Table Of ContentThe 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
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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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.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
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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.
