Book Description

This book investigates the evolution of economic discourse from fully specialised texts towards popularisation. Popularising texts on economics and business-related matters has hitherto been a neglected and under-explored area of enquiry, and yet it deserves attention and study on account of the new fascinating insights it offers into specialised language and discourse. The present book explores this under-researched area via the qualitative analysis of a modern genre, namely newspapers on the web. In particular, it scrutinises authentic extracts principally drawn from The Guardian Online in order to show, on the one hand, the popularising effect of the Internet on business and economic discourse, and, on the other hand, the realistic vocabulary currently used in economic and professional jargon. The introductory chapter discusses the popularisation of specialised text at large and of new media discourse in particular. It describes this phenomenon as a ‘reformulation process’ whereby specialised knowledge is transformed into everyday or lay knowledge, and also as a ‘recontextualisation process’ whereby popularisation discourse is adapted to the appropriateness conditions of the new genres and to the constraints of the media employed. Popularisation, it is claimed, implies relevant changes not only in terms of terminological simplifications and adaptations to the public’s prior knowledge, but also in terms of the roles undertaken by the participants in the communicative event. The remaining chapters are organised into thematic units whose topics range from global economy, economic growth, and financial crisis to business management, employment, and sales. This part provides an in-depth investigation of various topics related to the economics and business worlds, combined with systematic explanations of linguistic phenomena at various language levels, from morphology to syntax, semantics, and the lexicon. In this book, the lexicon of ESP is offered in a fresh, less formal style, which will attract younger and non-expert readers alongside experts and professionals. The book is of considerable interest to students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, lecturers, professors, entrepreneurs, specialists, and to those scholars who investigate ESP and its popularisation.