and multiperspective inits design and implementation, and brings together not only researchers from a wide range ofdisciplines, such as English for Speci

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional

Communication

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional Communication provides a broad coverage ofthe key areas where language and professional communication intersect and gives a comprehensiveaccount of thefield

The four main sections of the Handbook cover:

 Approaches to Professional Communication

 Practice

 Acquisition of Professional Competence

 Views from the Professions

This invaluable reference book incorporates not only an historical view of the field, but alsolooks to possible future developments Contributions from international scholars and practi-tioners, focusing on specific issues, explore the major approaches to professional communicationand bring into focus recent research

This is the first handbook of language and professional communication to account for bothpedagogic and practitioner perspectives and as such is an essential reference for postgraduate studentsand those researching and working in the areas of applied linguistics and professional communication.Contributors: Natasha Artemeva, Vijay Bhatia, Stephen Bremner, Patrice M Buzzanell, SaulCarliner, Winnie Cheng, Marta Chromá, Isabel Corona, Stephani Currie, George AnthonyDavid Dass, Bertha Du-Babcock, Matt Falconer, Gail Forey, Janna Fox, Finn Frandsen, Jeremy

P Fyke, Michael B Goodman, David Grant, Elizabeth de Groot, Christoph A Hafner,Michael Handford, Peter B Hirsch, Janet Holmes, Winni Johansen, Alan Jones, Sujata Kathpalia,Koo Swit Ling, Becky S C Kwan, William Littlewood, Jane Lockwood, Jane Lung, CarmenDaniela Maier, Meredith Marra, Lindsay Miller, Catherine Nickerson, Daniel Nyberg, AnnePeirson-Smith, Robyn V Remke, Priscilla S Rogers, Graham Smart, Alina Wan, Yunxia Zhu.Vijay Bhatia is an Adjunct Professor at Macquarie University and University of Malaya He isthe author of Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings (1993) and Worlds of WrittenDiscourse: A Genre-based View (2004)

Stephen Bremneris an Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University ofHong Kong His main research interests are workplace writing and the ways in which studentsmake the transition from the academy to the workplace

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Professional

Communication

Edited by Vijay Bhatia and Stephen Bremner

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The Routledge handbook of language and professional communication / edited by Vijay Bhatia and Stephen Bremner.

pages cm – (Routledge handbooks in applied linguistics)

1 Communication –Study and teaching 2 Language and language–Study and teaching.

I Bhatia, V K (Vijay Kumar), 1942–

A General theoretical frameworks

Vijay Bhatia

Winnie Cheng

3 A situated genre approach for business communication

Yunxia Zhu

4 Stretching the multimodal boundaries of professional

Carmen Daniela Maier

B Broad disciplinary frameworks

Catherine Nickerson

6 Business communication: A revisiting of theory,

Bertha Du-Babcock

7 Research on knowledge-making in professional discourses:

Graham Smart, Stephani Currie and Matt Falconer

Saul Carliner

Janet Holmes and Meredith Marra

Michael B Goodman and Peter B Hirsch

Marta Chromá

C Specific disciplinary frameworks

12 Management communication: Getting work done

Priscilla S Rogers

13 Business and the communication of climate change:

David Grant and Daniel Nyberg

14 Professionalising organisational communication discourses,

Patrice M Buzzanell, Jeremy P Fyke and Robyn V Remke

Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen

16 Corporate communication and the role of annual reporting:

Elizabeth de Groot

A Pedagogic perspectives

17 A blended needs analysis: Critical genre analysis and needs analysis of

Jane Lung

18 The changing landscape of business communication 274

Sujata S Kathpalia and Koo Swit Ling

26 The public relations industry and its place in professional

communication theory and practice: Past, present

Anne Peirson-Smith

27 Communities in studies of discursive practices

Becky S C Kwan

28 The formation of a professional communicator:

Natasha Artemeva and Janna Fox

Stephen Bremner

Contents

30 Training the call centre communications trainers in the Asian BPO industry 501

List of figures

1.2 Interdiscursivity in genre-based analysis of professional communication 8

12.1 Competing values communication framework illustrates the relationships betweenfour basic types of communication and valued characteristics 17912.2 Profile of a relatively newly hired employee with a liberal arts background whosecommunication is‘now’ too transformational whereas it ‘should be’ more

17.1 The micro and macro aspects of social reality in workplace communication 26717.2 BNA (Blended Needs Analysis) framework of language and professional

21.2 Professional practice as the recruitment of disciplinary knowledge and communicativecompetence for the realisation and promotion of interests, values and agendas 332

3.1 Breakdown of the learning activities 313.2 A breakdown of the communicative purposes students identified 333.3 The NZ and Chinese managers’ views on the English invitation 3512.1 Financial Times top 51 global MBA programs shows growth in programs outside

12.2 English language perspective compared to Business English Lingua Franca

12.3 Association of Business Communication Outstanding Researcher Award

recipients who are known for their management communication research

19.1 Analytic and experiential approaches to language learning and teaching 29519.2 The‘communicative continuum’ as a framework for teaching methodology 298

21.1 Two sets of four skills, as identified by researchers (A) and auditors (B) 334

27.1 Discourse processes and products among parties in external communication 45027.2 Discourse processes and products among parties in internal communication 450

Notes on contributors

Natasha Artemevais Associate Professor at Carleton University, Canada Her research focuses

on applications of activity-based rhetorical genre theory to the study of school-to-worktransitions in engineering, mathematics, and otherfields Her work has received awards fromthe National Council of Teachers of English, USA

Vijay Bhatia is an Adjunct Professor at Macquarie University and University of Malaya Hisresearch interests include genre analysis, ESP and professional communication Two of hisbooks, Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings and Worlds of Written Discourse: AGenre-based View, are widely used by researchers in genre theory

Stephen Bremneris an Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University ofHong Kong His main research interests are workplace writing and the ways in which studentsmake the transition from the academy to the workplace

Patrice M Buzzanellis Professor of Communication in the Brian Lamb School of nication (and Professor of Engineering Education by Courtesy) at Purdue University, USA.Her research centres on the intersections of communication, career and gender

Commu-Saul Carlineris an Associate Professor, eLearning Fellow, and Director of the Education DoctoralProgram at Concordia University, Canada He is editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions onProfessional Communication, a Fellow and past international president of the Society for TechnicalCommunication, and a past board member of the STC Certification Commission

Winnie Cheng is an Associate Dean, Faculty of Humanities, and Professor of English andDirector of the Research Centre for Professional Communication in English (RCPCE),Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Marta Chromá is a teacher and researcher in legal English, legal linguistics and translation atCharles University in Prague, Czech Republic She focuses on the issues of linguistic andlegal interpretation of legal concepts and texts for the purposes of translation and translationallexicography

Isabel Corona(PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the Universidad de Zaragoza(Spain) Her main research interests are genre analysis and multimodality in academic andlegal texts and in professional media discourse She is a member of the research groupInterLAE (www.interlae.com)

Stephani Currierecently completed an MA degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies

at Carleton University, Canada Her research focused on the role of ideology in discursiveconstructions of climate change established by various environmental organisations

George Anthony David Dasswas a partner at Shahrizat, Rashid and Lee for over 25 years

He continues as a consultant and a board member of Perbadanan Insurans Deposit Malaysia,and also of United Bintang Berhad in Malaysia

Bertha Du-Babcockis an Associate Professor teaching (intercultural) business communicationand Communication Strategies in Business Projects at City University of Hong Kong Shealso is the Vice-President for the Asia and Pacific Region of the Association for BusinessCommunication

Matt Falconerrecently completed an MA degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies

at Carleton University, Canada, and is currently an intern with the Council of CanadianAcademies, a non-profit organisation providing independent, expert assessments of sciencerelevant to public concerns While this is hisfirst publication, Matthew’s research has alsofocused on tutor training in a Canadian university’s academic writing centre

