Applied genre analysis in professional contexts

: discourses of and perspectives from IPO lawyers and reporting accountants

Abstract

Professional genres have often been analyzed in isolation, leaving the study of professional practice almost completely out, except as providing context for specific analyses (Bhatia, 2008). By means of an analysis of the genre of comfort and confirmation letters and accountants' reports and summary reports that reporting accountants and initial public offering (IPO) lawyers write, along with an ethnographic analysis of the context of production of these texts, this study highlights a more integrated analytical perspective on professional genres in order to uncover the realities of the professional world (professional practices) of IPO lawyers and reporting accountants. Based on a 14-month study of an IPO in Hong Kong and the related creation of letters and reports and the surrounding meetings between reporting accountants, IPO lawyers and other related parties, this study illustrates the respective role of interdiscursivity in professional genres. On the one hand, through a more contextual analysis of the context of production, the study investigates the discursive realities and professional practices of accountants and lawyers. On the other hand, based on a corpus of current and authentic letters and reports written by reporting accountants and IPO lawyers, the study explores how communicative purposes are achieved through the systematic schematic structuring and linguistic realisation patterning of the genre. In doing so, professional practices of accountants and lawyers are also uncovered. The research data includes a set of genres which constitutes a corpus of 50 comfort letters and 50 accountants' reports written by reporting accountants and 50 confirmation letters and 50 summary reports written by IPO lawyers. Supported by observations of three IPO meetings between accountants and lawyers and of these professionals at work, along with interview data taken from three reporting accountants and three IPO lawyers, the texts in the research data are presented and analyzed by adopting a move and lexica-grammatical analysis. Important and interesting findings emerge from this analysis. The first relates to interdiscursivity in the company prospectus and in professional communication, especially in legal discourse in the IPO context. The second finding is how professional writing and professional practices influence each other and can be examined reflexively. This study's contextual analysis supports the findings from the textual analysis of letters and reports, and the textual analysis supports the findings from the contextual analysis. The narratives of experience drawn from reporting accountants and IPO lawyers along with the analysis of their writing bring us to the third finding of professional roles and practices and the conflicts between institutional demands of reporting accountants and IPO lawyers and the way in which negotiation and collaboration operates in an IPO context. The study offers insight into the complex nature of professional discourse and professional practices, which become even more complex as different professions work together (an increasing trend of new collaborations in the professional world) from which pedagogical and research implications can be drawn. The overarching conclusion of the study is that the contextual and linguistic approaches to genre analysis along with a closer examination of professional practices can contribute to our understanding of professional discourse.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	John FLOWERDEW (Supervisor)