Companies around the world now routinely provide financial information in English for the global investment community. In the interest of greater transparency, companies may also publish a policy ...that articulates how they intend to communicate with investors in terms of content, timing, and channels. This paper aims to explore the language of investor relations communication policies of Japanese and Italian companies, representing two different national and business cultures. Ad-hoc datasets were compiled from English-language textual materials relating to investor relations communication practices on the websites of companies listed on the Italian FTSE MIB 40 and the Japanese Nikkei 225. The datasets were comparatively analysed with corpus software to extract keywords used when communicating with investors that could reflect distinctive cultural approaches. Results showed that keywords emphasizing social relations characterized the Italian dataset, while those in the Japanese dataset highlighted the normative aspects of financial communication. Follow-up qualitative analysis indicated that the Italian and Japanese companies' approaches were both aligned and unaligned with their presumed cultural orientations. From a pedagogical perspective, the findings can inform ESP courses dealing with financial communication to raise L2 learners' awareness of trends and culturally diverse perspectives in relation to investor relations communication practices.
•Investor relations communication policy aims to inform investors and engender trust.•English communication policy texts of Italian and Japanese companies were analyzed.•Italian and Japanese companies had different approaches to engaging with investors.•Results showed both alignment and unalignment with presumed cultural orientations.•Study findings are useful to inform financial communication courses in ESP settings.
Lecture comprehension is a complex process that involves the decoding of meanings on various levels (e.g., phonological, lexical, syntactic, pragmatic, cultural), thus creating challenges for L2 ...learners. Moreover, there may be difficulties caused by unfamiliar prosodic patterns or accents of lecturers, as well as facial expressions and gesturing whose meanings may escape L2 students. To address all of these potential obstacles, lecture comprehension activities should implement materials prepared from authentic classroom lectures to provide L2 learners with realistic input, which may also vary according to instructional context.
The aim of this article is to illustrate how video-recorded lectures can be analysed to gain insights into their multifaceted nature and how the findings can be used to inform classroom activities to improve lecture comprehension. The article provides 1) a description of how video clips cut from OpenCourseWare lectures can be prepared for research and practice, 2) an overview of two case studies performed on video clips that highlight the use of multimodal ensembles integrating verbal and non-verbal features (e.g., idioms, humour, stance markers, culture-specific references, prosodic patterns, gesturing), and 3) a detailed lesson plan to exemplify how video clips from OCW lectures can be used to facilitate lecture comprehension.
•Lecture comprehension remains an ongoing challenge for EAP/ESP learners.•Video clips from OpenCourseWare lectures are analysed from a multimodal perspective.•Teaching activities using lecture video clips to improve comprehension are described.•The contribution of nonverbal cues to understand lecturers' meanings is highlighted.
This paper explores OpenCourseWare (OCW) lectures as a key resource for EAP research and practice. The aim is to gain insights into the distinctive features of this technology-driven lecture format ...and how it may differ from the traditional classroom lecture not intended for an online audience. The analysis was structured into two parts. First, the digital affordances provided by two pioneers of the open education movement (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University) were surveyed to understand how they support and enhance the lecture experience. Then, 15 lectures from their OCW platforms were analyzed with corpus tools to extract linguistic features of lecturer-audience interaction (i.e., I-you patterns, dialogic episodes, informal expressions). For comparative purposes, the same analysis was performed on a corpus comprised of 15 lectures from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Results showed a wide array of supporting digital affordances beyond video-recorded lectures, including lecture transcripts with metadata, content structuring, and navigational features. The linguistic analysis revealed that the OCW lecturers used considerably more I-you patterns to engage with students on an interpersonal level than the MICASE lecturers. The findings provide insights into how OCW lectures can be effectively leveraged for improving lecture comprehension for EAP settings.
•A survey of OCW lectures revealed innovative digital affordances to support learners.•Lecturer-audience interaction in OCW lectures vs. traditional lectures was analyzed.•Corpus analysis detected a more prominent usage of I-you patterns in OCW lectures.•OCW lectures are valuable resources to be leveraged for EAP research and practice.
Purpose
– The purpose of this exploratory study is to propose a new methodological approach to investigate brand associations. More specifically, the study aims to show how brand associations can be ...identified and analysed in an online community of international consumers of fashion to determine the degree of matching with company-defined brand associations.
Design/methodology/approach
– The methodology is two-pronged, integrating qualitative market research techniques with quantitative text mining. It was applied to determine types and perceptions of brand associations among fashion bloggers with reference to three leading Italian fashion houses. These were then compared to brand associations found in company-generated texts to measure the degree of matching.
Findings
– The results showed consistent brand associations across the three brands, as well as substantial matching with company-defined brand associations. In addition, the analysis revealed the presence of distinctive brand association themes that shed further light on how brand attributes were perceived by blog participants.
Practical implications
– The methods described can be used by managers to identify and reinforce favourable brand associations among consumers. This knowledge can then be applied towards developing and implementing effective brand strategies.
Originality/value
– The authors propose an interdisciplinary approach to investigate brand associations in online communities. It incorporates text mining and computer-assisted textual analysis as techniques borrowed from the field of linguistics which have thus far seen little application in marketing studies, but can nonetheless provide important insights for strategic brand management.