Gail Foreyis an Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University She has carriedout research and published in the areas of discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics,written and spoken workplace discourse, language education and teaching development Gailedited a book in 2010 with Jane Lockwood, Communication and the Workplace, which is directlyrelevant to the present chapter and discusses the BPO industry from different perspectives.Janna Fox is an Associate Professor at Carleton University, Canada Her research focuses onassessment, teaching, and the development of academic literacies in culturally and linguisticallydiverse settings She holds a 3M National Teaching Fellowship in recognition of contributions

to scholarship and leadership in Canadian higher education

Finn Frandsen is Professor of Corporate Communication and Director of the Centre forCorporate Communication (CCC) at the Department of Business Communication, School

of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark

Jeremy P Fykeis an Assistant Professor, Communication Studies and Strategic Communication,

in the J William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University,USA His research focuses on consulting, leadership development, ethics and discourses ofsocial change

Michael B Goodman is Professor and Director of the MA in Corporate Communication atBaruch College, The City University of New York, and Director of CCI Corporate Com-munication International He is Visiting Professor at Aarhus University (Denmark), HongKong Polytechnic University, and Universita IULM (Italy) He has published widely, includingCorporate Communication: Strategic Adaptation for Global Practice, with Peter B Hirsch

David Grant is Co-Dean and Professor of Organisational Studies at the University of SydneyBusiness School, Australia His current research interests focus on the application of discoursetheory and analysis to organisational change and leadership

Elizabeth de Grootis Assistant Professor in Communication and Information Studies at theRadboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands Her research interests involve the use and

effectiveness of English and multimodality in international business texts

Christoph A Hafnertrained as a lawyer and is now Assistant Professor in the Department ofEnglish at City University of Hong Kong His research interests include legal discourse,academic and professional literacies, and language learning and technology In addition to hisother publications, he has co-authored a book (with Rodney H Jones) entitled UnderstandingDigital Literacies: A Practical Introduction, published by Routledge in 2012

Michael Handford is Professor of the Institute for Innovation in International EngineeringEducation at the University of Tokyo, and works on professional and intercultural discourseanalysis He is the co-editor, with JP Gee, of The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis.Peter B Hirsch is Executive Vice President, Director of Reputation Risk for OgilvyPublic Relations With more than 30 years experience in public relations, he counsels globalcorporations on issues of corporate reputation and risk management

Janet Holmesholds a Chair in Linguistics and is Director of the Wellington Language in theWorkplace Project at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand She teaches and resear-ches in the area of sociolinguistics, specialising in workplace discourse and language and gender.Winni Johansen is Professor of Corporate Communication and Director of Study of theExecutive Master’s in Corporate Communication (EMCC) at the Department of BusinessCommunication, School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark.Alan Jonesis a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University,Sydney, and a Visiting Fellow in Anthropology at the Australian National University inCanberra Research interests include discourse analysis, English for Specific Purposes, andprofessional communication

Sujata S Kathpaliais Senior Lecturer at the Language and Communication Centre, NanyangTechnological University, Singapore, where she teaches academic writing courses.Her research interests include genre analysis, academic writing and English languageteaching

Koo Swit Ling, Deputy Director, Language and Communication Centre, Nanyang logical University, Singapore, is currently teaching Professional Communication to engineeringstudents Her research interests include business communication, classroom teaching, andlanguage learning

Techno-Becky S.C Kwanis Associate Professor of English at City University of Hong Kong whereshe teaches on a variety of theory and ESP courses Her areas of research include thesiswriting, academic discourse, genre analysis and doctoral publishing

William Littlewood taught in secondary schools and teacher education before moving toHong Kong in 1991 He has published widely in thefield of language teaching and is nowHonorary Professor at the Language Centre at the Hong Kong Baptist University

Notes on contributors

Jane Lockwoodis an Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University ofHong Kong and her research interests involve English for Specific Purposes curriculum andassessment design She has also developed‘train the trainer’ education programmes for Asianworkplace settings.

Jane Lunghas been working closely with language specialists, subject specialists, ESP practitionersand language teachers in a number of research projects She has interests in discourse analysis,genre analysis, corpus linguistics and professional communication including legal, businessand promotional genres, as well as language teaching and learning She is an Associate Professor

at Macao Polytechnic Institute

Carmen Daniela Maier is an Associate Professor and member of the Centre for BusinessCommunication and of the Knowledge Communication Research Group at Business andSocial Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark Her main research interest is the theoreticaland methodological development of multimodal analysis of knowledge communication.Meredith Marra investigates workplace discourse (including meeting talk and workplaceidentities) as a core member of the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project team.She currently teaches sociolinguistics from first year to PhD level at Victoria University ofWellington

Lindsay Milleris Associate Professor in the Department of English at City University of HongKong He has been responsible for designing, developing and teaching a wide variety of ESPcourses in the department, mostly English for Science and English for Engineering

Catherine Nickerson is a Professor in the College of Business at Zayed University in theUnited Arab Emirates She is currently working on research on the impact of language andlanguages in the Islamic business world

Daniel Nybergis Professor in Sustainability at Nottingham University, UK His main researchinterest is investigating how organisations take part in negotiating and shaping how we, asindividuals, organisations and societies, respond to global or societal phenomena

Anne Peirson-Smithis an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at City University

of Hong Kong teaching courses on advertising copywriting, fashion communication, publicrelations and popular culture Her research focuses on the discourses of fashion branding,advertising and public relations She is co-author of Public Relations in Asia Pacific: CommunicatingAcross Cultures (2009)

Robyn V Remkeis Associate Professor of Intercultural Communication and Management at theCopenhagen Business School in Denmark Her interests focus on organisational irrationalityand resistance in public welfare organisations, organisational diversity and women’s leadership.She is the immediate past-president of the Organisation for the Study of Communication,Language, and Gender

Priscilla S Rogers, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business,teaches in Global MBA and Executive Education programs, trains for diverse companies and

is an Association for Business Communication Outstanding Researcher Award recipient

Graham Smartis an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies at CarletonUniversity, Canada He has published research on writing in professional and academicsettings, including Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre and Technology in the World of Banking,

an ethnographic study of the discourse practices and collaborative knowledge-making activity

of economists at Canada’s central bank His current research focuses on the discourses andargumentation of various social actors in the debate over global climate change

Alina Wanis a PhD student at City University of Hong Kong Her research relates to municative practices in the accountancy profession She has published in this area in thejournal English for Specific Purposes

com-Yunxia Zhu is Senior Lecturer at UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia.Her research interests include cross-cultural communications and management and writtencommunication She has published extensively in these areas and her works have appeared inbooks, book chapters and prestigious international journals such as Management InternationalReview, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Discourse &Communication, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Society, Text, and Journal of Business and TechnicalCommunication She also has extensive consulting experience with companies and governmentagencies in Australia and China

Notes on contributors

Vijay Bhatia and Stephen Bremner

The Handbook of Language and Professional Communication is an attempt to introduce currentresearch and practice in thefield of language teaching and learning in professional contexts to awide audience, which includes not only newly initiated professional communicators, teachersand trainers, but also researchers in the field of professional communication In addition tobringing readers up to date on the current understanding of professional communication, theHandbook also takes them a step further in making them aware of the most recent thinking onthe issues confronting the field The Handbook is multidimensional and multiperspective inits design and implementation, and brings together not only researchers from a wide range ofdisciplines, such as English for Specific Purposes, business communication, management com-munication, corporate communication, organisational communication, and translation, but alsopractising professional communicators from thefield

A narrower interpretation is common in Business and Technical Communication (BTC)literature, which incorporates sub-disciplinary contexts, and often includes management com-munication, corporate communication, organisational, and institutional communication Professionalcommunication is also sometimes viewed as incorporating what is generally referred to as workplacecommunication

In addition to these interpretations, professional communication also has some overlap with

‘Writing In the Disciplines’ (WID), or even ‘Writing Across the Curriculum’ (WAC), althoughthese two are mostly concerned with communication in academic and disciplinary contexts,whereas professional communication most often refers to communication in the world of work.Although these two types of writing programmes (WID and WAC) address different audiencesand may claim different motivations, they do seem to have some synergy and overlap withprofessional communication A fourth possibility, historically strong but not very common

today, is the use of professional communication to refer to what is popularly known as masscommunication, media communication, and sometimes new media communication.

