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GLEN MICHAEL ALESSI

COLLABORATORE DI RICERCA
Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Culturali

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Pubblicazioni

2020 - Modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies: methodologies fro tracking language change over recent time. [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Partington, Alan
abstract

This paper presents a description of the tools and methodologies employed in the novel discipline of modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies. The main instruments are a set of three ‘sister’ corpora of parallel structure and content from different moments of contemporary time, namely 1993, 2005 and 2010, along with a number of corpus interrogation tools. The methodologies are the particular techniques devised by the research team to which the author belongs (the SiBol group) for employing these interrogation tools to shed light on the various research questions treated in the paper. The first part of the paper outlines ways in which these tools and techniques can be used to track changes in the grammar, lexis and discourse practices of UK broadsheet or ‘quality’ newspapers. Given the important role of newspapers, some of these changes may well be indicative of general changes in UK written English. The second part, instead, describes a number of studies conducted by the research group into how the reporting of various social and cultural themes and issues, ranging from what is seen as a moral issue, to the rhetoric of appeals to science, to how antisemitism is debated, has developed over the time period in question. The concluding section discusses the relationship between the methodologies employed in modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies and wider scientific research methodology. SiBol is a portmanteau of Siena and Bologna, the two universities involved in initiating the project. http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/clb/

2020 - Two ways of sticking together and getting along in discourse: propositional cohesion and evaluative cohesion. [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Partington, Alan
abstract

In this paper, we intend to describe two systems of what is often referred to as ‘standard’ cohesion, namely entity/propositional cohesion and evaluative cohesion, the first of which has been far more extensively analysed in the discipline of linguistics, especially, grammar, than the latter. Cohesion means, of course, ‘sticking together’. According to Thompson (1996:147-??) cohesion teaches a ‘set of resources’, which ‘the speaker [writer] attempts to employ to enable the listener [reader] to make sense of a piece of communication by ‘organizing the ways in which the meanings are expressed’, by having them connect together in some way. Here we have to underline that the kind of ‘meanings’ held together in standard cohesion practice range from simple entities, objects, people, places to more complex propositions encapsulated in lengthy stretches of text. ‘Standard” cohesion, then affords a set of tools and techniques by which the the speaker [writer] hopes to make the flow of text comprehensible (often named ‘coherent’) to an audience and, in some forms of texts, also engaging. However, the study of standard cohesion can tell us a great deal about how a text is rendered coherent, but it sheds little light on the communicative (the perlocutionary) intents of the speaker [writer] in the first place, that is, why and what it is they wish to communicate and how. A vast amount of human communication involves the expression of evaluation; in essence the appraisal of an entity as good or bad, though good or bad in an infinity of different ways. We very rarely discuss entities or propositions without evaluating them in some way. Indeed the presentation and arrangement of information without the speaker [writer] evaluation would not only by very dry but largely uninformative on an interpersonal level. Texts then are also held together, they cohere, in terms of the evaluations they express, and it is the study of evaluative coherence (sometimes referred to as evaluative harmony) which sheds light on what speakers [writers] intend to do when they communicate to others. As Aristotle noted, human communication largely consists in attempts to connnect with and to influence the beliefs and even behaviour of other people (Partington, Duguid and Taylor 2013 ??), in other words, to persuade them (of everything from the fact that you are a person worth listening to, to how they should spend their money, to how they should vote.) In order to study how evaluative cohesion functions in detail, we will utilise concordancing of relevant lexical items, lexical templates often called units of meaning, as they appear in the Siena-Bologna (SiBol) Modern Diachronic Corpora suite of corpora. This consists of four sister corpora, the first three of UK newspaper texts from different but contemporary periods in time, designed and compiled to be as alike as possible to eliminate potentially complicating variables. They contain all the articles published by the three main UK broadsheet or so-called ‘quality’ newspapers, namely The Times, the Telegraph and the Guardian in the years 1993 (the SiBol 93 corpus), 2005 (the SiBol 05 corpus) and 2010 (the SiBol 2010 corpus). They contain, respectively, circa 100 million words, 150 million and 140 million words. The 2013 corpus wave, instead, contains the output of that year of 12 English language newspapers, including the original The Times, the Telegraph and the Guardian plus two UK tabloids, the Mirror and the Mail, two US newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Times of India, the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Daily News (Egypt), Gulf News (UAE), This Day Lagos (Nigeria). It contains a total of 327 million words.

