Discourse, communication and the enterprise

This book brings together a selection of papers originally presented at the fifth conference on Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise (DICOEN V) held in Milan in September 2009, and mainly focuses on the relevance of discourse and communication to the world of business and organizations as seen from a variety of disciplines (linguistics, communication studies, management studies, sociology, marketing). What unites the contributions is the discursive framework they adopt for the analysis of corporate communication, looking at it as a situated activity in a broadly constructionist paradigm. The various sections are organized along an internal-to-external-communication gradient, starting from the analysis of communication within a company’s ordinary operational activities and moving gradually towards types of discourse that are specifically aimed at communication to the public at large, including their representation in the media. The picture that emerges is a good approximation to an accurate and updated snapshot of the state of the art in research and expertise in the area of corporate and institutional communication.