Abstract

Ever since its origins there has been a deep-rooted focus on conflict (and how it can be resolved) and difference (and how it should be navigated) at the heart of business communication scholarship and teaching. Key concepts include negotiation (think of Fisher and Ury’s early focus on getting to yes without giving in) and persuasion (centred around the need to influence others' thoughts, behaviors, and decisions). Crisis communication advice and training, for example, starts from the idea that the outside world is adversarial, antagonistic while the job application and recruiting process has largely been framed as transactional: candidates need to sell themselves as they are offering skills and knowledge in exchange for career opportunities and compensation.

This presentation takes a different perspective, starting from the reality of business communication practice, where disagreement and opposition turn out to be a lot less common than one might assume based on the literature. Drawing on the Aristotelian concept of epideixis (see Lopez Pan 2015), I set out to explore how a lot of what is said and done in business is ceremonial and celebratory, aimed at displaying shared values, demonstrating consensus and reinforcing a sense of community. I present and put up for discussion a course of action, spelling out a tentative what, how, who and why for examining the quintessentially epideictic nature of  business communication, and I go on to illustrate it by reporting on linguistic ethnographic research I conducted on entrepreneurial podcasting. Drawing on Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969), I will show how consensus is constructed through value-centred discursive devices like quotes and proverbs, through rhetorical questions and appeals to the listener and through a combination of authorial and personal personas.

References

Fisher, R., & Ury, W. (1981). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.

López Pan, F. (2015). "The Newspaper as an Epideictic Meeting Point: On the Epidictic Nature of the Newspaper Argumentation." Argumentation 29.3: 285-303.

Perelman, C., & Olbechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The New Rhetoric. A Treatise on Argumentation. Translated by J. Wilinson & P. Weaver.

Bio

Geert Jacobs is a Professor at Ghent University's Department of Linguistics. His research interests include linguistic ethnography and discourse analytic work on professional communication and news production processes. He has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals. He recently co-edited volumes on participation and engagement in the media (Benjamins), on data in professional discourse (Palgrave), and on storytelling in business (iLanD). He is a Past President of the Association for Business Communication.