2019 - Scholarly vs. Popularized Buscom Writings: Two sides of the same elephant ? [Relazione in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

2018 - Edible Arizona: The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert Publications addressing sustainable regional culinary systems, along with 'Real' and 'Local' food movements have sprung up all over the United States. These "Edible Communities" publications exist in localized versions as quarterly magazines and websites represented in 85 regions. They address issues of producing, preparing, serving and promoting locally sourced food. The magazines include stories, interviews, recipes and writing about heritage foods, local ecologies, farming, marketing and locally sourced foods. In the state of Arizona, two distinct 'Edible Community' publications exist: Edible Phoenix and the award-winning Edible Baja Arizona; the latter covering the greater Tucson area into northern Sonora, Mexico. These two distinct areas have distinct histories, local cultures, identities, and politics. Phoenix is regarded widely as a politically conservative, displaced 'Midwestern' city, while Tucson (the only U.S. city to be named World City of Gastronomy by UNESCO) as a city which prides itself on its pre-statehood status, progressive values, and its Hispanic and Native traditions. These distinct identities may likewise be reflected in lifestyle choices and related perspectives, discussions and language choices regarding food, cuisine, sustainability and ecological issues. This work-in-progress takes these two Edible Communities publications as its starting point in investigating the breadth and depth of discourse surrounding regional food and culinary issues. Borrowing frameworks from critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2012) and corpus-assisted discourse studies (Partington 2012), it explores how these publications may (or may not) less-knowingly reveal marked local ideologies, regional values and distinct identities through language choices when discussing locally produced food and food culture.

2018 - Scholarly vs. Popularized Bucom Writings: Two Sides of the Same Elephant? [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Scholarly vs. Popularized Buscom Writings: two sides of the same elephant? The widespread popularity of 'problem-solving' pop-management literature, in the form of self-help books and 'how-to' manuals, has promoted an authorial voice, and in some cases, a default 'go-to' or primary information source for managers and business communications practitioners who seek to improve or 'add-value' to their professional know-how and performance ( Frenkel 2005: 138 ). Varying greatly in format and content, these readings include best-selling books, manuals, blogs, popularized management journals, book summaries and emailed newsfeeds, all of which address practitioners' needs by rationalizing how to best efficiently manage time, social interactions, communications, performance, health and more. Their advocates (including authors and publishers) argue that such readings, by drawing upon scholarly writings and evidence-based practices in organizational settings, result in creatively reinterpreted, credible and inspiring experienced-based narratives that abridge the normal requirement for scholarship based on evidence and causality. These readings, it is claimed, are based upon real world practices in organizational settings, which surpass the reader's need for scholarly sources. This surge of fast-track writing, they say, successfully bypasses-laborious academic descriptions, which are accused of creating a wider gap between perceived and real practitioner needs ( Frenkel 2005 ). But have these 'cure-all' writings, having presumably incorporated elements borrowed from academic research, really managed to make findings both prescriptive and reliable while popularizing them for wider readership?

2018 - Strategic Communication: Views on how practioners enact discursive strategies. [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Strategic Communication: Views on how practioners enact discursive strategies. Strategic communication, as a field of study in professional and public spheres has been tagged as being a misunderstood, ambiguous, contested or neglected area of professional communication (Holltzhausen and Zerfass, 2015). Despite efforts to better define and give focus to its applications in a variety of professional contexts through conferences, academic journals such as The International Journal of Strategic Communication, online courses and monograph textbooks, each initiative appears to add to or create even further nuanced interpretations which avoid an overall unifying perspective. This study does not assume there is one exclusive top-down catagorisation of strategic communication, but wants to explore strategic communication as being sector and task specific to each practitioner, while at the same time sharing lexico-grammatical and interdiscursive strategies across disciplines. This study addresses practitioners in a variety of professional contexts to see if, how and which discursive strategies such as lexico-grammatical choices, thought to be integral to their notions of strategic communication, are realized through their discursive choices.