Although all the somewhat different forms of communication outlined above have commonand overlapping interests, in that most of them are concerned with communication issues inspecific academic, professional, institutional or other workplace contexts, they essentially drawtheir inspirations from different theoretical orientations, some paying more attention to texts(use of language) while others regard context of use as more central However, none of theseapproaches ignore either the text or the context completely In theory, they all tend to workwithin their specific frameworks; in pedagogical practice, however, they often have overlappinguse of resources ESP approaches, for instance, have traditionally been driven by discourse andgenre analyses of academic and professional discourses (which draw on a strong British tradition

in the analysis of specialised genres, as in Swales 1990, and Bhatia 1993), or rhetorical theory(which likewise heavily relies on the American tradition in rhetoric and genre, as in Devitt

1991, 2004), whereas others have drawn their strengths from either general communicationtheories, or from more specific management or organisational theories (as in Reinsch 1996;Rogers 1998, 2000, and 2001; Jameson 2000, 2001) However, in spite of these different the-oretical and disciplinary orientations, most of these approaches have the same ultimate objective,that is to be able to understand and appreciate how professional communication is used in theirspecific contexts, and how best they can teach and train professionals to communicate appro-priately in their specific contexts to achieve their disciplinary and/or professional objectives.And since their concerns are somewhat similar or shared, they are more likely to benefit from

an integration of one another’s approaches and available work There have been a number ofstudies published in the last few years, particularly in business communication, which have beenusing discourse and genre frameworks to enrich their understanding of issues in various areas ofbusiness, management, and organisational communication (as evidenced in Bargiela-Chiappiniand Nickerson 1999; Nickerson 1998; Chia 2000; Rogers 2000 and 2001; Grant, Keenoy andOswick 2001; Louhiala-Salminen 2002; Boje, Oswick and Ford 2004; Rogerson-Revell 2007;Charles 2007; and a number of others) These recent developments (see Bhatia 2007) encourage asynergetic integration of various approaches and frameworks

Integrated view of professional communication

This view favouring integration of various approaches is further strengthened by the fact that inmore recent pedagogic practice there appears to be a considerable interest in incorporatingmethodologies and insights from seemingly different approaches to professional communication,certainly more than was the case a few years ago Considering the situation today and what it islikely to be in years to come, this Handbook of Language and Professional Communication takes abroader perspective on professional communication than has been taken traditionally

Professional communication thus integrates three main areas of study: English for

Spe-cific Purposes (ESP), which draws its inspiration in turn from analysis of disciplinary variationwithin the framework of register or genre analysis, the second area The third main traditionthat seems to have influenced current thinking in professional communication consists of busi-ness communication, management communication and corporate communication Unlike ESP,none of these sub-areas of communication studies have been seriously influenced by register

or genre analysis until recently (see Bhatia 2007 for a detailed review) Instead, they havedrawn their strength from various communication theories The focus in these sub-dimensions

of professional communication has been primarily on text-external factors, includingcontext However, as Bhatia and Bhatia (2011) point out, although at least two of these

Introduction

approaches to professional communication, i.e ESP and business communication studies,developed almost independently of each other, and remained separate for a long time, theyseem to have been brought together by their common interest in the analysis of discourse var-iation in professional communities, which makes discourse and genre analysis a key contributor

to the current integration of ESP and business communication we have called professionalcommunication

In this volume, we give more substance to this integrated view of professional communication

by referring to some of the main developments in recent research in all three areas: analysis ofdiscourse variation in professional communities, ESP, and various other contributors to profes-sional communication, such as business communication, management communication, corporatecommunication, and organisational communication This integrated view of English for professionalcommunication can be visually represented as follows:

Taking this broad integrated perspective on professional communication, the proposedHandbook will essentially incorporate not only an historical view of thefield, but will also leadreaders in the direction in which we think it is likely to develop in the coming years This hasbeen achieved by specially solicited papers from some of the best-known and most well-establishedscholars and practitioners in their respective fields to give their understanding of specific issuesrelating to professional communication and also to project their views about its future development.The main objectives of this Handbook thus are:

 To provide an overview of the key contributors to professional communication,

 To make readers aware of the major approaches to professional communication,

 To bring into focus the recent research in professional communication, and

 To argue for the integration of various dimensions of professional communication

Figure 0.1 ESP and professional communication

Socia-linguistics

Genre Analysis Critical Discourse Analysis

Professional Communication

Englishfor Specific Purposes

Pr~fessional

Communication

English for Specific Purposes

Organisation of the Handbook

The Handbook has four major sections:

1 Approaches to professional communication

The first section of the Handbook consists of three separate and yet conceptually interrelatedsub-sections, which share an overlapping concern with theoretical inputs to various areas ofprofessional communication They provide, though in varying degrees, some indications of thevarious kinds of inspiration that have provided strength to individual strands of professionalcommunication

A General theoretical perspectives

This section reflects the underlying philosophy and some of the key components of theoreticalframeworks that have inspired and contributed to the present-day understanding of what wehave referred to here as professional communication, while at the same time illustrating itsdevelopment through a range of ideas and approaches

In thefirst chapter, ‘Analysing discourse variation in professional contexts’, Vijay Bhatia introducesone of the most established and most popular frameworks for the analysis of discourse variation inlanguage use in academic and professional contexts Although his starting point is the develop-ment of discourse and genre analysis of academic and professional discourses, his focus is onboth text and context: text as the object of analysis, and context as text-external phenomenonthat makes such textual genres possible in real academic and professional contexts He concludes

by suggesting the integration of genre as discursive practice and context as professional practice.Winnie Cheng, in her chapter ‘Corpus analyses of professional discourse’ explains a popularresearch approach used to empirically analyse variation in language use in professional contexts.This corpus-driven approach, based on large quantities of textual data, has brought an increasingamount of credibility to analyses of discourse variation, and hence is being widely used in ESPand business communication studies Based on reviews of some of the key contributions to thefield, Cheng offers a very comprehensive introduction to this immensely useful approach,illustrating her chapter with insights from instances of professional discourses

Yunxia Zhu, in the next chapter, proposes a situated genre approach for cross-culturalbusiness communication and education, which she explains as a genre learning process inprofessional contexts Drawing on the experiences of Chinese students learning Englishbusiness writing in New Zealand as an example, she claims that the situated model can helplearners guide their learning processes to achieve an in-depth understanding of communicationgenres through active participation in class This research finding with its focus on studentknowledge construction has implications for professional communication learning and education ingeneral

In thefinal chapter of this sub-section, Carmen Daniela Maier introduces multimodality as amethodological tool, exploring specific aspects of professional communication Looking beyondlanguage and across several media, she focuses on the present and future communicativepotential and challenges provided by the simultaneous appearance of more complex commu-nicative tools of multiliterate generations, who create, disseminate and use these tools in broadmultidisciplinary contexts She also investigates several types of multi-resources kits that aremeant to facilitate new forms of inter-institutional and inter-professional communication andinteraction related to the context of thefilm business

