"Professional Discourse" gives a broad and multifaceted perspective on discourse in the professions. For each of these professions, the book explores the dual relationship between discourse and context, outlining how professional discourse is continuously reconstructed in relation to changing contextual frameworks. The case studies discussed in the book are based on authentic texts and spoken data, collected within different environments and related to different domains. The book includes discussion of both theory and methodology, thus providing tools for exercises and future studies. The reader is introduced to a variety of analytical approaches, including textlinguistics, pragmatics, genre studies, sociolinguistics, interactional sociolinguistics and sociology, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology.The book gives theoretically grounded and systematically investigated answers to questions of relevance for advanced learners, practitioners and academic scholars. Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in the humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways language mediates and shapes our interactions with each other and with the social, political and cultural formations of our society.

Author Biography

Britt-Louise Gunnarsson holds the chair in Sociolinguistics at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has directed several large research projects and published extensively on professional language and discourse.