Professional Discourse

Using a wide range of examples, this book examines the discourse of professional writing and its important role in society.

Kenneth Kong (Author)

9781107025264, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 August 2014

304 pages, 23 b/w illus. 13 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.5 kg

'… the book can be used as a key text in any advanced course or graduate level seminar in discourse analysis or as a special topic in applied linguistics, especially for those interested in the English for Specific Purpose tradition of learning about and examining professional written discourse.' Md Mijanur Rahman, LINGUIST

Using a wide range of professional genres such as research papers, business reports, performance commentaries, guidebooks and legal documents, this study focuses on the discourse of professional writing, employing analytic paradigms from systemic-functional linguistics, pragmatics, text analysis, sociology and anthropological linguistics. Kenneth Kong argues that while professions use different sets of practices, their use of language displays many universals. This is demonstrated through the analysis of data from a broad cross-section of professional settings such as medicine, law, business, mass media and engineering. This examination of professional discourse, and its important role in society, will be of interest to researchers in applied linguistics, to professionals who want to understand the role of language in their work, and to teachers of English for specific purposes.

1. Introduction
Part I. Conceptual Issues: 2. Profession as a symbolic community
Part II. Linguistic Realizations: 3. Ideology in professional discourse
4. Communicative competence in the professional workplace
5. A model of interpersonal negotiation in professional discourse
Part III. Functions and Global Patterns: 6. Speech functions
7. Intertextuality
8. Genre and textual patterning
9. Multimodality
10. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Linguistics [CF]