BUSINESS DISCOURSE STUDIES IN THE ‘NEW’ AND ‘FAST’ CAPITALISM: APPROACHES AND INVESTIGATION METHODS

Abstract

The complex and changing linguistic context cannot be confined or constrained to a single approach or theory. It is, thus, the purpose of the present article to argue in favour of the fluidity, flexibility, dynamic and variable background against which new tenets for business discourse have emerged. To build a case for the present evolution of research in business discourse studies, the present article examines such issues as the blurred lines between business discourse and other sub-branches (such as workplace discourse, institutional discourse, organizational discourse, etc.), the diverging sociological underpinnings of these studies and the methods used in the related research in an attempt to highlight the difficult and sinuous development of business discourse research. The paper seeks to underline the variability of the approaches and the research methods proposed by six discourse analysts in their writings, while pointing out their consensual basis. The discussed articles are: Norman Fairclough (2004) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis in Researching Language in the New Capitalism: Overdetermination, Transdisciplinarity, and Textual Analysis’; Iedema, R. and Scheeres, H. (2009) ‘Organisational discourse analysis’; Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini and Catherine Nickerson (2002) ‘Business discourse: old debates, new horizons’; Daniushina, V. Yulia (2010) ‘Business linguistics and business discourse’.