2018 - Strategic Communication: Views on how practitioners enact discursive strategies. [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Glen Michael Alessi University of Modena and Reggio Emilia - ITALY Strategic Communication: Views on how practioners enact discursive strategies. Strategic communication, as a field of study in professional and public spheres has been tagged as being a misunderstood, ambiguous, contested or neglected area of professional communication (Holltzhausen and Zerfass, 2015). Despite efforts to better define and give focus to its applications in a variety of professional contexts through conferences, academic journals such as The International Journal of Strategic Communication, online courses and monograph textbooks, each initiative appears to add to or create even further nuanced interpretations which avoid an overall unifying perspective. This study does not assume there is one exclusive top-down catagorisation of strategic communication, but wants to explore strategic communication as being sector and task specific to each practitioner, while at the same time sharing lexico-grammatical and interdiscursive strategies across disciplines. This study addresses practitioners in a variety of professional contexts to see if, how and which discursive strategies such as lexico-grammatical choices, thought to be integral to their notions of strategic communication, are realized through their discursive choices.

2016 - Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran Desert [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Glen Michael Alessi Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert Publications addressing sustainable regional culinary systems, along with 'Real' and 'Local' food movements have sprung up all over the United States. These "Edible Communities" publications exist in localized versions as quarterly magazines and websites represented in 85 regions. They address issues of producing, preparing, serving and promoting locally sourced food. The magazines include stories, interviews, recipes and writing about heritage foods, local ecologies, farming, marketing and locally sourced foods. In the state of Arizona, two distinct 'Edible Community' publications exist: Edible Phoenix and the award-winning Edible Baja Arizona; the latter covering the greater Tucson area into northern Sonora, Mexico. These two distinct areas have distinct histories, local cultures, identities, and politics. Phoenix is regarded widely as a politically conservative, displaced 'Midwestern' city, while Tucson (the only U.S. city to be named World City of Gastronomy by UNESCO) as a city which prides itself on its pre-statehood status, progressive values, and its Hispanic and Native traditions. These distinct identities may likewise be reflected in lifestyle choices and related perspectives, discussions and language choices regarding food, cuisine, sustainability and ecological issues. This work-in-progress takes these two Edible Communities publications as its starting point in investigating the breadth and depth of discourse surrounding regional food and culinary issues. Borrowing frameworks from critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2012) and corpus-assisted discourse studies (Partington 2012), it explores how these publications may (or may not) less-knowingly reveal marked local ideologies, regional values and distinct identities through language choices when discussing locally produced food and food culture.

2016 - Genre and Discourse-based Approaches to ESP Teaching in Italian Lingua Inglese Courses: A Survery and Discussion [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

The main concern of this chapter is to gather insights and to survey the current practices of genre and or discourse-based approaches used in Lingua Inglese Courses in the curriculum at Italian universities in various departments and degree programs. It considers questions of: What gets taught? How are Course content and objectives related to degree programs? Why is this approach used? And, how are genre and discourse-based approaches to ESP seen as being relevant and justified regarding institutional practices.

2016 - Place Branding and Heritage Tourism in The American West [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Place Branding and Heritage Tourism in The American West For over 150 years, the American West continues to be romanticized, idealized and fictionalized, through film, television, popular literature and more recently through heritage branding and travel both in print and in social media. Today, readers of specialist magazines and websites dealing with historically western themes continue to romanticize events, objects, personalities and places through feature stories, advertising, forums and travel advice, which inform of a past which has been enriched and, and in a Bhatian sense, colonized by the language of commercialization and promotion in order to sell clothing, package tours, firearms and promote heritage events and museums. TRUE WEST MAGAZINE, published since 1954 and which is the most widely read and longest-running publication of its type, has allowed access to their archives to explore and assess the types of discourse and lexicogrammatical features (specialist terms or archaic labels) that this repackaging of the past for the present proposes. A thorough examination of the generic features at play in both the print and online versions will be explored and presented in this paper. Evidence of destination branding, city branding, along with event and heritage branding will be explored using frameworks borrowed from CDA, critical Genre Analysis and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS).

