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Plenary Speaker:
Professor Britt-Louise Gunnarsson,
Uppsala University
Title: Professional Discourse in the 21st
Century
Abstract: The conditions for professional
discourse have been influenced by a series of changes which have taken
place in recent decades. Technological advances and globalization have
affected workplace practices leading to a restructuring of the social
and communicative structures. The channels for internal and external
communication have changed with consequences as well for managers at
different levels as for individual employees.
In professional settings, there is a complex
interplay between micro and macro levels, that is, global, national and
organizational norms and ideas influence the communicative practices.
When our goal is to understand how, and also why, professional discourse
changes, it becomes relevant to analyse the complex relationship between
discourse and context at micro and macro levels. Professional texts and
talk are often parts of socially organized and structured set of
activities within a workplace unit. What also characterizes professional
discourse is its dependence on various societal framework systems: a
legal- political, a technical-economical, a socio-cultural and a
linguistic framework system.
In my lecture, I will develop a theoretical model
for the analysis of the contextual reconstruction of professional
discourse. This model will then be referred to in the discussion of
results of empirical studies of discourse in large organizations and
multilingual workplaces.
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