Introduction

B Broad disciplinary frameworks

Thefirst part of this section contains five chapters concerned with the ways in which researchershave traditionally approached professional communication, looking at the diverse theories thathave informed research and analysis The intention is, on the one hand, to help readers under-stand the various perspectives from which professional communication has been viewed, and on theother, to help readers recognise commonalities among the theories and frameworks employed inthefield in order to consider ways in which they might be combined and integrated in subsequentresearch

Catherine Nickerson, in her chapter‘Business communication’ traces the historical ment of business communication as an academic discipline from the beginning of the 1990s

develop-to its present-day evolution She provides an insightful overview of published work based onsome of the key international journals and other related publications in the field of businesscommunication research and pedagogy She identifies some of the most important theoreticaland methodological frameworks that have influenced business communication researchersand practitioners in the field, discussing how business communication has made a substantialcontribution to our understanding of professional communication She also identifies a number

of common trends in business communication in recent research and pedagogical approaches,and speculates on how these may shape the future of the discipline in the course of the next tenyears

Bertha Du-Babcock, in her chapter, revisits theory, research, and teaching in business munication to claim that since theories in this field are proliferating as researchers strive toexplain a more complex and diversified global communication environment, they may either beleading to a theory jungle that explains business communication from different positions or to

com-an orchard representing different yet complementary aspects of business communication Sheargues that to prevent a jungle from emerging, it is important to distinguish the goals andmethods of each research study and to integrate concepts from all of the various approacheswhereby they contribute to a better understanding of thefield of business communication.Drawing on a corpus of research studies of the discursive dimension of knowledge-making inthe natural sciences, Graham Smart, Stephani Currie and Matt Falconer explore how theory isemployed in qualitative empirical research for the purposes of framing, data analysis, and furthertheory-building in scientific communication Their analysis of a corpus of ten research studies isintended to help graduate students and early-career scholars in reading and producing qualitativeempirical research in the natural sciences, and more generally in professional communication

In the next chapter Saul Carliner offers a useful and comprehensive account of the field

of technical communication, which he defines as a broad field that includes any form of munication about technical or specialised topics, or that communicates by using technology,

com-or provides instructions about how to do something, com-or a combination of these Fcom-or him,the discipline of technical communication has many roots, including in writing, cognitivepsychology, and linguistics, and their underlying philosophies, though most technical commu-nicators take a broad view that focuses on designing content for users The profession of technicalcommunication, he claims, has a growing body of literature rooted in peer-reviewed and profes-sional publications and conferences, and has established quality standards as part of its awardsprogrammes

Janet Holmes and Meredith Marra, in ‘The complexities of communication in professionalworkplaces’, review research on the analysis of workplace communication, focusing on inter-action in workplace contexts They identify a rich and diverse number of theoretical frame-works that have been developed for the analysis of workplace communication, along with a

range of contrasting and complementary methods of data collection Within a broad linguistic framework, their review describes some of the significant theoretical orientations, keyissues and methodologies relating to workplace communication They also consider likelydirections for future research in this area.

socio-In our view, there are two additional areas of concern that have potential relevance to andsynergy with professional communication These are the use of electronic media, and translation,which are becoming increasingly relevant because of their shared interest in theories of discourseand communication Thefirst chapter in this sub-section concerns the importance of new media

in present-day professional communication, while the second addresses the challenges of dealingwith professional communication issues in the context of translation settings

This sub-section opens with a chapter by Michael B Goodman and Peter B Hirsch, whohighlight how electronic media– Web 2.0 – has created internal and external communicationchallenges for corporations, what they are, and some of the ways in which companies deal withthem They also point out the key challenges: these include globalisation, employee use of socialmedia in a networked enterprise, news aggregation and timely corporate responses in aninstantaneous media environment, and the use of electronic media in the regulated environment

C Specific disciplinary frameworks

This sub-section brings togetherfive chapters introducing four very specific and different disciplinary frameworks that have become established in their own right Each of the chaptersdeals with one discipline, drawing strength from somewhat different disciplinary concepts,which include management, organisational, institutional and corporate communication.Priscilla S Rogers in her chapter describes the historical development of management com-munication, identifying its unique focus relative to other professional communicationfields, andits core content related to managers’ communication activities Management communication,she explains, examines managers’ effective use of writing and speaking to get work done withand through people Her sources for this important overview of management communicationinclude a range of key journals in the field, in addition to descriptions and syllabi of relatedcourses from some top business schools

sub-In the next chapter, David Grant and Daniel Nyberg provide a framework to analyse valent organisational discourses communicated and employed within contemporary organisa-tions The use of the framework is illustrated with examples based on studies of how businessengages with climate change and the emerging discourse of sustainability to highlight how dis-courses are operating at different levels – societal, organisational and individual – that formorganisational realities The framework serves as a useful means by which to understand inter-and intra-organisational dynamics, which also allows us to theorise and give examples of thepossibility for corporations to shape and reshape discursive formations

pre-In the next chapter, Patrice M Buzzanell, Jeremy P Fyke and Robyn V Remke discussorganisational communication for scholars in professional communication, noting how recentinquiry in their field can contribute to professional communication Their chapter provides

Introduction

overviews of organisational communication from the earliest reviews to current reframings, atthe same time encouraging emerging research trends that underlie organisational-professionalcommunication intersections They point out that although organisational and professionalcommunication have quite distinctive orientations, both of them attend to intersections betweendiscourse and materialities, as well as theory and practice, and power, authority, and agency.The next chapter, by Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen, is a state-of-the-art account of thefield of corporate communication, defined both as a specific organisational practice and also as ayoung and emerging academic discipline They discuss the historical conditions and drivers that havetriggered the rise of corporate communication as a new strategic management tool in privateand public organisations, distinct from other related disciplines such as public relations, organi-sational communication, marketing communication and business communication, by identifyingkey concepts such as corporate identity, image and reputation, integration, and stakeholder relations.Elizabeth de Groot in the following chapter develops the theme of corporate communicationfurther by identifying it as a management instrument that focuses on the orchestration of allinternal and external communication activities, in order to generate and convey a consistentcorporate story based on which favourable relationships are established with stakeholders.Drawing on her extensive work on corporate disclosure practices, she identifies several of thetheoretical and analytical issues that scholars in thefields of corporate communication and corporatereporting currently face.

2 Practice

This section addresses the varied ways in which professional communication practitioners, both

in ESP and business communication contexts, have been handling various issues confronting theteaching and learning of language in professional contexts in order to prepare students to makethe transition from the academy to the workplace This section addresses two major kinds ofperspectives: pedagogical, such as needs analysis, curriculum design, materials development, andappropriation of relevant pedagogies, especially focusing on innovative aspects of methodology,both from ESP and business communication; and secondly, disciplinary perspectives such asEnglish for science and technology, engineering, accountancy, law, business processing outsourcing,public relations, and media communication

A Pedagogic practices

In thefirst chapter, on needs analysis for professional communication, Jane Lung examines ferent approaches to determining language and communication needs in the workplace Sheintroduces a blended approach to needs analysis by combining Critical Genre Theory withtraditional needs analysis approaches as a tool to determine the actual needs of learners in specificprofessional communication contexts She illustrates the approach by looking into the future Englishlanguage communicative needs of students in the hotel industry and identifies the typical skillsand activities required and desired by the respondents to improve their effective professionalcommunication in English

dif-Based on a survey of practitioners and a review of current research, the next chapter, by SujataKathpalia and Koo Swit Ling, attempts to reach a deeper understanding of the emergence anddevelopment of professional practices in business contexts, specifically to determine howworkplace communication has changed due to technological advances in the context of globa-lisation with its focus onflexibility, mobility and diversity With a focus on programme design

in professional communication, they examine these changing trends in the use of

communication modes such as websites, instant messaging, emailing, audio and video ferencing that have given rise to new communicative processes and multimodal genres thatintegrate text, speech, graphics, recorded sound and movies, affecting discourse in ways thatwere not possible in the past They investigate these shifts in communication practice in order

con-to capture snapshots of the changing landscape con-to better equip old and new employees with thedynamically changing world of business discourse

