Nordic Perspectives on the Discourse of Things

This open access book deals with the role of written texts in an increasingly diverse and dynamic society, bringing together a series of studies anchored in the Scandinavian research tradition of sakprosa, which roughly translates as 'subject-oriented prose' or 'professional communication'. The authors examine the written text's capacity to transcend contextual boundaries, as a crucial factor in the importance of capturing and maintaining content as a manageable entity. The chapters each deal with a text type that manages complex content in a specialized way, including genre shifting in CSR reports, discourse networks in modern digital culture, digital and social media crisis communication, and epistemic positions in non-fiction. This book is relevant to fields such as text research, professional/digital communication, discourse analysis and literacy studies, and may also be of interest to disciplines such as history, rhetoric, organization studies, media studies/journalism, and linguistics.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Draws on fields such as linguistics, text theory, genre analysis, communication and rhetoric Introduces the Scandinavian concept of sakprosa to a wider international audience Includes case studies on digital infrastructures, crisis communication, writing pedagogy and non-fiction prose

Autorentext

Catharina Nyström Höög is Professor of Swedish at the Department for Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research interests include plain language, genre and discourse analysis, organizational discourse, stylistics and text linguistics.

Henrik Rahm is Associate Professor in Scandinavian Languages at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Sweden. Examples of previous research are diachronic journalistic discourse, legitimation strategies of registered nurses and clear language. His latest research includes language use in working life, discourses of state-owned enterprises, language of accounting and ritualization of corporate annual meetings.

Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad is Professor in Applied Linguistics and Head of the Centre for Academic and Professional Communication at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Her research interests include language and communication across a variety of professional practices.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: A discourse of things. Nordic perspectives on texts negotiating issues that matter in professional communication.- Chapter 2: Texts complying with societal pressures - Changing genres in Finnish companies' CSR reporting.- Chapter 3: Subject-oriented prose in digital discourse networks: digital media as a socio-material condition for access and circulation.- Chapter 4: Crisis communication on social media: Informalization in the hour-by-hour struggle for information.- Chapter 5: Sheep, watchdogs and wolves as epistemic positions: How a master's programme in non-fiction writing produced and reflected an epistemic practice for the field of sakprosa in Norway.- Chapter 6: Postscript: The Power and Potential of the Concept Sakprosa (CPS) A guided tour through five topoi.