Winnie Cheng is Professor of English, Director of Research Centre for Professional Communication in English, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her major research has focused on discourse analysis, conversation analysis, discourse intonation, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, intercultural communication in the professions, and collaborative learning and assessment. She has published widely in these areas and has presented her work at conferences around the world. Some of her recent publications include Intercultural Conversation (2003) and A Corpus-driven Study of Discourse Intonation: the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (prosodic) (with C. Greaves and M. Warren, 2008), both by John Benjamins; and Professional Communication: Collaboration between Academics and Practitioners (co-edited with C.C.K., Kong, 2009), Hong Kong University Press.
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In business and professional communication, the borderline between spoken and written modes of communication is usually difficult to draw in practice as the flow of discourse inevitably mixes one with the other as the professionals go about their work. The notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, which are considered important characteristics of professional literacy, have yet to be fully described. Language is viewed as a means of participation in discursive practices in business and professional communication; and business and professional practices are closely related to linguistic structures and systems and discursive practices. The use and role of English language as an international lingua franca in business and professional communicative contexts is still under-investigated. |
In Hong Kong, the linguistic situation is unique. With the increasing importance of biliteracy and trilingualism, the relation between communicative purpose; the context of interaction; the choice of channel, mode and language medium; language skill areas; and the use of different genres is worthy of investigation. Identifying the qualities, skills and performance of the competent professionals in intercultural communicative settings in Hong Kong will therefore contribute to a better understanding of both intercultural communicative competence and professional literacy in business and professional contexts.
The paper reports on a study based in Hong Kong in which six professionals in the four key industries of Hong Kong’s economy, namely financial services, tourism, trading and logistics, and professional and other producers’ services, were shadowed for one week. During the shadowing period, each professional kept a detailed log of all the language and communicative activities that she/he encountered in the workplace. As well as completing the log, the professionals collected the actual discourses to enable a detailed analysis to be carried out. This paper describes the findings to date, focusing particularly on a comparison of the six professionals in terms of discourse flows, intertextuality and interdiscursivity. The discourse flows, i.e. interconnected discourse processes and products, specific to individual professionals will be analysed. The importance of intertextuality in locating each discourse coherently within the discourse flow, and how it is signalled, is explained. Interdiscursivity, which is the intermingling of genres within a discourse, is described with examples drawn from the data.
The paper will also discuss the implications of the study for business and professional communication and the training of communicators in today’s globalised world, particularly the contribution the study makes to bridge the gap among academics, researchers, trainers, and practitioners in the business and professional world. |