In the next chapter William Littlewood reviews how teaching methodology has been dealtwith, focussing on published books and chapters for ESP teachers rather than research articles

He considers whether there is in fact an identifiable ‘ESP methodology’ which is separate fromthat for general EFL, and claims that at the level of principles for language teaching, a singleframework embraces both domains He then considers attempts to formulate context-free principles that inform a context-sensitive methodology relevant to ESP and professionalcommunication teaching strategies and instructional materials

B Disciplinary perspectives

This sub-section looks at the different disciplinary fields for which professional communicationprogrammes are designed and implemented, always keeping in mind the ways in which prac-tising specialists achieve their academic and professional objectives This section has severalchapters on principles and insights from specific sites of practical and pedagogical engagement.This section on ESP practice opens with an historical review of the research into English forScience and Technology by Lindsay Miller He points out how English for Science and Tech-nology (EST) has moved along with trends in linguistic theory Based on research impacts onpedagogy and a review of textbooks in EST, he shows how materials development in EST hasmoved from a focus on accuracy, to fluency, to socio-cultural agency This he illustrates byexamining case studies of materials and courses in EST, suggesting ways to prepare EST studentsfor the ever more complicated world of dealing with multi-genres in EST that are emergingdue to the multiliteracies students are expected to have in the twenty-first century

Alan Jones, in the next chapter of this section, highlights the cross-functional roles ofaccounting professionals, in particular their involvement in strategic management and responsi-bility for adding value to commercial operations He rightly claims that all this entails a veryhigh level of interpersonal skills along with the ability to articulate policies and decisions bothlucidly and persuasively In order to give more substance to this view, he identifies and pro-blematises key aspects of what counts as professional communicative expertise in the context ofspecific professions, especially accounting Taking a top-down functionalist orientation, hedescribes the types of work accountants do, what they need to know to do this, and the kinds

of social-institutional problems they engage with on a daily basis, in order to conceptualiseprofessional expertise in terms of skills and attributes

In the next chapter, Christoph A Hafner provides an overview of the existing research intoprofessional communication in the legal domain He argues that, in order to reach a satisfactoryunderstanding of specialised legal genres and interactions, it is necessary to go beyond a focus ontexts and take into account the full socio-cultural context, in particular the discursive practices ofthe legal professional community, which are shaped by the social goals of those practices, as well

as the jointly held tacit system of values and beliefs of community members He reviews threemain areas of scholarly activity in professional legal communication research: 1 descriptivestudies of written professional genres, 2 interpretive studies of talk and interaction, and 3 studies

of multilingual and multicultural legal contexts, before speculating as to how the study ofprofessional legal communication might usefully develop in the future

Introduction

Drawing on a discourse-based project in the construction industry, Michael Handford lines how what he calls the‘construction communication’ process is structured, with particularreference to the different parties involved He looks at how communication within the industry

out-is portrayed in academic and professional studies, and the types of research that have beenconducted He then considers how studies in professional discourse might be operationalised tohave practical relevance in construction contexts, and goes on to outline an appropriate meth-odology, demonstrating how it has been applied to audio, video and ethnographic data collected

on a Hong Kong construction project

In the next chapter, Gail Forey, based on her work in the Business Process Outsourcing(BPO) industry, focuses on the differences between written and spoken discourse in order tobuild a bridge between what we know within applied linguistics and how language is under-stood in the workplace Using the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL),she claims that if the industry wants to hire and train Customer Service Representatives (CSRs)

to deal effectively with customer service enquiries, it may be futile to test and train tial employees through models of written language Drawing on her data from actual BPOindustry interactions, she argues for an evidenced-based understanding of significant features ofspoken language in the BPO industry to help change how language is perceived within theindustry

poten-Isabel Corona, in her chapter, attempts to clarify the current state of media communication,

by taking a threefold perspective: media as a discipline, media as professional practice, and media

as object of research by discourse analysts For her, media as a discipline is concerned withmedia studies in tertiary education as part of communication studies; media as professionalpractice involves encompassing a multiplicity of professions and practices, with an increasingdemand for both specialised knowledge and adaptability to respond to evolving new mediatexts and genres and globalising contexts for production and dissemination processes; and media

as object of research responds to an increasing demand for interdisciplinarity as shown by thecurrent trends and methodological approaches in the study of media discourse The chapter thustries tofind some common ground for an integrated view of the problems and challenges posed

by technological, social and globalisation factors that have a strong impact on the currentdevelopments in media studies, practice and research

In thefinal chapter of this section, Anne Peirson-Smith outlines some of the main theoriesand debates surrounding the current role of public relations as professional practice and as asubject for academic study After defining public relations, its history and origins, and its rolewithin the integrated marketing communications framework, she focuses on the rationale behindpublic relations, stakeholder relationships, the development of public relations, and the appli-cation of professional communication theories to analyse and direct public relations activities.She also speculates where public relations education and practice are heading in the future,given the rapidly changing nature of communication brought on with the application anddominance of new technology

3 Acquisition of professional competence

This section addresses the varied ways in which people become competent performers in fessional settings, looking at how professional competence is acquired, whether as a participatingmember of a particular discourse community or community of practice, or as a student beingprepared to make the transition from the academy to the workplace

pro-In thefirst chapter in this section, Becky S C Kwan discusses the notion of community inprofessional communication, which has been variously used and interpreted in Applied

Linguistics, particularly in the context of discursive practices, in a wide range of academic andprofessional settings The notion of community has been linguistically modified in a variety ofways, as we see in examples such as discourse community, community of practice, and scientific com-munity, which have now become widely invoked in the literature on acquisition of professionalcompetence She provides a brief overview of the epistemic origins of the three communitynotions, how they have been characterised, how they have been taken up in early and currentstudies of professional communication, and what the plethora of language studies have revealedabout discursive practices in specific communities She also proposes directions that future studies

of discursive practices in specific communities may consider

In contrast to Becky S C Kwan’s focus on discursive practices in the acquisition of professionalcompetence, Natasha Artemeva and Janna Fox adopt a socio-rhetorical approach as they con-sider the formation of a professional communicator, highlighting the notion of portability as itpertains to the transition from academia to the workplace They point out that whereas the ESPtradition has continued to focus to a large extent on the textual realisations of oral and writtenprofessional communication by non-native speakers of English, the Writing Studies tradition

in North America has investigated academic and workplace writing as situated within cultural, historical, or rhetorical contexts of predominantly English-speaking students andprofessionals

socio-In his chapter‘Collaborative writing: Challenges for research and teaching’, Stephen Bremnerlooks at the role of collaborative writing in professional communication, considering the defi-nitions and taxonomies that have emerged from research A central issue is the extent to whichcollaborative writing activity is entwined in the contexts in which it takes place; he considersthe implications this has for research aimed at defining and delineating collaborative writing,and the challenges that this constitutive relationship between writing and context poses forteaching He concludes the chapter with a look at research areas related to collaborative writingthat might be worthy of further investigation

In the next chapter Jane Lockwood addresses two key issues: the training of professionals incall centres, the nature of knowledge and skills required of English language communicationstrainers, and the nature of Customer Service Representative (CSR) communication breakdownthat they are expected to prevent and remediate In order to address these issues, she outlinesthe context of the call centre worksite and then describes how CSRs are currently being sup-ported through English language communications training and coaching in the workplace.Situating this discussion within research in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) discipline, onthe one hand, and business management research as it relates to training in the workplace, onthe other, she offers an analysis of communication breakdown in call centres, finally suggestingwhat might go into ESP call centre communication ‘train the trainer programmes’ and brieflydiscussing how these could be implemented

