27.2473, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Socioling: Burel (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2473. Fri Jun 03 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2473, Review: Cog Sci; Discourse; Socioling: Burel (2015)

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Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:43:09
From: Rahel Cramer [rahel.cramer1 at students.mq.edu.au]
Subject: Identitätspositionierungen der DAX-30-Unternehmen [Identity Positioning in the DAX 30 Corporations]

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3999.html

AUTHOR: Simone  Burel
TITLE: Identitätspositionierungen der DAX-30-Unternehmen [Identity Positioning in the DAX 30 Corporations]
SUBTITLE: Die sprachliche Konstruktion von Selbstbildern [The Linguistic Construction of Self-Images]
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter Sprache und Wissen 21
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Rahel Cramer, Macquarie University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This monograph is a German language book (see footnote 1) and part of De
Gruyter Mouton’s series ‘Wissen und Sprache’ (‘knowledge and language’), a
series featuring research in German linguistics with potential
interdisciplinary impact. The aim of the series is to illustrate how societal
and subject-specific knowledge is constituted and contextualized through
language. Simone Burel’s book fits well into the series, as the purpose of her
research is to illuminate the relevance of linguistic means for the
construction and positioning of ‘Unternehmensidentität’ (‘corporate identity’)
in economic discourse with a particular focus on conceptualizations of
corporate identity (CI) by companies themselves. The data for the study comes
from corporate websites and comprises texts drafted and disseminated by the
thirty major listed companies of the German Stock Index (DAX); for empirical
data analysis, the research builds on the principles of linguistic discourse
analysis and proceeds along the lines of a nuanced parameter model of
discourse that divides discourse into ‘Ebene der Situationalität, (‘situation
plane’), ‘Inhaltsebene’ (‘content plane’), ‘Ausdrucksebene’ (‘expression
plane’) and ‘Sprachhandlungsebene’ (‘pragmatic plane’). The target audience of
the volume are scholars in the fields of linguistics and economics, as well as
practitioners in both areas such as applied linguists, and communications and
marketing managers. 

The book is divided into three parts. Part A explains the theoretical and
methodological approach of the study; Part B comprises the empirical data
analysis, a synthesis of the findings, as well as references, an overview of
the corpus and the list of tables and figures; Part C is the electronic
appendix, which includes the empirical chapter ‘Diskursauffächerung:
Sachverhaltskonstitution’ (‘diversification of the discourse: constitution of
facts’) due to its length. Part C also includes the corpus texts in pdf and
txt format.  

The introductory chapter sets the scene for the linguistic study by
illustrating the relevance of language and communication in the business area
generally and for companies specifically, and details the leading research
question of how corporate identity is constituted as an issue through the
selected representational texts of the DAX 30 corporations. This overall
research problem is subdivided into specific questions addressed in four
layers of discourse, identified as expression-related, contents-related,
functional-pragmatic and situational. The empirical part of the thesis is
divided into chapters according to these levels of discourse, and they
reappear in the subsequent discussion of the findings, so that they function
as a guide for the reader and contribute to the study’s overall coherence.

The second chapter identifies the theoretical framework for the study and
provides an up-to-date review of relevant literature on identity. Drawing on
moderate constructivism (Berger & Luckmann, 2010; Felder, 2009) and semiotic
theory (Felder, 2013; Ogden & Richards, 1974; Vogel, 2005), Burel illuminates
the process from understanding and interpreting meaning to the creation of
knowledge, for which she identifies the relationship between producer and
recipient of the message as essential. The following literature review then
demonstrates how corporate identity is negotiated in subject-specific
discourses, spanning from less relevant theories about personal identity in
psychology, to theories on collective identity in organizational theory,
followed by business-specific constructions of corporate identity. This leads
to the design of a model that shows how corporate identity is constituted in
discourse from a linguistic perspective. According to this model, discourse on
corporate identity is divided into the perspective of the company, subdivided
into the projected and the perceived self, and the perspective of the outside
world, both of which may change over time. In her research, Burel focuses on
the projected self, excluding its temporal quality. 

Chapter 3 outlines the methodological approach. Starting from Foucault’s
(1974) central idea that individual knowledge is always intertwined with
historical and sociocultural circumstances, the author defines discourse as a
means to create knowledge through language. For her study, discourse is then
narrowed to the arrangement of texts produced by the actions of business
protagonists, rather than conceptualized as conversation between texts
(producers) and recipients. Access to the discourse on corporate identity is
via texts produced by business protagonists themselves. 

Part A of the volume finishes with a description of and reflection on the
process of the corpus compilation in Chapter 4. The criteria for the choice of
texts correspond with the research topic and aim, so as to serve the
investigation of linguistic constructions of CI from the perspective of
companies by means of a synchronic excerpt from the discourse.  
 
Part B constitutes the empirical analysis. It is divided into five chapters,
of which the first four attend to the sublevels of the discourse according to
the linguistic parameter model introduced in the first, and further elaborated
in the third chapter: ‘situation plane’, ‘content plane’, ‘expression plane’,
and ‘pragmatic plane’.

In the first chapter of Part B, the focus on the situation plane leads Burel
to conclude that contextual criteria of discourse initially influence and
filter its contents, in this case, the discursive area of ‘Wirtschaft’
(‘economy’), the enclosed discursive sphere DAX 30, and the thirty German
companies as social actors. Her analysis of the relevant text types
illustrates that they often suggest distinct classification criteria but that
these vary to such an extent that it is difficult to assign the
representational texts to one definite type. Then in Chapter 6, the content
plane analysis demonstrates how companies explicitly claim and manage topics,
subtopics, and minor concepts in representational texts, as well as model and
connect even contradictory concepts to define their corporate identities vis à
vis the public. In Chapter 7, an analysis of lexical choices, on the level of
syntax, text and text-image conjunctions shows that the companies draw on a
standardized repertoire on the expression plane to represent CI. Finally, in
Chapter 8, after analyzing the communicative intentions, she concludes that
corporations attain dominance and a positive self-positioning, respectively,
by constituting and evaluating facts in the discourse. 

