20.2860, Diss: Discourse Analysis: Crawford Camiciottoli: 'Evaluation in ICT...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-20-2860. Mon Aug 24 2009. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 20.2860, Diss: Discourse Analysis: Crawford Camiciottoli: 'Evaluation in ICT...'

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1)
Date: 24-Aug-2009
From: Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli < bcrawford at tin.it >
Subject: Evaluation in ICT-Mediated Genres of Financial Disclosure: A contrastive analysis of spoken earnings presentations vs. written earnings releases
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:48:07
From: Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli [bcrawford at tin.it]
Subject: Evaluation in ICT-Mediated Genres of Financial Disclosure: A contrastive analysis of spoken earnings presentations vs. written earnings releases

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Institution: Universitat Jaume I 
Program: Interuniversity Program in Applied Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2009 

Author: Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli

Dissertation Title: Evaluation in ICT-Mediated Genres of Financial Disclosure:
A contrastive analysis of spoken earnings presentations vs. 
written earnings releases 

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Inmaculada Fortanet-Gomez

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation contributes theoretical and practical knowledge to the
field of professional business communication, with particular reference to
financial disclosure, i.e., the periodic reporting of economic performance
data, representing one of the most important communicative activities of
businesses today. Although large companies are often legally required to
regularly disclose financial information, this type of reporting has taken
on greater significance following the high-profile scandals that have
recently shaken the international corporate community. Based on a
comparative analysis of two specialized corpora of prominent, yet fairly
unexplored technology-mediated financial genres - oral Earnings
Presentations (EP) and written Earnings Releases (ER) - the study provides
insights into key linguistic and discursive features. Using a 'two-pronged'
approach (i.e., top-down/discourse analysis and bottom-up/corpus
linguistics), the dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis of the forms
and functions of selected evaluative features in the two genres. Evaluative
features were analyzed by means of quantitative techniques, also involving
part-of-speech tagging to conduct thorough searches on open-class
grammatical categories, as well as qualitative analysis within context of
usage. The findings of the analysis were further illuminated by the input
of a professional informant with extensive experience in events of
financial disclosure.

The dissertation is structured into two major sections. Part I (chapters
1-6) constitutes the background of the study, reviewing previous
theoretical and empirical research that has been done in a number of areas
that are relevant to this study: discourse and genre analysis, corpus
linguistics, ICT-mediated communication, English as a lingua franca,
financial disclosure and evaluation. Part II (chapters 7-12) is dedicated
to the analysis of the two corpora, beginning with an exhaustive
description of the methodological approach (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 then
focuses of the structural analysis of the two corpora, distinguishing each
as a business genre in its own right influenced by communicative mode,
medium and roles of the interlocutors. Chapters 9-11 are devoted to the
contrastive analysis of evaluative features drawing on Martin and White's
(2005) appraisal model. These chapters are similarly organized starting
with methodological and editing issues, various types of analyses
(quantitative, qualitative and functional), a combined macro-micro analysis
and ending with a chapter wrap-up. Chapter 9 focuses on evaluative
adjectives as encoders of attitude, showing that these are considerably
more frequent and varied in the EPs than in the ERs. Chapter 10 deals with
concessive connectives as resources of engagement, which appear to be
exploited for rhetorical purposes by executive speakers in the EPs, and to
a lesser extent by writers of the ERs. Chapter 11 examines the use of
intensifiers and mitigators in the corpora. The results show that both
intensifiers and mitigators are more frequent in the EPs than in the ERs.
The final chapter re-establishes the rationale of the study by relating
back to important previous research and showing how the current work has
expanded knowledge in this area. The findings of the study are then
summarized by revisiting the original research questions. The final chapter
concludes with a discussion of directions for further research and the
pedagogical implications of the research findings. 




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