The final chapter in this sub-section is by Saul Carliner, who discusses credentialing ofpractising professionals as a significant development in the practice of professional communication.Credentialing for him refers to the process of formal recognition of the accomplishments ofcommunication professionals Credentialing is intended to recognise professional expertise andprovide a ‘seal of approval’ to hiring managers He outlines the types of existing credentials,which include certification (voluntary validation of demonstrated competence in a particularfield by a third party assessor), licensure (required validation of demonstrated competence in aparticular field by a third party assessor, required to practise a profession), certificates (successfulcompletion of a particular programme of study), degrees (completion of an approved curriculum

of study at an accredited institution), and accreditation (validation that an academic programmemeets the essential requirements)

Introduction

4 View from the professions

Since the Handbook of Language and Professional Communication concerns professionals in thefield

as much as it does academic scholars, including research students and faculty in universities, it isnecessary to balance what academics think and claim about the nature, function, teaching andlearning of professional communication with reactions, views, and perspectives of practitionersfrom the professions In order to achieve this balance, this section considers the views of prac-titioners from four relevantfields The editors of the Handbook interviewed well-established andvery experienced professionals from banking, law, accounting, and public relations in anattempt to explore the extent to which their perspectives converge with or diverge from theviews of researchers in those fields, particularly in areas such as the acquisition of professionalexpertise in their respective professions The interviews were generally about an hour long,based on a set of pre-designed questions Section 4 presents the authentically approved tran-scripts of these interviews The section also includes the set of questions we had for our gui-dance The four specialists are:

 Banking: A very senior and experienced banker, who would like to remain anonymous

 Law: George Anthony David Dass, Partner, Shahrizat, Rashad and Lee, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia

 Accounting: A Hong Kong accountant, who would like to remain anonymous, interviewed

Bibliography

Bargiela-Chiappini, F., and Nickerson, C (eds) (2001) Writing Business: Genres, Media and Discourse,London: Longman

Bhatia, Vijay K (1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings, Harlow: Longman

——(2004) Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View, London and New York: Continuum

——(2007) ‘Discursive practices in disciplinary and professional contexts’, Linguistic and Human Sciences,

Handbook of Applied Linguistics, London: Routledge Publications

Chia, Robert, (2000).‘Discourse analysis as organizational analysis’, Organization, 7(3), 513–18.

and J Paradis (eds), Textual Dynamics of the Professions, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 337–57

——(2004) Writing Genres, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., Phillips, N., and Putnam, L (eds) (2004) Handbook of OrganizationalDiscourse, London: Sage Publications

challenges’, International Studies of Management and Organization, 31(3), 5–24

Business Communication, 37(1), 7–38

——(2001) ‘Narrative discourse and management action’, Journal of Business Communication, 38(4), 476–511

English for Specific Purposes, 21(3), 211–31

80

——(2000) ‘CEO presentations in conjunction with earning announcements: Extending the construct of

Section 1

Approaches to professional

communication

A General theoretical frameworks

1 Analysing discourse variation in

professional contexts

Vijay Bhatia

Much of research in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and to some extent in professionalcommunication, has been inspired by descriptions of discourse variation in academic and pro-fessional contexts Although professional communication represents the development that integratesESP and Business Communication as two main areas of study (see Bhatia and Bhatia 2011),with ESP drawing its inspiration from applied linguistics, and Business Communication fromcommunication theory, both of them have come to benefit from the outcomes of analysis ofvarious forms of academic and disciplinary discourses within the various frameworks of discourseanalysis, in particular from genre analysis In more recent years critical discourse and genreanalytical frameworks have also started influencing the current thinking in organisational com-munication, management communication, and corporate communication, all of which are oftengrouped under professional communication (see Chia 2000; Boje, Oswick and Ford 2004;Grant et al 2004; Bhatia 2007) In the early sixties, only ESP relied heavily on descriptions ofdiscourse variation, and none of the other areas of professional communication took studies indiscourse and genre analysis seriously, relying on various communication theories instead Thefocus in these individually somewhat diverse areas of professional communication was primarily

on text-external factors, including context, whereas in ESP the focus was on text-internalaspects, such as lexico-grammar and rhetorical organisation However, in more recent years, thefocus in all areas of professional communication has been shifting towards disciplinary variations

in professional and academic discourses and practices in addition to various theories of munication, thus integrating text-internal as well as text-external factors in professional com-munication In this chapter I would like to introduce some of the key developments in thefield

com-of discourse and genre analysis and their applications to various forms com-of prcom-ofessional communication,which can be represented as shown in Figure 1.1

Analysing functional variation as register

As mentioned earlier, ESP has always drawn its inspiration from applied linguistics, particularlyfrom sociolinguistics, through the analyses of functional variation in language use in academic aswell as professional contexts The earliest forms of analysis of language variation can be tracedback to the work of Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens (1964), who defined functional variation

in language use as register, drawing evidence from statistical significance of lexico-grammaticalfeatures As Swales (2000) pointed out, register analysis gave early ESP practitioners a mechanism

to relate findings of linguistic analysis to pedagogic materials through what he called ‘thin’descriptions of ESP discourses However, he cautioned that this resource lacked‘a perception ofdiscourse itself’ and ‘the means for analyzing and exploiting it’ (2000: 60), which was rectified inlater work on genre analysis

In subsequent years numerous studies appeared identifying and describing typically acteristic features of various academic and professional registers, such as scientific English, businessEnglish, and legal English However, it is a common perception that outsiders to a discourse orprofessional community are not able to follow what specialists write and talk about even if theyare in a position to understand every word of what is written or said (Swales 1990), and evenbeing a native speaker in such contexts is not necessarily helpful if one does not have sufficientawareness or understanding of the conventions of such specialised discourses and genres situated

char-in specific professional practices Thus in subsequent years, ESP inspired a new tradition for theanalysis of academic and disciplinary discourses within the framework of genre analysis, which, asWiddowson (1998) points out, was a significant advance on register analysis Referring to thework done by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993), he claims that it‘seeks to identify the particularconventions for language use in certain domains of professional and occupational activity’ Hefurther points out that it is ‘a development from, and an improvement on, register analysisbecause it deals with discourse and not just text: that is to say, it seeks not simply to reveal whatlinguistic forms are manifested but how they realise, make real, the conceptual and rhetoricalstructures, modes of thought and action, which are established as conventional for certain discoursecommunities’ (1998: 9)

The rationale for such developments has been that communication is not simply a matter ofputting words together in a grammatically correct and rhetorically coherent textual form, butmore importantly, it is also a matter of having a desired impact on how a specifically relevantdiscourse or professional community views it, and how the members of that community

Figure 1.1 Discourse and genre analysis in professional communication (adapted from Bhatia 2012)

Professional Practices

Translation and

Interpretation

DISCOURSE AND GENRE ANALYSIS

English for Specific Purposes

Professional Communication

Discursive Practices

Document and Information Design

negotiate meaning in professional contexts It is a matter of understanding‘why members of aspecific disciplinary or professional community communicate the way they do’ (Bhatia 1993),which requires the discipline-specific knowledge of how professionals conceptualise issues andtalk about them in order to achieve their disciplinary and professional objectives.

