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Department of Linguistics

Communication in Professions and Organisations

Professional Communication & Discourse Analysis

When as westerners or Asians we do business together, when as men or women we work together in an office, or when as members of senior or junior generations we develop a product together we engage in what we cal "interdiscourse communication" (Scollon and Scollon, 2001, p. xii).

Ron and Suzie Wong Scollon argue that "because each professional communicator is simultaneously a member of a corporate, a professional, a generational, a gender, a cultural, and even other discourse systems" we must examine "how those multiple memberships provide a framework within which all professional communication takes place" (p. xiii).

Discourse analysis in professional communication is a new and rapidly developing field which integrates aspects of intercultural communication studies, applied interactional sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis (p. xiii).

See: Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. 2001. Second Edition. By: Ron Scollon (Georgetown University) and Suzanne Wong Scollon (Georgetown University). Basil Blackwell.

Units of study - Professional Communication & Discourse Analysis

In these units we help students to problematise their understanding of the everyday communicative practices that constitute and sustain their own workplace – that is, to see it as being made up of processes and strategies that need explaining.

Secondly, we assist students to reflect on these practices, processes and strategies. We take students from deliberate reflection on and in action to a new kind of action – reflexive action.

Finally, we help students "make sense of" these practices, processes and strategies by applying new concepts and conceptual frameworks – analytic perspectives – to This process is known as transfer, transformation, or recontextualisation.

 

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