Considerable research has been done on brand personality as a key factor in brand management, focusing mainly on how it is perceived by consumers, but without much attention to the managerial ...perspective. However, the latter is crucially important to ensure that the brand personality that consumers perceive actually corresponds to what a company intends to communicate. This study offers an innovative methodology to achieve this dual-perspective objective, integrating notions of marketing and linguistics to investigate brand personality alignment as it emerges from authentic and spontaneous digital environments. Textual data were collected from both company and consumer web communications across a sample of 100+ fashion brands, and then processed with software to extract sets of adjectives as the expression of brand personality. The adjectives were interrelated to calculate ratios that measure (a) the degree of alignment between company-defined vs. consumer-perceived brand personality, (b) similarity in personality between brands and (c) consumer perception of similarity in personality between brands. Varying degrees of alignment were identified, suggesting differences in how effectively the companies communicate their brand personality. The combination of the ratios derived from this research process can be utilized to evaluate the strength of brand differentiation and to redefine brand communication strategies.
•We propose an interdisciplinary method to investigate perceptions of brand personality.•Adjectives that express brand personality were extracted from online interactions.•We identified ratios to measure alignment and perceived similarity in brand personality.•High vs. low ratios were associated with more vs. less effective brand communication.•Ratios were combined to evaluate the perceived differentiating power of brands.
This study investigates persuasive language in earnings calls. These are routine events organized by companies to report their quarterly financial results. The analysis is based on the earnings calls ...of 10 companies in the third quarter of 2009, when financial markets were still suffering from the global financial crisis, and the third quarter of 2013 when markets had largely recovered. Earnings call transcripts were compiled in two parallel corpora (Crisis Corpus and Recovery Corpus), thus providing a diachronic perspective. Semantic annotation software was used to extract pragmalinguistic resources of persuasion. The Crisis Corpus had a higher frequency of persuasive items, as executives often emphasized progress and future hopes. However, the types of items were largely the same across the corpora. This suggests a well-consolidated linguistic protocol within this discourse community that transcends financial performance. The findings offer insights into how earnings call participants use persuasive language strategically to achieve their distinct professional objectives as responsible providers of information (executives) versus discerning seekers of information (analysts).
Earnings calls are now the primary channel for oral financial reporting in the globalized corporate world. During these events, teams of executives present their companies' economic results to ...professional financial analysts within an audio teleconference setting. The presentations are followed by Q&A sessions with the analysts allowing them to interact directly with the executives. Research on this genre thus far has focused on their linguistic features, with little attention to their prominent multimodal dimension, which incorporates a unique blend of verbal and non-verbal input. Using a case study approach, I analyse all the semiotic resources that come into play during an earnings call of a leading European telecommunications company, with particular attention to the intersemiotic complementarity of the various modes, including prosodic features of the participants' vocal production and accompanying visual supports with numerical data, graphics, and images. The findings showed that the earnings call combined verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources which are interdependent and cannot be fully understood in isolation. Moreover, a smooth shifting between verbal and visual modes without explicit cuing suggested a consolidated and mutually understood protocol for utilizing various modes and media. The prosodic features of the participants' speech appeared to convey pragmatic meanings linked to both authoritativeness and tentativeness, depending on the sometimes conflicting goals of analysts who request information and executives who may or may not want to provide it. The findings of the study can be used to inform financial communication courses that aim to train future company executives and financial analysts.
The language of fashion was first investigated by Roland Barthes in his influential book
, but it has since received scant attention from linguists, perhaps due to perceptions of frivolousness ...associated with the fashion world. This study explores contemporary fashion discourse through a systematic analysis of hyphenated phrasal expressions as linguistic features that are analytically challenging, but with strong expressive potential. The Fashion Discourse Corpus consists of 396,125 words compiled from the traditional fashion press (Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, Harper’s Bazaar) and two leading fashion blogs, representing both American and British English. For comparative purposes, a reference corpus was extracted from American and British benchmark corpora. The quantitative analysis revealed that hyphenated phrasal expressions were considerably more frequent in the Fashion Discourse Corpus. Follow-up qualitative analysis identified conventional, semi-conventional, and non-conventional types, along with recurring structural patterns and communicative functions used to describe and evaluate fashion phenomena. The fashion blogs in particular contained richly expressive items that seemed to reflect the writer’s unique voice and identity within the discourse community. The findings can be applied in journalism and communication courses to help aspiring writers learn to use hyphenated phrasal expressions effectively.
This paper investigates how companies seek to convey an image of transparency in their investor relations (IR) communication policy texts. It is based on two corpora compiled from texts describing ...the IR communication policies of companies listed on the Finnish OMX Helsinki 25 and the Italian FTSE MIB 40, representing two culturally different players within the European financial community. A two-pronged methodology was used to identify the linguistic and discursive expression of the concept of transparency: corpus-driven micro-linguistic analysis and rhetorical move analysis. Results showed that transparency and dialogue were keywords only in the Italian corpus. They further suggested that Finnish companies focus more on the efficient disclosure of information, whereas the Italian companies highlight their commitment to constant dialogue with stakeholders. The findings can be interpreted as reflecting cultural differences between the countries in terms of contextual vs. personal, affective vs. instrumental, and elaborate vs. exacting communication styles.
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