2016 - Reflections on the Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research [Breve Introduzione]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Jacobs, Geert
abstract

1 This book presents a collection of original chapters focusing on what, for lack of a more precise term, we have come to call the “INs and OUTs” of business and professional discourse research. Put simply, this means that we zoom in on the two extreme ends of the scholarly process investigating written, oral, non-verbal and digital commu- nication in business and professional settings. On the one hand, the volume includes a number of chapters that deal with issues of gaining access to and collecting data, and addresses questions like: how can we convince practitioners to let us observe, record, inter- view, survey? What counts as data? How much data do we need? What shape and form can the data take? How does our research interfere with the professional practices we study? On the other hand, there are a number of chapters that look at issues of feeding results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners. Questions here include: how can professional discourse research be applied to help shape practice? How do we translate our methods and concepts for the communities that we investigate, including industry, government and non-profit organizations?

2016 - Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports: Linguistic Perspectives on Professional Writing practices. [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Drawing on Bhatia's (2008) notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, this study examines generic and lexico-grammatical features found in a corpus of anonymised internal investigative reports produced by a large multinational company. It considers how insights gained from genre analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Partington 2008, 2013; Alessi 2013 ) may furnish the company with future recommendations in fine-tuning these reports for a previously unaccounted for external readership by lawyers and paralegals. On a more general scale, my interests attempt to illustrate how academic research findings, based on the study of existing communicative practices, might better inform, improve and shape future professional practice. My study addresses reports produced by a large multinational corporation, which conducts internal investigations regarding problematic employee behaviour, such as misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints, and issues of compliance. These reports are based on investigator-employee interviews, which were intended only for internal use only. They may however be unexpectedly required, at a future date, for legal purposes such as in litigation cases between an employee and the company. The company involved, expressed interest in employing external linguistic expertise - or mediation - in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized, in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. In an effort to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices amongst authors, the company hopes that the reports might create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the various cases and investigators. A principle aim is to produce standardized documentation, which foreseeably could be better defended in court. In linguistic terms, the company is intent on imposing register variation and re-contextualizing language of these internal reports in order to create documentation, which can be legally defended while using English as a Lingua Franca. Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches, together with Sketch Engine applications, will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents legally resistant. Particular attention is given to prescribing choice of reporting verbs, contents and moves of the executive summary, vague versus explicit language, expressing factuality and allegations. References Alessi, Glen M. "The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustments: Interviews or Interrogations?" Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Ed. Franca Poppi and Winnie Cheng. [S.l.]: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2013. 23-36. Print. Bhatia, V. "Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice." English for Specific Purposes 27.2 (2008): 161-74 Partington Alan. 2008. The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, in Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley, Erik Castello (eds) Corpora for University Language Teachers, Bern: Peter Lang, 189-213. Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid & Charlotte Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

2016 - The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research. Reflections on Interacting with the Workplace [Curatela]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Jacobs, Geert
abstract

This edited volume offers a collection of original chapters focusing on the Ins and Outs of professional discourse research. The contributors discuss all aspects of the scholarly process, investigating written, oral, non-verbal and digital communication in professional settings. First the book analyses gaining access and collecting data by exploring questions such as, how can we convince practitioners to let us observe, record, interview, survey? What counts as data? How much data do we need? What shape and form can the data take? How does our research interfere with the professional practices we study? The book then examines feeding results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners, asking questions such as, how can professional discourse research be applied to help shape practice? How do we translate our methods and concepts for the communities that we investigate, including industry, government and non-profit organizations? Drawing on insights from LSP, ethnography and discourse analysis, this book will be of great value to researchers and practitioners of workplace settings.

2016 - The Language of Insurance Adjustments as Paralegal communication: Accident Reports Acting as Legal Depositions [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

