36.536, Confs: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis / France

Tue Feb 11 03:05:04 UTC 2025

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-536. Tue Feb 11 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.536, Confs: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis / France

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Date: 11-Feb-2025
From: Philippe Millot [philippe.millot at univ-lyon2.fr]
Subject: 46th GERAS International Conference: Narratives in ESP: Past, Present and Future

46th GERAS International Conference: Narratives in ESP: Past, Present
and Future

Date: 20-Mar-2025 - 22-Mar-2025
Location: Lyon, France
Meeting URL: https://geras2025.sciencesconf.org/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     French (fra)

Narratives in ESP: Past, Present and Future
In 1969, Gérard Genette defined narratives as “the representation of
an event or series of events, real or fictitious, by means of
language, and more particularly written language” (1969, 49). Whether
in stories, novels, films or TV series, narratives are a recurrent
object of research in English for Specific Purposes (ESP). This is no
doubt because many specialized phenomena (e.g., corporate life,
medical treatments, trials, scientific protocols) have a beginning and
an end, whether they are happy or unhappy. Without narratives,
specialized phenomena would probably be only synchronic descriptions
of mechanisms and processes, independent of any dynamic perspective,
whether individual or collective. By anchoring specialized phenomena
in a form of temporality, narratives highlight issues which are
central to
specialized domains and their stakeholders, such as the ethical
dilemma of the surgeon, social worker or manager faced with
decision-making, the euphoria and the despair of traders in the face
of stock market fluctuations, or the anxiety caused by climate change.
Specialized narratives, and the storytelling process, therefore lie at
the intersection of the pragmatic fact and the fable. But, as
neuropsychologist Oliver Sachs so aptly summed up in his great
collection of clinical essays: “What facts! What fables!”
The study of the narrative part of specialized discourses is a
potentially immense field of research, given that these discourses are
nowadays deployed through a wide variety of channels, be they written,
oral or multimodal. While the comparison of fictions with scientific
and technical texts (Bensoussan 1990) is undoubtedly a starting point
in the study of specialized narratives, most studies of the narrative
part of specialized discourse take the form of genre analysis. While
some studies show that specialized fictional narratives (FASP) may be
considered a narrative genre in its own right, other studies have
specifically dealt with the narrative part of genres such as corporate
annual reports (Ren & Lu 2021). Furthermore, the analysis of
narratives makes it possible to approach certain underlying cultural
characteristics in texts, such as the notion of professionalism in
healthcare (Bosher & Stocker 2015) or corporate culture (Domenec
2016). As for the study of metaphors, metaphorical terms in
particular, they seem to constitute a specific category, as metaphors
may sometimes be seen as the narrative framework of specific economic
theories (Resche 2019) or science. As far as didactics is concerned,
specialized narratives have already been considered as a learning and
teaching modality, but narrative-based tools such as portfolios may
also contribute to the development of narrative competence among
learners.
For more information, please visit the conference website.
Bibliographical references:
Bensoussan, Marsha. 1990. “EFL Reading as Seen Through Translation and
Discourse Analysis: Narrative vs. Expository Texts.” English for
Specific Purposes 9 (1) : 49–66.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0889-4906(90)90028-B.
Bosher, Susan & Joel Stocker. 2015. « Nurses’ Narratives on Workplace
English in Taiwan: Improving Patient Care and Enhancing
Professionalism ». English for Specific Purposes 38: 109–20.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2015.02.001.
Domenec, Fanny. 2016. « ‘How Technology has Changed our Lives’ : la
mise en récit du discours de l’entreprise dans America’s Farmers ». In
La mise en récit dans les discours spécialisés, edited by Catherine
Resche, 161–183. Berne : Peter Lang.
Genette, Gérard. 1969. Figures II. Paris : Éditions du Seuil, coll. «
Essais ».
Ren, Chaowang & Xiaofei Lu. 2021. “A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of the
Management’s Discussion and Analysis Narratives in Chinese and
American Corporate Annual Reports.” English for Specific Purposes 62:
84–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.12.004.
Resche, Catherine. 2019. « Des ‘taches solaires’ et des ‘vagues’, au
‘cheval à bascule’ et au ‘pendule’ : que nous apprend l’étude des
métaphores du cycle économique sur un siècle (1850-1950) ? » ASp 76
(1) : 29-47. https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.6013.
Sacks, Oliver. 1985. The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. London:
Picador.

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