Analysing functional variation as genre

In its early conceptualisations, genre analysis sought thicker functional descriptions of discoursevariation, often going beyond the immediate context of situation, attempting to offer a groundeddescription of language use in educational, academic, or professional settings Genre analysis thus

reflected more than mere linguistic descriptions of texts, invariably offering explanation forlanguage use in conventionalised and institutionalised settings Genre analysis, as pointed out inBhatia (2004), is viewed as the study of situated linguistic behaviour in institutionalised aca-demic or professional settings, whether defined in terms of typification of rhetorical action, as inMiller (1984), Bazerman (1994), and Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995); regularities of staged, goaloriented social processes, as in Martin, Christie and Rothery (1987), and Martin (1993); or con-sistency of communicative purposes, as in Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993) Genre theory, in spite ofthese seemingly different orientations, covers a lot of common ground The most importantfeature of this view of language use is the emphasis on conventions that all three manifestations

of genre theory consider very central to any form of generic description Genre essentially refers

to language use in a conventionalised communicative setting in order to give expression to aspecific set of communicative goals of a disciplinary or social institution, which gives rise tostable structural forms by imposing constraints on the use of lexico-grammatical as well as discoursalresources (Bhatia 2004)

The second important aspect of genre theory is that although genres are typically associatedwith recurring rhetorical contexts, and are identified on the basis of a shared set of commu-nicative purposes with constraints on allowable contributions in the use of lexico-grammaticaland discoursal forms, they are not static Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995: 6) aptly point it outwhen they say ‘genres are inherently dynamic rhetorical structures that can be manipulatedaccording to conditions of use’

These two features of genre theory– emphasis on conventions and propensity for innovation –may appear to be contradictory in character; one tends to view genre as a rhetorically situatedand highly institutionalised textual activity, having its own generic integrity, whereas the otherassigns genre a natural propensity for innovation and change, which is often exploited by theexpert members of the specialist community to create new forms in order to respond to novelrhetorical contexts or to convey ‘private intentions within the socially recognised commu-nicative purposes’ (Bhatia 1995: 1) How do we explain this seeming contradiction between

‘generic integrity’ on the one hand, and ‘propensity for innovation’ on the other?

Going back to Berkenkotter and Huckin, we find that although genres are associated withtypical socio-rhetorical situations and in turn, they shape future responses to similar situations,they have always been ‘sites of contention between stability and change’ (1995: 6) Situations,and more importantly rhetorical contexts, may not always recur exactly in the same way,though they may still have a considerable overlap It may be that a person is required to respond

to a somewhat changing socio-pragmatic need, encouraging her or him to negotiate her or hisresponse in the light of recognisable or established conventions It may also be that she or hemay decide to communicate ‘private intentions’ within the rhetorical context of a ‘sociallyrecognized communicative purpose’ (Bhatia 1995) Bhatia (2004) discusses the example of aletter from a company chairman to the shareholders, in which he finds expert manipulation of

Analysing discourse variation

generic resources to convey a positive image about a company’s somewhat negative performance.

In contexts such as these it is often possible for established members of a professional nity to manipulate institutionalised generic resources, thus exploiting the ‘tactical freedom’available to expert professionals to negotiate individual responses to recurring and novel rhetoricalsituations It is true that there are regularities of various kinds, in the use of lexico-grammatical,discoursal, and generic resources; there are rhetorical situations, which often recur, though notexactly in the same form, or manner, but at the same time, there are expert and well-establishedusers of language in specific disciplinary cultures who try to exploit, appropriate, and even bendgeneric conventions and thus expectations in order to be innovative and effective in their use oflanguage All these factors make the real world of discourse complex and yet interesting

commu-In the last two decades genre theory has become one of the most favoured tools for theanalysis of professional discourse The frameworks and methods of language description havealso become increasingly sophisticated, focusing more on context, rather than just the text Ithas also become increasingly multidimensional and multi-perspective (Bhatia 2004), in that ithas integrated a number of different methodologies, such as textography (Swales 1998), inter-pretive ethnography (Smart 2006), corpus analysis (Hyland 2000; Cheng, this volume), participant-perspectives on specialist discourses (Louhiala-Salminen 1996; Rogers 2000), cross-cultural andintercultural perspectives (Gimenez 2001; Vergaro 2004; Planken 2005; Vuorela 2005; Zhu, thisvolume), multimodal analysis (Brett 2000; O’Halloran 2006; Maier, this volume), and observationanalysis (Louhiala-Salminen 2002), to name only a few However, the implication for professionalcommunication is that text-based analyses within register or genre analysis have been found to beincreasingly inadequate in explaining and accounting for the typical relationship between ‘dis-cursive’ and ‘professional’ practices (Bhatia 2004, 2008a, 2008b, and 2010) of various professionalcommunities In the light of this need to analyse‘professional’ practices, Bhatia (2008a, 2008b, and2010) argues for a much deeper understanding of context in all its varied forms, including studies ofhow participants undertake these discursive tasks, perform professional actions, and what theyachieve through these discursive and professional activities and practices

In its recent developments, genre analysis started exploring more comprehensively whatBhatia (2010) calls‘socio-pragmatic space’ to raise a number of other interesting issues, in par-ticular those that question some of the basic assumptions about the integrity of genericdescriptions This has prompted investigations into variations in‘discursive practices’ leading tocritical examination of ‘professional practices’, with focus on the achievement of successfuloutcomes in professional actions, rather than just on the writing of grammatically correct andacceptable texts In this context, Livesey (2002: 7–9) points out that ‘formal and surface features

of texts’ must be studied in ‘the narratives of context’ leading to what he calls ‘a creative-criticalmoment of understanding’ thus revealing ‘the ideological meaning of particular texts’ and theinterests they serve

Bremner (2008: 308) also argues in favour of a more comprehensive understanding ofinterdiscursive voices in any system of activity He points out that,

If we take the social constructionist view of genres and contexts as inherently dynamic, asmutually constitutive (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1993; Goodwin and Duranti 1992; Smart2006), and also recognize that genres are interconnected in wider systems of activity, then

we need to look at the ways in which genres influence other genres in the system A keyfeature of intertextuality to consider, then, is that it is not simply a link between texts, but aphenomenon that helps shape other texts: as genres combine to achieve different goals,they contribute to the development of new genres as they are recontextualised (Linell1998) Thus the generic, linguistic and rhetorical choices that a writer makes will be

influenced by the texts that precede or surround the text under construction, and will inturn have an effect on the final textual product.

Bhatia (2004, 2008a, and 2010) argues that the study of conventional analyses of genres or even

‘genre sets’ (Devitt 1996) or ‘systems of genres’ (Bazerman 1994) that are used to fulfil theprofessional goals of specific disciplinary or professional communities may not be sufficient tounderstand the complexities of professional communication He claims that a comprehensiveunderstanding of the motives and intentions of professional practices is possible only if one looksbeyond the textual constraints to analyse the multiple discourses, actions and voices that play asignificant role in the formation of specific discursive acts within the contexts of specific insti-tutional and organisational practices and cultures He develops the notion of‘interdiscursivity’ as

a function of appropriation of contextual and text-external generic resources within and acrossprofessional genres and professional practices, to which we shall return in the next section

