LESSON 1: lunedì 13 febbraio

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

The role of language in business communication

“Language and communication are becoming fundamental to the way in which our organisations operate internally
and compete externally. However much we distrust it, we are much more dependent on language in business than
we used to be.”
“Words are enmeshed in every aspect of organizational reality, from how companies operate internally to how they
do business externally.”

Language is fundamental to interpersonal relationships, to maintain good rapport, have a pleasant and successful
interaction and thus to obtain the desired effect and results.
➔ As with all types of discourse, business discourse, too, has specific linguistic characteristics and discursive
strategies that are appropriate to it.
➔ Misusing language can lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding, and speakers do not achieve their
desired effect or goal in meetings, projects, proposals, and so on. We can end up being offensive or rude.

Not only are words important for the reputation, public image and international impact of a company, but also for
the services they provide (commercials and promos), for negotiation and for establishing community feeling.
Good communicative skills are now required in all jobs. This presupposes knowing how to communicate
appropriately in different interactional contexts.
Advanced linguistic skills go hand-in-hand with personal skills such as flexibility and adaptation capacity, sensitivity,
open-mindedness and teamwork.

What makes a good communication?

• awareness of what others do
• ability to reflect on the situation and themselves
• empathy, i.e. being able to talk from someone else’s point of view
• understanding what language and other resources can achieve
• flexibility to use a wide range of resources critically: linguistic styles and strategies, nonverbal cues and other
modes of communication such as visuals; it is important not to follow the same procedures and to vary the words
we use in language production, or we may risk sounding schematic, cold and distant.

Understanding language appropriateness and communicative competence

Good communicators exhibit:
• Linguistic competence
• Sociolinguistic/sociopragmatic competence (politeness)
• Strategic competence
• Technological competence

What is a TEXT?
➢ A TEXT is any stretch of language (written or oral) that conveys a message and is meaningful in a specific context,
irrespective of its length.
➢ Textual cohesion – the linguistic means of weaving a text and connecting information.
➢ Textual coherence – time, logical/conceptual links (cause-consequence, addition, back-reference, explanation,
and so on)

MORPHEME > WORD > PHRASE > SENTENCE > PARAGRAPH > TEXT

*Understanding texts
• The seven principles of textuality: 1) cohesion; 2) coherence; 3) intentionality; 4) acceptability; 5) informativity;
6) situationality; 7) intertexuality.
• Text types (narrative, informative, descriptive, etc.)and genres (press release, complaint letter, letter of apology
etc,)
• Target readers
• Rhetorical and discursive strategies (e.g. terms of endearment, address practices, use of passive voice)
• Routinized speech practices that are contextually appropriate

What is a context?
Extralinguistic factors
• who the participants involved in the communicative product are = mode of the text (the channel of transmission);
• what the relationship between the participants is = the manner/tenor (formality of the text);
• what the purpose of the communicative situation is = field of the text (its subject matter/theme).

➔ EXAMPLES

*Do NOT take for granted that English writing

styles and conventions are identical to Italian ones
(or those of other languages)! Do NOT transfer
your own native language’s rhetorical style to
written English.
Producing a written text in another language
means working with different linguistic resources,
different criteria of appropriateness and a
different cultural context.
At the same time, do NOT take for granted that
English-language writing style is cross-culturally
applicable. English is a global language often used
as a so-called lingua franca, but is NOT a culturally-
neutral language of communication.