The dynamics of language, communication and culture in a changing world

AILA World Congress | Groningen | August 9–14, 2020 | The dynamics of language, communication and culture in a changing world

 

 

Symposium: Research Network Financial Communication
Communicating figures with the language of numbers

 

Convenors

Marlies Whitehouse, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, marlies.whitehouse@bluewin.ch

Alexander Laskin, Quinnipiac University, Alexander.Laskin@quinnipiac.edu

 

Symposium abstract

Successful communication of figures is key in finance and, thus, affects us all. In our symposium, we intend to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the pivotal role that language and communication play in the financial sector and in society-at-large. Key research questions include which communication strategies the stakeholders use, why they make their decisions as they do, and how the resulting practices are received in public discourse. By creating the opportunity for close interdisciplinary dialogue between complementary disciplines, the symposium aims at developing a common agenda of joint research on communication in finance as a key to an economically shaped world.

In our symposium, we address theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges of investigating the intertextual and interdiscursive dynamics and linguistic strategies at the interface of verbal, visual, and numerical languages and their macro-structural context. Research frameworks combine innovative questions with inter- and transdisciplinary approaches (Laskin, 2017; Palmieri, Perrin, Whitehouse, 2018) that enable researchers to capture and understand the field’s complexity and dynamics. Methods and methodologies emanate from or are combined from e.g. text analysis, genre analysis, multimodal genre analysis, critical genre analysis, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, corpus analysis and writing research.

 

Laskin, A. V. (Ed.) (2018). Handbook of Financial Communication and Investor Relations. New York: Wiley.

Palmieri, R., Perrin, D., & Whitehouse, M. (Eds.). (2018). The pragmatics of financial communication.
Part 1: from sources to the public sphere
(Vol. 55/2): Sage.

 

Key words

linguistic strategies, interdiscursive dynamics, language of numbers, financial communication

 

 Description Research Network of Financial Communication

The AILA Research Network (ReN) of Financial Communication brings together applied linguists who investigate the interplay between text production, markets, and changes in the domain of finance in general and financial communication and literacy in particular. In order to obtain deeper insights into this multi-dimensional research field, we are interested in establishing both spontaneous and stable institutionalized connections between scholars who address the highly complex and dynamic interplay of language use in organizations, domains such as economics and politics, as well as society-at-large.