This volume stems from a workshop organised by the Corpus Linguistics and Language Variation in English Research Centre, known as CLAVIER, held at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. It brings together a series of double-reviewed studies on the nature of the dissemination of specialist knowledge in English, its transformation from being a mere repository of information into a proactive source of understanding and empowerment. Through the chapters, the various principles, conceptualisations, constructs and pragmatic dynamics of knowledge dissemination are shown in a range of discourse genres. The studies reveal the multi-levels of knowledge, its varied typology and its ongoing co-construction, maintenance and updating among heterogeneous audiences. Assuming that maintaining credibility and legitimacy is fundamental to successful communication in a globalised and virtual world, the essential complementary aspect to knowledge dissemination is the analysis of the language that builds trust in interpersonal interactions, in different contexts and settings. The first section of the book deals with the building of trust through different strategies in political, academic, tourist and educational contexts. The second discusses ways of building trust via linguistic devices in corporate communication. The third part is concerned with the maintenance and repairing of trust, and the fourth section presents the building/repairing trust processes in the medical sector. The collection is addressed to scholars of linguistics, particularly those concerned with the analysis of specialized languages and their impact on effective communication. It will also appeal to university teachers of English for Special Purposes and researchers interested in corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis.

This book was born out of the idea that domain-specific knowledge has two major dimensions, since, on the one hand, peer-to-peer communication is primarily intended to further research within specific disciplines, while, on the other, domain-external, asymmetric communication of ‘filtered’ knowledge caters to different types of lay-audiences. Collectively, the chapters in the volume take the reader on a journey through knowledge communication and knowledge (re)presentation strategies that are able to successfully disseminate and communicate. The domains under scrutiny are medicine and health, corporate communication, cultural heritage and tourism. A number of issues are addressed at the interface of corpus linguistics, genre studies and multimodal analysis. The variety of questions posed and methods used to explore corpus data will contribute to further debate among scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, multimodality, media studies and computer-mediated communication.

This volume provides descriptive and interpretive insights into the ‘living’ usage of language and other semiotic modes in building and performing the law across academic, professional and institutional contexts, where issues arise from the meaning and function of legal texts, discourse and genre in constituting and enabling conventions, albeit dynamically, and account for the socially and (inter)culturally influenced forms of discursive actions and practices. The twenty contributions included here weave significant contexts and situations for legal discourse and practice into a tight thread, and justify selected topic areas through a variety of approaches, frameworks, methodologies, and procedures. As such, this publication is multidimensional and multiperspectival in its design and implementation of key issues confronting discursive actions and practices of the law, and provides an invaluable resource for academics in a wider range of disciplines, including linguistics, applied linguistics and communication studies. It will also be of interest to students of interdisciplinary discourse analysis.

This volume presents research studies that investigate various aspects of corporate communication from the viewpoint of language and discourse, giving special attention to emerging issues and recent developments in times of rapid sociotechnical evolutions. The studies included here are diverse in their outlook, analytical procedures, and objects of enquiry, spanning across various areas of corporate communication, both external and internal, such as corporate image and reputation management, various forms of corporate behaviour, branding at different levels including employer branding, recruiting, and consumer reviews. Similarly diversified are the settings, genres and media analysed, from face-to-face interaction to communication through the press, from traditional websites to social networking sites. All the studies presented in this volume are set in a discourse-analytical framework and share the ultimate purpose of providing new insights into the evolution of communication and discourse practices in the corporate environment, taking account of the most important issues that have attracted researchers’ interest and are still open to debate.

This book offers an intermedial approach to truthful communication. Bringing together a wide range of media types and interactions from a transmedial perspective, the volume maps out how truth claims are made in different contexts, and how different media promise to create a truthful perception of the social world. The flexible communicative possibilities of digital technology have a significant impact on our perception of truth and truthfulness of communication. Bot accounts, deep fake videos, or AI technology draw attention to how reliable communication is destabilized and questioned. In this unstable climate, binaries such as true/false, authentic/fake and fiction/facts are difficult to apply. Instead, it is crucial to investigate how media products construct truthfulness in different ways. The volume brings together various media types and contexts such as press conferences, documentaries and mockumentaries, images in magazines and on social media, horror movies, biopics, and educational games and explores how truth claims, authenticity discourses, and knowledge communication are established and how they collide, merge, or are confused. This is an open access book.

This book reflects the state-of-the-art in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research, drawing on both top-down and bottom-up practices and methodological itineraries. In order to fill some of the gaps in the current literature, it provides well-grounded and thorough investigations into discursive practices in academic, workplace and intercultural settings, throwing light on the specific varieties of language used to achieve professional targets. Teachers have to act as an interface between theory and praxis, bridging the gap between the classroom and the workplace to create a dynamic virtuous circle. The multi-perspective and multi-method frameworks presented in this volume range from quantitative corpus-based techniques integrated with discourse analysis to analyses of what occurs in the classroom informed by English language teaching (ELT) educational theories and notions regarding language acquisition, motivation, learning styles and instructional contexts. Both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the theory-practice dyad provide the opportunity to obtain a closer view of the subject from both ends of the spectrum and can prompt fresh initiatives by all those working within the domain of ESP. This book, therefore, offers a cutting-edge account of some of the latest avenues in research and practice which will be of interest to scholars and university teachers of ESP, as well as scholars in the field of applied linguistics.

This volume is dedicated to Maurizio Gotti, in honour of his long and noteworthy academic career. Having served as Full Professor of History of the English Language and of English Language and Translation for more than two decades at the University of Bergamo, Italy, Gotti made significant contributions to multiple areas of study including specialized discourses, lexicography, history of the English language and language teaching. This wide-ranging collection brings together essays from these fields of enquiry authored by scholars whose academic input have interacted in various ways with ideas and topics introduced or extensively discussed by Gotti. The contributions are grouped into four theme-based sections representing the main threads in Gotti’s research, from the macro area of specialised discourse to the more specific fields of research in academic and legal languages, while the fourth section includes contributions dealing with the history of English language, and is followed by a miscellaneous section which concludes the collection.

Congressional hearings are often the most requested government documents in US libraries. However, among the genres that have been traditionally of interest to political discourse analysts – e.g. political speeches, political interviews, policy documents – hearings have not been of much scrutiny on the part of discourse scholars, an attitude somehow contrasting with the lay public’s interest. Cinzia Giglioni takes the opportunity to gain a unique view into the actors, the interested parties, the issues, from a linguistic and rhetorical perspective. Her intent is to provide an in-depth analysis of witnesses’ opening statements, which are probably the most salient parts in a congressional hearing. The investigation begins with, but is not constricted by, theoretical aspects, which are integrated with empirical observations and suggestions for critical reading.

This is a sophisticated and nuanced introduction to critical discourse analysis (CDA) that covers a range of topics in an accessible, engaging style. With international examples and an interdisciplinary approach, readers gain a rich understanding of the many angles into critical discourse analysis, the fundamentals of how analysis works and examples from written texts, online data and images. This new edition: expands coverage of multimodality adds two new chapters on social media and analysis of online data supports learning with a guided introduction to each chapter includes a new and extended glossary Clearly written, practical and rigorous in its approach, this book is the ideal companion when embarking on research that focuses on discourse and meaning-making.