The Language of Business Studies Lectures: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis

256 Pages·2007·4.968 MB·

by  Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli

The Language of Business Studies Lectures
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Volume 157
The Language of Business Studies Lectures. A corpus-assisted analysis
Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli
The Language
of Business Studies Lectures
A corpus-assisted analysis
Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli
University of Florence

John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Camiciottoli, Belinda Crawford.
The language of business studies lectures : a corpus-assisted analysis / Belinda Crawford
Camiciottoli.

p. cm. -- (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser., v. 157)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Academic language--Data processing. 2. Business education--Data processing. 3.
Lectures and lecturing--Data processing. I. Title.
P120.A24C36 2007
401'.41--dc22 2007003849
ISBN 978-90-272-5400-9 (hb : alk. paper)
© 2007 – John Benjamins B.V.
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Table of contents
Preface ix
List of acronyms and abbreviations xi
List of tables and figures xiii
chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1 Rationale for the study  1
1.2 The university lecture: pros and cons  2
1.3 Aims of the study  4
1.4 Target readership  6
1.5 Overview of the book  6
chapter 2
Background to the study: The merger of discourses 9
2.1 Introduction  9
2.2 Spoken discourse  9
2.2.1 The linguistic/discursive approach  10
2.2.2 The interactional approach  13
2.3 Academic discourse  15
2.4 Disciplinary discourse: the field of economics  21

2.5 Professional discourse: the world of business  25
2.6 A conceptual framework for analyzing business studies lectures  28
chapter 3
The business studies lecture corpus: Design, collection and analysis 31
3.1 Introduction  31
3.2 Corpus design  31
3.3 Collecting the data  34
3.4 Transcribing the data  36
3.5 Methodology: an integrated approach  39
3.5.1 Quantitative and qualitative analysis  39
 The Language of Business Studies Lectures
3.5.2 Comparative analysis  41
3.5.3 Behavioural observation  42
3.5.4 Participant feedback  43
chapter 4
Speaking to the audience 45
4.1 Introduction  45
4.2 Speech rate  46
4.3 Lecture style  49
4.3.1 Discourse dysfluencies  52
4.3.2 Reduced forms  54
4.4 Lexical informality  57
4.4.1 Vagueness  58
4.4.2 Idioms  62
4.5 Syntactic informality  65
4.5.1 Ellipsis  66
4.5.2 Non-restrictive which-clauses  68
4.6 Lexical density  73
4.7 Summary of findings  76
chapter 5
Interacting with the learners 79
5.1 Introduction  79
5.2 Discourse structuring  79
5.2.1 Lecture macrostructure  80
5.2.2 Macromarkers  84
5.2.3 Micromarkers  89
5.3 Evaluation  94
5.3.1 Relevance markers  96
5.3.2 Affect markers  100
5.4 Lecturer-audience interaction  104
5.4.1 Questions  105
5.4.2 Comprehension checks  108
5.4.3 Dialogic episodes  109
5.5 Audience responsiveness and feedback  113
5.6 Summary of findings  115
Table of contents 
chapter 6
Teaching the discipline and the profession 119
6.1 Introduction  119
6.2 Disciplinary/professional orientations: a descriptive profile  120
6.3 Real vs. hypothetical worlds  122
6.4 Argumentation  125
6.5 Specialized lexis  127
6.5.1 Global analysis  128
6.5.2 Keyword analysis  131
6.5.3 Connections to Business English  135
6.5.4 Compounds and buzzwords  138
6.6 Metaphors  142
6.6.1 Global analysis  144
6.6.2 Comparative analysis  147
6.7 Summary of findings  148
chapter 7
Beyond speaking: Multimodal aspects 151
7.1 Introduction  151
7.2 The visual mode  153
7.2.1 The analytical framework  154
7.2.2 The analysis  155
7.2.2.1 Visual typologies in the BSLC  158
7.2.2.2 Comparative analysis  163
7.3 The nonverbal mode  165
7.3.1 Methodology in nonverbal studies  168
7.3.2 The analysis  169
7.3.2.1 Interpersonal episodes  170

7.3.2.2 Nonverbal behaviours of the lecturers  171
7.3.2.3 A microanalysis of one lecturer’s nonverbal behav-
iours  177
7.4 Summary of findings  181
chapter 8
Final remarks 183
8.1 Introduction  183
8.2 Aims, findings, pedagogical implications and research prospects  183
8.3 Methodological insights  188
8.4 Business studies lectures and interdiscursivity revisited  189
 The Language of Business Studies Lectures
References 193
Appendix A – Transcript samples from the twelve lectures of the BSLC 213
Appendix B – Specialized lexis in the BSLC ranked according to
frequency 227
Name index 231
Subject index 235
Preface
This book represents the culmination of several years of work focusing on the dis-
course of business studies, one of the most dynamic and popular disciplines in insti-
tutes of higher education worldwide. The research began in 2000 under the auspices
of an Italian inter-university English-language project entitled Small Corpora and
Genre Analysis: Academic Discourse in the Humanities and Social Sciences. As a mem-
ber of the research team of the University of Florence, I was involved in the creation
and investigation of a corpus of lectures given by business academics. Unlike cor-
pora of written discourse which lend themselves well to distinct collection and anal-
ysis phases, spoken corpora are typically investigated ‘along the way’ in the form of
preliminary or limited-scope studies. For this reason, some of the material in this
volume expands on previous publications. In Chapter 5, the analyses of discourse
markers and relevance markers build on articles that appeared in the Journal of Eng-
lish for Academic Purposes (Crawford Camiciottoli 2004a) and the volume Academic
Discourse: New Insights into Evaluation (Crawford Camiciottoli 2004b), respectively.
In Chapter 6, the study of domain-specific metaphors extends the findings of an ar-
ticle published in the volume Evaluation in Oral and Written Academic Discourse
(Crawford Camiciottoli 2004c). In Chapter 7, the investigation of non-verbal behav-
iour further develops a study that appeared in the volume Academic Discourse, Gen-
re and Small Corpora (Crawford Camiciottoli 2004d).
In the summer of 2002, I had an extremely rewarding experience at the Eng-
lish Language Institute of the University of Michigan as a Morley Scholar. It was
then that the idea for this book began to take form. I am particularly grateful to
John Swales for his advice and guidance towards realizing this goal when it was
still in its infant stages. At that time, I also had the opportunity to read Alan Part-
ington’s (1998) Patterns and Meanings: Using Corpora for Language Research and
Teaching which inspired the core methodology adopted in this study. Since then
and throughout this project, I have benefited from the support of several col-
leagues and friends. I would especially like to thank Gabriella Del Lungo, Inmacu-
lada Fortanet, Polly Walsh and, again, John Swales and Alan Partington, for all
taking the time to read drafts of chapters and provide insightful comments. I also
thank the two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions allowed me to incorporate
new and broadened perspectives into the final version.
 The Language of Business Studies Lectures
I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all the professors who agreed
to participate in this research. By authorizing the recording of their live lectures or
by kindly sending their lectures directly to me, they made this study possible.
Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Adriano, for his unfailing encouragement
and patience throughout this long endeavour.