The Language of Insurance Claim Adjustment as Paralegal Communication : Accident Reports Acting as Legal Depositions. Insurance adjusters in the United States are hired as independent accident claims investigators by insurance companies to produce investigative accident reports which prove crucial in helping the insurance company determine liabilitycompensation. A written corpus of 400 adjuster-written accident reports, totalling 795,674 tokens, was examined using corpus-assisted and critical genre analyses approaches to question whether the language used in these reports might reveal features of paralegal communicative practice. The reports were seen to perform two potentially conflicting functions: first, by assembling facts and impartially narrating the events of the accident, and secondly, by interpreting and grading reliability of witness testimony. The adjuster’s choice of attributors in the reports proved crucial, when both narrating and evaluating, as carrying potential bias and indirectly assigning blame. The reports mirrored elements of conventional and standardized moves found in Bhatia’s four move legal case analysis (Bhatia: 1993), and relied heavily on lexico-grammatical and generic borrowings from investigative practices found in the disciplinary cultures and discursive procedures characteristic of legal practice and law enforcement. While the communicative purposes may appear straightforward to all parties as producing an accurate and unbiased account of events in fulfillment of a business- to -client relationship, the reports' interdiscursive and intertextual features place it within professional and organizational discourse practices which are also aimed at defending, accusing or convicting, and therefore should be more accurately viewed as constituting investigative paralegal discourse.

2015 - Business English as a Lingua Franca in Chinese-Italian Business Negotiations: A corpus-assisted case study of communicative strategies. [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

This is a corpus-assisted analysis of English used as a Lingua Franca in the context of spoken business communications between Italian and Chinese interlocutors. It examines communicative strategies used during negotiations between a small Italian toy-marketing firm and their Chinese suppliers. The focus of the study is to examine how Italian importers and Chinese exporters employ spoken conventions during negotiations in a workplace BELF context to achieve cooperation and to avoid miscommunication. It also points what might be considered the communicative shortcomings in the negotiation and suggests corrective measures to the Italian company on how future interaction might be better informed.

2015 - Business English as a Lingua Franca in Chinese-Italian Business Negotiations: A corpus-assisted case-study of communication strategies [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Business English as a Lingua Franca in Chinese-Italian Business Negotiations: A corpus-assisted case-study of communicative strategies. Glen Michael Alessi Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia This is a corpus-assisted analysis of English used as a Lingua Franca in the context of spoken business communications between Italian and Chinese interlocutors. It examines communicative strategies used during negotiations between a Modena-based import-marketing firm and their Chinese suppliers. The methodology of this case study combines qualitative close conversation analysis (Levinson 1983/7, Handford 2010), along with from corpus-assisted analysis (CADS: Stubbs 1996, Partington 2008) and ELF interactional pragmatic perspectives (Cogo, Dewey 2012). Evaluations also included observations on intercultural ELF strategies and cross-cultural L1 strategies (Hofstede, 1991, Gesteland, 2003 and Spencer-Oatey, Xing 2008). The focus of the study is to examine how Italian and Chinese interlocutors employ spoken conventions in workplace ELF to achieve cooperation and to avoid miscommunication, and it also attempts to point out communicative shortcomings and furnish recommendations to the Italian company on how future interaction might be improved. A corpus of 30 minutes of taped and transcribed negotiations, comprised of 787 turns with 19,140 tokens, were examined using Wordsmith Tools and Sketch Engine to isolate relevant conversational features which included: turn-taking, turn-giving, turn-keeping, starters, verbal fillers, uptakes, alerts, meta-comments, silent pauses, repetition, politeness strategies, hedging and tag questions. Results revealed conscious efforts, on the part of the Chinese participants, to establish politeness while maintaining distance and formality. The Italians used interactional strategies which often neglected distinctions between non-understanding and misunderstanding, and generally furnished far fewer supportive moves (back-channel, repetition, reformulation) while at the same time they regularly provided dispreferred response formats.

2015 - Business English as a lingua franca in Chinese-Italian business negotiations: A corpus assisted case study of communicative strategies [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