The last chapter, entitled ‘Syntheses’ (‘synthesis’), gives an overview of the
findings, reflects on their implications for business practice and linguistics
as an applied discipline, and discusses the merits of linguistic discourse
analysis. Burel concludes that, although companies strive for uniqueness and
individuality, redundancy and standardization of linguistic features in the
discourse prevents them from constructing distinctive corporate identities.
Based on this, Burel convincingly makes the point that her findings can
contribute to business practice, for example to enhance language strategies
for individual businesses. Similarly, her comparison of linguistic discourse
analysis and discourse analysis in other disciplines enables her to highlight
the merits of a linguistic approach due to its focus on texts.

EVALUATION

Overall, Burel succeeds in achieving her goal of illuminating how companies
interpret and thereby constitute corporate identity via linguistic means in a
clearly circumscribed discourse. The theoretical and methodological approaches
are explained in-depth and are well-suited to the linguistic analysis. The
structure of the book and the empirical part, in particular, allow the reader
to follow her argumentation as she moves from an analysis of overarching
contextual criteria of the discourse to an in-depth analysis of content-,
expression- and pragmatics-related features. 

Nevertheless, the work has some shortcomings. Despite the fact that Burel’s
monologic approach is consistent with her research objective of facilitating
dialogue between linguists and business practitioners, it means that an
investigation of social implications is lacking. In the new economy,
multinational companies have been identified as the predominant business form
and, therefore, constitute powerful social actors (Vaara, Tienari, Piekkari, &
Säntti, 2005). Moreover, social power and control are enacted through social
practices and language (Fairclough, 1992). Hence, the communicative practices
of powerful social actors such as the big corporations in this research call
for a critical analysis. Arguably, this would not prevent the dialogue between
linguists and business practitioners that the author desires to achieve.
Ideally, it would enable their discussion to contribute to advancing a more
just economy.

Burel’s uncritical view of big corporations and her unawareness of changes due
to globalization processes is also discernible in the overview she provides in
tabular format in Chapter 5 of the corporations involved in her study. To
guide the reader in interpreting the table, she explains that the firm Adidas
produces goods at its German headquarters. This contradicts the fact that many
companies, in fact including Adidas, have outsourced their manufacturing.
Although it does not impact the findings of her linguistic study directly, it
is a fact that seems relevant to research investigating the
self-representations of companies, in particular in times of globalization.

Furthermore, despite covering relevant terminology such as ‘corporate
communication’ and discussing the importance of communication in the business
context with reference to relevant literature, language as a factor in
businesses and problems related to it receive little attention in this work.
In fact, ‘multilingualism’ is overlooked completely although it has become an
essential part of large business ventures due to globalization processes
(Marschan, Welch, & Welch, 1997). For example, large companies are now
required to disseminate representational texts and corporate knowledge in
languages other than the national languages of the countries their
headquarters are based in. Notwithstanding the fact that the author’s focus
lies on German linguistics, it is a limitation of the study that the author
could have addressed.

In terms of achieving the kind of dialogue which Burel wishes to achieve, this
work may in part fail to reach its stated ambition, as extensive use of
linguistic terminology is a salient feature of her work. However, while the
first part of the book in particular may be a difficult read for
non-linguists, it is primarily part B, the empirical analysis and the critical
discussion, that may yet prove useful for addressees such as business
practitioners.

(Footnote 1:  All translations from German into English are mine.)

REFERENCES

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (2010). Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der
Wirklichkeit (23 ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual
analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 193-217. 

Felder, E. (2009). Sprache — das Tor zur Welt!? In E. Felder (Ed.), Sprache
(pp. 13-57). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Felder, E. (2013). Faktizitätsherstellung mittels handlungsleitender Konzepte
und agonaler Zentren. Faktizitätsherstellung in Diskursen: Die Macht des
Deklarativen, 13, 13. 

Foucault, M. (1974). Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der
Humanwissenschaft: Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.

Marschan, R., Welch, D., & Welch, L. (1997). Language: The forgotten factor in
multinational management. European Management Journal, 15(5), 591-598.
doi:10.1016/S0263-2373(97)00038-8

Ogden, C. K., & Richards, I. A. (1974). Die Bedeutung der Bedeutung: eine
Untersuchung über den Einfluß der Sprache auf das Denken und über die
Wissenschaft des Symbolismus: Suhrkamp.

Vaara, E., Tienari, J., Piekkari, R., & Säntti, R. (2005). Language and the
Circuits of Power in a Merging Multinational Corporation. Journal of
Management Studies, 42(3), 595-623. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6486.2005.00510.x

Vogel, F. (2005). „Aufstand “–„Revolte “–„Widerstand “. Linguistische
Mediendiskursanalyse der Ereignisse in den Pariser Vorstädten, 2009.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Rahel Cramer is undertaking PhD studies in the Department of Linguistics at
Macquarie University, Australia. Her research focuses on language choice and
discursive constructions of identity in multinational corporations. Her
research interests include intercultural communication, language and identity,
and discourse analysis. Rahel Cramer holds an MA in Multilingual Educational
Linguistics from Hamburg University. During her postgraduate studies, she has
held positions as a research assistant, as a student assistant, and as a tutor
at various universities.





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