Abstract
In this book, Solly provides a particular perspective on the stylistic features of professional discourse, examining on the one hand the way discourse is used to construct identity and on the other how language has developed within the medical, legal and educational professional communities. By focusing on the interaction and overlapping of stylistic features and discourse strategies deployed in these domains, the study fills a substantial gap in stylistic approaches to the discourse of professional communities.
The volume consists of seven chapters and a coda. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the theoretical background to the main theories considered in the volume – from critical discourse analysis to conversation analysis, genre analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, corpus-based methods and narrative approaches – with a special emphasis on stylistics, whose ‘approach to analyzing texts can provide useful insights on language choice and use within professional communities, enabling both non-native and native speakers to become discursively aware’ (p. 19).
Starting from these premises, Chapter 2 explores the nature of speech communities and the role of language within them. The well-known definition of discourse community first proposed by Swales is integrated with Wenger’s concept of community of practice to arrive at the idea of ‘professional communities’, that is, communities ‘with their own genres and conventions’ (p. 24). The language choice within them plays an important role in building up professional identity.
Chapters 3–5 focus on the stylistic features of the three areas chosen for the study, namely, medical, legal and educational discourse. Chapter 3 underlines three main aspects of healthcare communication, each supported with interesting examples and case studies: the first one addresses the state of the art in healthcare communication, the second focuses on specific medical language choices (such as patient leaflets and case studies from the media) and the third is devoted to international healthcare insurance literature. Chapter 4 describes some aspects of the language of the law, gives the background to forensic linguistics, and focuses on some types of legal texts (statutes and witness evidence among the others) and the most typical features of legal language (i.e. repetition, vagueness and precision). Finally, Chapter 5 aims at describing contemporary educational discourse and the language of educational reform, with particular attention paid to the language of both UK and European language policy. The section devoted to commencement speeches (pp. 88–97) is worthy of note, given the novelty of the topic within the framework of stylistic studies and discourse studies; in fact, they are approached here as important ‘higher education texts’, tools for building the identity of the universities, and wonderful examples of ‘professional communication’ as a result.
Chapter 6 moves on to the impact of the main technological issues on professional communication, facing topics like language and technological change, texting and email (with special reference to issues of concision, informality and formulaic language), blogs and social media. Questions about the future of automatic translation and the future of communication via the Internet are left to the reader as food for further thought. The last chapter, entitled ‘Stylistics, pedagogy and professional discourse’, underlines the strong pedagogical role of stylistics in the teaching of language and literature through the last few decades. Content and Language Integrated Learning and English Medium Instruction are quoted as successful examples of the main recent developments in the teaching of professional discourse.
The synoptic Coda at the end of the book is an effective synthesis of the main issues at stake in the field of stylistics and discourse studies. Considering how far stylistics has come from its origins, but also how much remains to be done, Solly looks forward for stronger cooperation between language experts and professionals in the future.
Thoughtfully planned and well-articulated, The Stylistics of Professional Discourse skillfully melds together perspectives from the disciplines of applied linguistics, language education and communication studies. Of course, as the author himself maintains, ‘not all the professional communities are covered in the volume’ (p. vii), but the three areas chosen work as a model for other possible areas of research. Moreover, each chapter is enriched with a number of interesting activities, whose aim is to encourage readers to reflect on the topics discussed in the book.
Written by a passionate and experienced researcher in the field of stylistics and discourse studies, this work should rightly be seen as a significant contribution to a growing literature in professional communication. The originality of the book consists of the way the author demonstrates the strong relationship between stylistics and discourse studies in defining the distinctive identity of professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and educators. In particular, Martin Solly chooses a new and innovative perspective, which uses the lens of stylistics to describe the discourse of professional communities. The audience may therefore potentially include any researcher in the field, both beginner and expert, while at the same time giving an excellent and detailed critical overview of the issue for more expert scholars.