BELF in Chinese-Italian Business Negotiations: A corpus-assisted case-study of communicative strategies. Glen Michael Alessi Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia This paper addresses issues of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF ) in the context of spoken and written business communications between Italian and Chinese interlocutors. The first section examines communicative strategies used in spoken BELF during negotiations between a Modena based import-marketing firm and their mainland Chinese suppliers, while the second section looks at strategies used in written correspondence , with particular regard to unsolicited Chinese "sales letters"in email format. The methodology of this case study combines, qualitative close conversation analysis (Levinson 1983/7, Handford 2010), along with from corpus-assisted analysis (CADS: Stubbs 1996, Partington 2008) and ELF interactional pragmatic perspectives (Cogo, Dewey 2012). Evaluations also included observations on intercultural ELF strategies and cross-cultural L1 strategies (Hofstede, 1991, Gesteland, 2003 and Spencer-Oatey, Xing 2008). The focus of part one is to examine how Italian and Chinese interlocutors employ spoken conventions in workplace ELF to acheive cooperation and to avoid miscommunication, and, in response to the Italian company's requests, it also attempts to point out communicative shortcomings and furnish recommendations to the Italian company on how future interaction might be improved. A corpus of 30 minutes of taped and transcribed negotiations, comprised of 787 turns with 19,140 tokens, were examined using Wordsmith Tools and Sketch Engine to isolate relevant conversational features which included: turn-taking, turn-giving, turn-keeping, starters, verbal fillers, uptakes, alerts, meta-comments, silent pauses, repetition, politeness strategies, hedging and tag questions. Results revealed conscious efforts, on the part of the Chinese participants, to establish politeness while maintaining distance and formality. The Italians used interactional strategies which often neglected distinctions between non-understanding and misunderstanding, and generally furnished far fewer supportive moves (back-channel, repetition, reformulation) while at the same time they regularly provided dispreferred response formats. References Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print. Cogo, Alessia, and Martin Dewey. Analyzing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus- driven Investigation. London: Continuum, 2012. Print. Gesteland, Richard R. Cross-cultural Business Behavior: Marketing, Negotiating, Sourcing and Managing across Cultures. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School, 2003. Print. Hall, Edward T., and Mildred Reed. Hall. Understanding Cultural Differences:. Yarmouth: Intercultural, 1996. Print. Handford, Michael. The Language of Business Meetings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. Hofstede, Geert H., Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print. Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Print. Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid, and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013. Print. Spencer-Oatey, Helen. Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. London: Continuum, 2008. Print. Stubbs, Michael. Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell, 1996. Print.

2014 - Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports : A Case Study in Appropriated Professional Language Practices [Poster]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Standardizing language in corporate investigative reports: A case study in appropriated professional language practices Glen Michael Alessi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Adopting Gunnarsson's (2009) definition of professional discourse, and drawing on Bhatia's (2008) notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, this study examines generic and lexico-grammatical features found in a corpus of anonymised internal investigative reports produced by a large multinational company. It considers how insights gained from genre analysis (Bhatia 1993) and corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Partington 2008, 2013) may furnish the company with future recommendations in fine-tuning these reports for a previously unaccounted for external readership of lawyers and paralegals. On a more general scale, my interests attempt to illustrate how academic research findings, based on the study of existing communicative practices, might better inform, improve and shape future professional practice. My study addresses reports produced by a large multinational corporation which conducts internal investigations regarding problematic employee behaviour, such as misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints, and issues of compliance. These reports are based on investigator- employee interviews and are intended only for internal use only. They may however be unexpectedly required, at a future date, for legal purposes such as in litigation cases between an employee and the company. The company involved, expressed interest in employing external linguistic expertise - or mediation - in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized, in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. In an effort to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices amongst authors, the company hopes that the reports might create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the various cases and investigators. A principle aim is to produce standardized documentation which foreseeably could be better defended in court. In linguistic terms, the company is intent on imposing register variation and re-contextualizing language of these internal reports in order to create documentation which can be legally defended while using English as a Lingua Franca. Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches, together with Sketch Engine applications, will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents legally resistant. Particular attention is given to prescribing choice of reporting verbs, contents and moves of the executive summary, vague versus explicit language, expressing factuality and allegations. References Alessi, G. M. 2013. The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustments: Interviews or Interrogations? In: Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Ed. F. Poppi & W. Cheng. Cambridge Scholars. 23-36. Bhatia, V. 2008. Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice. English for Specific Purposes 27.2: 161-74 Partington A. 2008. The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. In: Corpora for University Language Teachers. Ed. C. Taylor Torsello, K. Ackerley & E. Castello. Bern: Peter Lang. 189-213. Partington, A., Duguid A. & C. Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