Interdiscursivity in professional communication

Interdiscursivity in professional communication has become one of the most important conceptsthat seem to be crucial to the study of professional genres and practices (Bhatia 2010) Withinthe concept of genre and professional practice, one can see expert professional writers constantlyoperating within and across generic boundaries creating new but essentially related and/orhybrid (both mixed and embedded) forms to give expression to their‘private intentions’ withinthe socially accepted communicative practices and shared generic norms (Bhatia 1995; Fairclough1995) Interdiscursivity is invariably across discursive events that may be genres, professionalactivities, or even more generally professional cultures It is often based on shared generic orcontextual characteristics across two or more discursive constructs, and some understanding ofthese shared features is a necessary condition to an adequate understanding of the new construct.Interdiscursivity thus can be viewed as a function of appropriation of generic resources across three kinds ofcontextual and other text-external resources: genres, professional practices, and professional cultures.From the point of view of genre theory, especially in the context of professional commu-nication, it is necessary to distinguish appropriations across text-internal and text-externalresources, the former often viewed as intertextuality, and the latter as interdiscursivity Inter-textuality operates within what we refer to as‘textual space’ (Bhatia 2004) and has been widelystudied (Kristeva 1980; Foucault 1981; Bakhtin 1986; Fairclough 1995); however, a vastmajority of appropriations often take place across text-external semiotic resources at other levels

of professional, institutional and disciplinary discourses, such as genres, professional, institutional,and disciplinary practices, and professional, institutional and disciplinary cultures to meet sociallyshared professional, institutional, and disciplinary expectations and objectives, and sometimes toachieve‘private intentions’ These latter forms of appropriations that operate in what could beviewed as‘socio-pragmatic space’ (Bhatia 2004) are essentially interdiscursive in nature It may

be pointed out that often all these appropriations, whether text-internal or text-external, cursively operate simultaneously at all levels of discourse to realise the intended meaning, andhave been widely used in the recontextualisation, reframing, resemiotisation or reformulations

dis-of existing discourses and genres into novel or hybrid forms In addition to this, appropriation dis-ofgeneric resources is also very common in various forms of hybrids, such as mixing, embeddingand bending of genres (see for details Bhatia 2004, 2008a, 2008b, and 2010) The general picturerepresenting interdiscursivity in genre theory can be summarised as in Figure 1.2

I would like to claim that interdiscursivity operates at all levels of text-external use ofresources, e.g generic, professional practice, and professional culture; it also allows a more

Analysing discourse variation

rigorous and comprehensive analysis of genres in and as professional practice At the same time,

it also encourages evidenced-based studies of professional and institutional practices and culturesthrough the genres that are typically used in such contexts

This idea of studying professional practice through interdiscursive use of linguistic and othersemiotic resources within socio-pragmatic space is very much the central focus of what I havereferred to elsewhere as‘critical genre analysis’ of professional communication as part of pro-fessional practices (see Bhatia 2008a, 2010) Critical genre analysis contributes significantly toour understanding of organisational and institutional practices, in addition to its current appli-cations to discursive and professional practices, in both academic as well as professional contexts.Critical genre analysis is meant to explain and clarify how professional communication is actu-ally constrained and eventually realised, and in what ways this meaning is intended to be part ofprofessional practices, as well as providing insights into what goes into its production, receptionand the consumption of knowledge This emphasis on academic and professional practice, inaddition to discursive actions, encourages a further perspective on genre analysis, with a focus

on what I would like to call‘discursive performance’, which extends the scope of analysis fromgenres as discursive products to the professional practice that all discursive acts tend to accomplish

In thefinal section of the chapter I would like to give more substance to what I have referred

to as‘Critical Genre Analysis’ (CGA)

Critical Genre Analysis of professional discourse

Critical Genre Analysis (CGA) is an attempt to extend genre theory beyond the analyses oftextual resources used in professional genres to understand and demystify professional practices

or actions in academic as well as professional contexts In spite of apparent similarities withCritical Discourse Analysis (CDA), CGA is very different

CDA draws on critical theory as cultural critique, and focuses on social relations of domination,typically grounded in class relations, including race and gender, specifically focussing on their

Figure 1.2 Interdiscursivity in genre-based analysis of professional communication (Bhatia 2012: 25)

Interdiscursivity in Genre Theory

Appropriation of Generic Resources

Resemiotisation Reformulation Recontextualisation Reframing

Hybridity

Genre-Embedding Genre Bending Genre-Mixing

oppressive sides It thus tends to analyse social structures in such a way that they are viewed asinvulnerable It encourages recognition of domination without offering resources for actionagainst such practices CDA thus examines social structures and relations and analyses them insuch a way that the analysis highlights the use of power and domination to represent oppressiveactions in somewhat unequal social settings.

Critical Genre Analysis, on the other hand, is a way of ‘demystifying’ professional practicethrough the medium of genres An interesting aspect of this analysis is that it focuses as much ongeneric artifacts, as on professional practices; as much on what is explicitly or implicitly said ingenres, as on what is not said; as much on socially recognised communicative purposes, as on

‘private intentions’ (Bhatia 1995) that professional writers tend to express in order to understandprofessional practices or actions of the members of corporations, institutions and professionalorganisations In CGA, therefore, no professional, institutional, or organisational practices areassumed, but are systematically analysed and negotiated They seem to be in a constant strugglebetween competing interests CGA with its focus on practice considers individual members ofprofessional organisations, though bound by their common goals and objectives, as still havingenough flexibility to incorporate ‘private intentions’ within the scope of professionally sharedvalues, genre conventions, and professional cultures (Bhatia 1995) A notion of practice thusdescribes the relation between shared values and flexibility as dynamically complex, in thatinstitutional and organisational ideologies and constraints are often conventionalised and stan-dardised, but not always static or inflexible In professional communication, a theory of practice

is a function of organisational and institutional structures as evident in the everyday activities ofprofessionals, and conditions of production and reception are crucial Not only this, in profes-sional communication in the age of computer-mediated communication, CGA also considersthe overwhelming power and influence of technology in professional life Thus professionalpractices give shape to actions in specific professional contexts, and they get established so long

as the members of the professional community continue to follow the conventions which areshared by the members of a specific professional discourse community CGA makes a commit-ment, not only to describe, but also to explain, clarify, and‘de-mystify’ professional practice Inthis sense, CGA is not an initiative to change the professional practices of individual disciplinary,institutional, and corporate communities, but to understand how professional writers use thelanguage to achieve the objectives of their professions

Concluding remarks

I have made an attempt in this chapter to present a broad overview of register and genre-basedframeworks for the analysis of discourse variation in professional contexts In doing so, I havealso highlighted the recent developments in thefield of genre analysis, particularly the effort to

go beyond the textual artifacts to investigate context of various kinds, including interdiscursivity

as crucial to a comprehensive understanding of professional communication

It may be pointed out that research in areas such as the relationship between discursiveactivities and professional practices in most disciplinary, professional and institutional contexts(Bhatia 2008a, 2008b) is still in its early stages, and a lot more work is needed before we canfind convincing answers to the question that Bhatia (1993) raised, that is, ‘why do most pro-fessionals use the language they way they do?’ For instance, we still have no comprehensiveunderstanding of what makes a novice accounting student into a good accountant, or how weidentify, train, and appraise a good manager, marketing executive, or a public relations expert.What is the role of language in the development of specialist expertise in a particular profes-sional field? What are the core competencies that are needed to make a person a competent

Analysing discourse variation

professional? Are these competencies teachable? Is it possible to assess the acquisition of such tise? Although we seem to be a long way from any kind of definite and convincing answers to some

exper-of these questions, and a lot more work is needed, we seem to be heading in the right direction

To conclude, I would like to suggest a few directions in which research in future is likely to

go In my view, there is a need to integrate ESP with current research in other areas of fessional communication This will also encourage a more comprehensive view of professionalcommunication In addition to this, thefield of professional communication can be enriched byintegrating insights from and about professional practices, which can be and have, in recent genreanalytical studies, been successfully undertaken with insightful conclusions If we can continue toexplore some of these perspectives, I feel that we will be very close to demystifying some of thehitherto hidden complexities associated with acquisition of specialist professional and disciplinarycompetence

Bhatia, V K (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-Based View, London and New York: Continuum.(It offers a comprehensive genre analytical framework for the study of discursive and professional practices

in a number of different business and disciplinary contexts.)

Bhatia, V K., John Flowerdew and Rodney Jones, (eds) (2008) Advances in Discourse Studies, London and

covering a range of approaches, discourses and frameworks.)

Swales, J M (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press (This is a very comprehensive account of the genre theory, in particular focusing onacademic communication.)

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