This volume focuses on the evolution of genres in specialized communication under the pressure of technological innovations and the profound social changes triggered by globalization in the contemporary world, in a context where rapid and extensive changes in communicative practices, patterns and technologies have deeply affected the generic configuration of professional and disciplinary domains. These developments call for a reconsideration of the repertoires of conventions traditionally identified in each specific genre as well as for a reassessment of the analytical tools used to investigate them, about three decades after the emergence of genre analysis.

Giuliana Garzone is Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at Università degli Studi di Milano. Her main research interests are in specialized discourse in its different domains, and in translation and interpreting studies. She has co-ordinated several research projects and published extensively on legal language, scientific discourse, business communication, political discourse and on translation and interpreting. In recent times her research has examined the impact of multimodality on professional communication, focusing on text types and genres embedded in the web-mediated environment. Paola Catenaccio is Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Translation at Università degli Studi di Milano. Her research interests span from second language acquisition to translation and discourse analysis, particulary in LSP. Her most recent contributions focus on linguistic aspects of corporate communication, especially corporate social responsibility discourse. Chiara Degano is Tenured Researcher in English Linguistics and Translation at Università degli Studi di Milano. Her research, mainly grounded in Discourse Analysis integrated with corpus linguistics, has lately centred on argumentative discourse, investigating its realizations across different institutional domains (media, political and legal).

Leseprobe

Contents: Giuliana Garzone/Paola Catenaccio/Chiara Degano: Introduction – Giuliana Garzone: Why Do Genres Change? – Marina Bondi/Silvia Cavalieri: The Evolution of the Abstract as a Genre: 1988-2008. The Case of Applied Linguistics – Davide Simone Giannoni: A Diachronic Study of Genre Variation in Academic Publishing: (1965-2004) – Stefania M. Maci: . The Case of Medical Posters in a Diachronic Perspective – Martin Solly: Dialogic Monologues: Commencement Speeches as an Evolving Genre – Paula De Santiago: Diachronic Evolution of Scientific Popularised Articles in Online Newspapers: Critical Reflections on – Min-Hsiu Liao: A Diachronic Study of the Q&A Column in a Popular Science Magazine. – Annarita Tavani: FAO’s Food Insecurity Reports: An Evolving Genre – Cristina Pennarola/Germana D’Acquisto: The Genre Evolution of the UN Secretary-General’s Annual Reports from 1953 to 2010 – Vanda Polese/Stefania D’Avanzo: From Making to Promoting Law: An Investigation into the Evolution of ‘Food Safety’ Discourse in EU Summaries – Paola Catenaccio: Genre-bending for Consensus Building: A Diachronic Perspective on Monsanto’s Pledge Reports (2000-2009) – Cinzia Giglioni: Apologetic Discourse in Financial Reporting: CEO and Chairman Statements. A Case Study – Sylvain Dieltjens/Priscilla Heynderickx: The CEO’s New Year’s Message from the 1960s to 2000 – Paul Gillaerts: From Job Announcements to Recruitment Advertising: The Evolution of Recruitment Ads in a Flemish Newspaper (1946-2010) – Francesca Santulli: Genre Variation and Genre Change: Theory and Applications.