2014 - Standardizing the language of corporate internal investigative reports: A case study in appropriated professional language practices [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Standardizing the language of corporate internal investigative reports: A case study in appropriated professional language practices Glen Michael Alessi (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia) glennalessi@mac.com Large international corporations regularly conduct internal investigations regarding employee behavior. These investigations may pertain to misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints or issues of compliance. Employees are the first subject to interviews by company investigators, who subsequently report these cases in written form for internal use. These reports, however, may be required for external use later; for example, in the case litigation between an employee and the company. These reports are written by internal investigators who come from various cultural, educational and language backgrounds. They work at branch offices worldwide, often producing reports which often do not comply with the company's style-guide for report writing. The writing style and competency in English differ substantially between the reporting officers, requiring heavy editing in order to meet prescribed guidelines. A major international conglomerate which conducts investigations on its own staff worldwide has requested linguistic expertise or mediation in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. The request is to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices among authors. The company hopes that the standardized reports create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the company, the author and legal contexts, regardless of the specific case or author. The company's ultimate aim is to produce standardized documentation which employs terms, which foreseeably could be defended in court if needed. This presentation regards an in-progress case study which considers the analysis of six anonymized internal investigative reports by a major EU based multinational company. The company had requested suggestions of how it might credibly adapt the language in their reports to a legal context and how a standardized version of choices might be prescribed to agent-writers. Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents more legally resistant.

2014 - Taking Genre to the LSP Learning Environments in Italian Higher Education [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Taking Genre to the LSP Learning Environments in Higher Education Glen Michael Alessi UNIMORE -DCE Genre perspectives on LSP and building genre knowledge have been thought to be an important part of developing professional, institutional and critical literacies while encouraging the learning of and successfully participating in discursive practices across professional disciplines . The lecture hall and laboratories offer both advantages and disadvantages as academic settings for the introduction of genre analysis in LSP contexts. This paper intends to survey and critique current approaches to genre teaching and testing in the Italian university context and to propose alternative, lecture, language lab and blended-learning curriculums and activities which coordinate lecturing with applied laboratory activities. Existing practices of classic identification and analysis of genre moves and lexico-grammatical features, will be extended to real-world contexts which call for applying genre knowledge to solve problems in text-production or editing ( e.g. writing for the Web, translation, or public service notices ). This paper takes Hyland's definition of genres as 'abstract, socially recognised ways of using language'( Hyland, 2002a:114 ) , and attempts to operationalize that definition in the LSP lecturing, learning and teaching contexts in Italian university context . ( Nesi, Gardner 2012 )

2013 - The language of insurance claims adjustments: interviews or interrogations [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustment Interviews: interviews or interrogations? Glen Michael Alessi Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia Insurance adjusters in the United States act as independent third parties, interviewing accident victims in order to establish both an accurate report of events as well assess degrees of testimony reliability. The resulting information helps in determining who is at fault, and influences assigning liability for damages. Adjusters are hired by insurance companies to provide impartial expertise in accurately reporting the context, sequence, conditions and chronology of events involved in the accident. When impossible to conduct a face to face interview at the scene of the accident, interviews are conducted via telephone. The interviews follow a predictable sequence of guided semi-scripted questions on the part of the adjuster and unscripted recall on the part of the interviewee. The study here presented is based on spoken corpus of 17 taped and transcribed adjuster-victim interviews comprising 98,936 tokens . It describes the discourse features found in these assessment interviews and compares them with features found in police interrogations. Initial observations revealed highly predictable formulaic question types and sequencing of interrogatives which establish and confirm shared knowledge. Adjusters encourage spontaneous and unsolicited information through open questions only after confronting factual minimal response answers from closed questions. Open questions may elicit more detailed yet tenuous information along with unsolicited answers, contradictions, silences or corrections ; which, as in interrogations, may prove self-accusatory and influence establishing reliability of testimony and assigning fault. Interviews began with closed questions requiring minimal standardized responses. Further on, questions evolved into open questions requiring more detailed yet tenuous information, evaluation and occasional interpretation by interviewee. “ So” questions implying accusation or a presumably shared assumptions were generally used more to restate and summarize information given by the interviewee in the previous turn. The adjuster firmly manages the conversation and elicits information through careful back-channelling, topic management, turn-taking, name repetition, tags, and selection between characterisation and relational identifications or numerical and official identifications. References Buenker, Josef F. The Interpreter's Guide to the Vehicular Accident Lawsuit. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Print. Drew, Paul, and John Heritage. Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1992. Print. Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise. Professional Discourse. London: Continuum, 2009. Print. Heydon, Georgina. The Language of Police Interviewing: a Critical Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Holt, Elizabeth, and Rebecca Clift. Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. Koester, Almut. Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum, 2010. Print. Magarick, Pat. Casualty Investigation Checklists. New York, NY: C. Boardman, 1985. Print. Martin, Warren. "Warren, M. 2009. The Phraseology of Intertextuality in English for Professional Communication. Language Value 1/1: 1-16." Language Value 1.1 (2009): 1-16. Print. Pomerantz, Anita. "Descriptions in Legal Settings." Ed. Button Graham. Print. Rpt. in Talk and Social Organization. Ed. John R.E. Lee. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, 1987. 226-43. Print. Shuy, Roger W. The Language of Confession, Interrogation and Deception. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998. Print

