The members of any specialist community produce knowledge by negotiation and persuasion, that is, by claiming, counterclaiming and persuading others of their point of view. Knowledge claims are never presented as simple matters of fact but as argumentations in the attempt to fit the context wherein actions, values and communication, in general, takes place in sync with or in coordination with others. Thus, academics/economists can make themselves visible as a who by creating a socially-situated identity and can become recognisable as a what by their actions. Such a claim may be applied not only to academics/economists but also to companies on business websites, since both may be seen as instances of social interaction between producer and receiver. These are to be understood not as isolated individuals/entities but as social agents located in a network of social relations (Kress 1989) where language is used to negotiate social relations by acknowledging, evaluating, taking a stance while construing an identity. Previous work has focussed on evaluation/stance in academic discourse (Bondi and Mauranen 2003; Samson 2004b; Fløttum, Dahl and Kinn 2006), or in professional/business discourse (Garzone 2002; Bargiela Chiappini 2006; Shaw 2006, to mention a few), but little research has to date explored the influence of one genre on another, that is, the influence or the “colonisation” (Bathia 2004), for instance, of the promotional genre on the pedagogical one and the commonalities that such different genres might share in construing textual identities. Based on the analysis of two small specialised corpora, this paper attempts to fill this research gap by answering the following questions: Do academic/economists’ identities have any features in common with those construed by companies in business websites? If yes, which are the features they share most? This paper first focuses on some concepts of genre transformation, stance and branding. It then analyses the two corpora in a quantitative and qualitative approach. The emerging results are illustrated with examples and discussed from the two sets of data in order to highlight the devices – e.g. self-mention and attitude markers - which help to construe identity in a similar way in dissimilar genres.

Academic and professional website identities: anything to share? / Samson, Christina. - In: QUADERNI DEL DIPARTIMENTO DI LINGUISTICA. UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE. - ISSN 1122-0619. - STAMPA. - 17:(2007), pp. 169-182.

Academic and professional website identities: anything to share?

Samson Christina
2007

Abstract

The members of any specialist community produce knowledge by negotiation and persuasion, that is, by claiming, counterclaiming and persuading others of their point of view. Knowledge claims are never presented as simple matters of fact but as argumentations in the attempt to fit the context wherein actions, values and communication, in general, takes place in sync with or in coordination with others. Thus, academics/economists can make themselves visible as a who by creating a socially-situated identity and can become recognisable as a what by their actions. Such a claim may be applied not only to academics/economists but also to companies on business websites, since both may be seen as instances of social interaction between producer and receiver. These are to be understood not as isolated individuals/entities but as social agents located in a network of social relations (Kress 1989) where language is used to negotiate social relations by acknowledging, evaluating, taking a stance while construing an identity. Previous work has focussed on evaluation/stance in academic discourse (Bondi and Mauranen 2003; Samson 2004b; Fløttum, Dahl and Kinn 2006), or in professional/business discourse (Garzone 2002; Bargiela Chiappini 2006; Shaw 2006, to mention a few), but little research has to date explored the influence of one genre on another, that is, the influence or the “colonisation” (Bathia 2004), for instance, of the promotional genre on the pedagogical one and the commonalities that such different genres might share in construing textual identities. Based on the analysis of two small specialised corpora, this paper attempts to fill this research gap by answering the following questions: Do academic/economists’ identities have any features in common with those construed by companies in business websites? If yes, which are the features they share most? This paper first focuses on some concepts of genre transformation, stance and branding. It then analyses the two corpora in a quantitative and qualitative approach. The emerging results are illustrated with examples and discussed from the two sets of data in order to highlight the devices – e.g. self-mention and attitude markers - which help to construe identity in a similar way in dissimilar genres.
2007
17
169
182
Samson, Christina
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/1108173
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