“DEAR EMMA…”. GENRE OVERLAPPING AND REGISTER VARIATION IN THE ENGLISH AND ITALIAN VERSION OF SERGIO MARCHIONNE’S LETTER TO CONFINDUSTRIA
PDF

Keywords

Genre analysis
Register
Employment relations
Translation
Linguistics

How to Cite

Manzella, P. (2020). “DEAR EMMA…”. GENRE OVERLAPPING AND REGISTER VARIATION IN THE ENGLISH AND ITALIAN VERSION OF SERGIO MARCHIONNE’S LETTER TO CONFINDUSTRIA. Comparative Legilinguistics, 44, 46–63. Retrieved from https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cl/article/view/23308

Abstract

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine whether genre overlapping and register variation have implications on the translation outcome. To this end, the English and the Italian version of the letter sent by Sergio Marchionne to the President of Confindustria – Italy’s most important employers’ organisation – will be analysed. The decision to investigate Marchionne’s statement is based on the fact that this is a letter disseminated in the form of a press release, which also contains highly-technical terminology pertaining to Employment Relations (ER) discourse. Consequently, a number of issues might arise when deciding which strategy should be used in terms of genre analysis and register when translating specialised texts.

PDF

Funding

none

References

Addink, Henk. 2019. Good Governance: Concept and Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Aijmer, Karin and Bengt Altenberg, eds. 2013. Advances in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics: Studies in honour of Stig Johansson – Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Aijmer, Karin, and Diana Lewis. 2017. Contrastive Analysis of Discourse-pragmatic Aspects of Linguistic Genres. Cham: Springer.

Amernic, Joel H., and Craig Russell, eds. 2006. CEO-Speak: The Language of Corporate Leadership. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Baker, Mona. 2011. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation, 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2004. Worlds of Written Discourse: A Genre-based View. London: Continuum International.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2008. Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice. English for Specific Purposes 27: 161-174.

Bhatia, Vijay K. 2010. Interdiscursivity in Professional Communication. Discourse & Communication 4: 32-50.

Bloor, Meriel and Bloor, Thomas. 2007. The Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis: an Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge.

Breeze, Ruth. 2013. Corporate Discourse. London: Bloomsbury.

Bromwich, William and Manzella, Pietro. 2018. Shock Absorbers, Tax Wedges and White Resignations: Language Challenges in Comparative Industrial Relations. The Translator 24: 70-88.

Cambridge Dictionary. 2020. Efficacy. <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/it/dizionario/inglese/efficacy> (accessed 3 March 2020).

Cambridge Dictionary. 2020. Infringe on. <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/it/dizionario/inglese/infringe-on-upon-sth?q=infringe+on%2Fupon+sth> (accessed 15 March 2020).

Cambridge Dictionary. 2020. Unreserved. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/it/dizionario/inglese/unreserved (accessed 20 March 2020).

Clifton, Jonathan. 2012. ‘Doing’ Trust in Workplace Interaction. In Professional Communication across Languages and Cultures, eds. Stanca Măda and Răzvan Săftoiu, 107-134. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Craig, Russell and Amernic, Joel H. 2014. Exploring Signs of Hubris in CEO Language. In Communication and Language Analysis in the Corporate World, ed. Roderick P. Hart. 69-88. Hershey: Information Science Reference.

Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda. 2013. Rhetoric in Financial Discourse. A Linguistic Analysis of ICT-mediated Disclosure Genres. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

EUROFOUND. 2003. National Multi-Industry Agreement.

<https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/efemiredictionary/national-multi-industry-agreement-0> (accessed 15 January 2020).

Fang, Chengyu Alex, and Jing Cao. 2015. Text Genres and Registers: The Computation of Linguistic Features. Berlin: Springer.

Fairclough, Norman. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical

Study of Language. London: Routledge.

French, Peter, and Dominic Watt. 2018. Assessing Research Impact in Forensic Speech Science Casework. In Applying Linguistics. Language and the Impact Agenda, eds. Dan McIntyre and Hazel Price, 150-162. Abingdon: Routledge.

Garzone, Giuliana. 2007. Annual Company Reports and CEOs’ Letters: Discoursal Features and Cultural Markedness”. In Intercultural Aspects of Specialised Communication: 14. Linguistic Insights – Studies in Language and Communication, eds. Christopher N. Candlin and Maurizio Gotti, 311-342. Bern: Peter Lang.

Gast, Volker. 2015. On the use of Translation Corpora in Contrastive Linguistics. A Case Study of Impersonalisation in English and German. Language in Contrast 15: 4-33.

Gillaerts, Paul and Van de Velde, Freek. 2011. Metadiscourse on the Move: The CEO’s letter revisited. In Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise. Genres and Trends, eds. Giuliana Garzone and Maurizio Gotti, 151-168. Bern: Peter Lang.

Gill, Robert. 2011. Using Storytelling to Maintain Employee Loyalty during Change. International Journal of Business and Social Science 2: 23-32.

Gotti, Maurizio. 2007. Introduction. In Intercultural Aspects of Specialised Communication: 14. Linguistic Insights – Studies in Language and Communication, eds. Christopher N. Candlin and Maurizio Gotti, 9-26. Bern: Peter Lang.

Gotti, Maurizio. 2014. Reformulation and Recontextualisation in Popularisation Discourse. Ibérica 27: 15-34.

Halliday, Michael A. K. 1985. Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Hassan, Bahaa-eddin Abulhassan. 2014. Between English and Arabic. A Practical Course in Translation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Hatim, Basil and Munday, Jeremy. 2004. Translation: An Advance Resource Book. Abingdon: Routledge.

Huang, Ying, and Kaye Rose. 2018. You, Our Shareholders: Metadiscourse in CEO Letters from Chinese and Western Banks. Text & Talk 38: 167-190.

Hyland, Ken. 1998. Exploring Corporate Rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s Letter. International Journal of Business Communication 35: 224-244.

Ilie, Cornelia. 2017. Leaders in Times of Change: Stereotypes and Counter-Stereotypes of Leadership Discourse. In Challenging Leadership Stereotypes Through Discourse: Power, Management and Gender, eds. Cornelia Ilie and Stephanie Schnurr, 69-94. Singapore: Springer.

Karlsson, Paula, and Jenny Rutgersson. 2014. Communication in CEO Letters Before, During and After the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. A Study of Two Companies in the Real Estate Industry in Sweden. 01.03.2020 <https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/36110/1/gupea_2077_36110_1.pdf>. (accessed 13 May 2020).

Ke, Ping. 2018. Contrastive Linguistics. Singapore: Springer.

Kong, Kenneth. 2014. Professional Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kranich, Svenja. 2016. Contrastive Pragmatics and Translation. Evaluation, Epistemic Modality and Communicative Styles in English and German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Lakoff, George. 2009. The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics. New York: Penguin.

Liu, Shuang, Zala Volcic and Cindy Gallois. 2015. Introducing Intercultural Communication: Global Cultures and Contexts. London: Sage.

Loewenstein, Jeffrey, William Ocasio and Candace, Jones. 2012. Vocabularies and Vocabulary Structure: A New Approach Linking Categories, Practices, and Institutions. The Academy of Management Annals 6: 41-86.

Magnusson, Lars and Stråth, Bo. 2016. A Brief History of Political Economy: Tales of Marx, Keynes and Hayek. Cheltenham, UK (Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA): Edward Elgar.

Malavasi, Donatella. 2011. ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’: A Comparative Analysis of Nokia’s and Ericsson’s Corporate Social Responsibility Reports. In Discourse, Communication and the Enterprise: Genres and Trends, eds. Giuliana Garzone and Maurizio Gotti, 193-212. Bern: Peter Lang.

Morrow, Cynthia B., Douglas Hirano and Brad Christensen. 2008. Communication and Media Relations. In Public Health Administration: Principles for Population-Based Management, eds. Lloyd F. Novick, Cynthia B. Morrow and Glen P. Mays, 567-588. Boston: Jones and Bartlett.

Murphy, Amanda C. 2015. On ‘True’ Portraits of Letters to Shareholders – and the Importance of Phraseological Analysis. In Current Issues in Phraseology, eds. Sebastian Hoffmann, Bettina Fischer-Starcke and Andrea Sand, 57-82. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Neumann, Stella. 2014. Contrastive Register Variation- A Quantitative Approach to the Comparison of English and German. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Ngai, Cindy Sing-Bik, and Rita Gill. 2014. Communication with Stakeholders through Corporate Web Sites: An Exploratory Study on the CEO Messages of Major Corporations in Greater China. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 28: 352-394.

Schnitzer, Johannes. 2017. The Annual Report. In Handbook of Business Communication: Linguistic Approaches, eds. Gerlinde Mautner and Franz Rainer, 197-218. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Schubert, Klaus. 2007. Wissen, Sprache, Medium, Arbeit. Ein integratives Modell der ein- und mehrsprachigen Fachkommunikation. Tübingen: Narr.

Shuttleworth, Mark and Cowie Moira. 2014. Dictionary of Translation Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Stråth, Boed. 2000. After Full Employment: European Discourses on Work and Flexibility. Brussels: Peter Lang.

Wallwork, Adrian. 2016. English for Presentations at International Conferences. Cham: Springer.

Zoppei, Verena. 2017. Anti-money Laundering Law: Socio-legal Perspectives on the Effectiveness of German Practices. Berlin: Springer.