2011 - Whose loss? Whose fault? The language of insurance claims adjustments, from interview to final report [Abstract in Atti di Convegno]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

Insurance adjusters in the United States act as independent third parties, interviewing accident victims to establish an accurate report of events and to judge whether the testimony is reliable. In this context, this work serves as an investigation of how to contextualize the language of insurance claim adjustments, in the attempt to identify areas of linguistic inquiry and to highlight the relationship between assessment interview questioning and interrogation questioning. On the basis of both an oral and a written corpus, the analysis reveals the presence of highly predictable wording, formulaic question types and sequencing of interrogatives to establish and confirm shared knowledge in the telephone interviews. In addition, data show that reporting verbs are often used in reports in order to skilfully qualify information reported in the prior sentence as being tenous. Overall, findings suggest that language use in the setting of insurance claims points to generic hybrids defining themselves somewhere between neutral business sector institutional discourse and investigative paralegal discourse.

2006 - Il Ruolo della fonologia inglese nei programmi di formazione degli insegnanti della scuola primaria [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

This paper examines the rationale behind including formal study of English Phonology in Primary EFL teacher trainee programmes. Having had insufficient formal training in English Phonology or been given little direction in how to use available sources to resolve pronunciation problems, Primary EFL teachers often lack confidence in their own pronunciation skills . This paper addresses these insecurities and proposes integrating specific areas of linguistic training in the formation of EFL Primary teachers , which is hoped will help build confidence and learner autonomy with regard to English pronunciation.

2005 - Frequently Asked Questions : Who writes them and why? [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

This paper outlines the initial steps taken to explore key linguistic and communicative features of online FAQs, as found on e-commerce websites. More specificallty, it focuses on lexical, grammatical and discourse patterns which reveal potential authorship, i.e. the customer, the company or a form of co-authorship.

2005 - Sperimentazione dei materiali prototipi [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Darby, Clare Marie
abstract

Il saggio si propone di presentare una sintesi di un progetto finalizzato all'elaborazione di materiali e metodologie finalizzati al consolidamento delle professionalità aziandali sotto il profilo delle competenze linguistiche in inglese commerciale per addetti di industrie medie e piccole.

2005 - The Use of Metadiscourse in EAP Presentations by Native Italian Speakers [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

This paper intends to explore one of the key-genres of academic discourse, i.e. research presentations. In particular, the study analyses the use of metadiscursive techniques on the part of Italian native speakers, by showing that this device contributes to a more effective organisation of information in delivering presentations.

2004 - Genre Analysis of Medicine Information Leaflets [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Alessi, Glen Michael
abstract

This study identifies generic features in medicine information leaflets and reveals insights in to how they successfully acheive their communicative tasks. It includes a comparative analysis beteen an Italian medicine information leaflet and and a comparative English leaflet, revealing how culturally both the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industries use distinctive discursive strategies when producing leaflets. It includes a brief summary of considerations in defining genre analysis is followed by detailed discussion of the corpus, methodology, pattern analysis, and conclusions .

2004 - Modulo 3 - I principi fondamentali della didattica di una lingua; le attività di apprendimento vicino al mondo dei bambini: i giochi, le canzoni, le storie e le attività di drammatizzazione [Capitolo/Saggio]
Alessi, Glen Michael; P., Taylor
abstract

Il contributo si propone di formulare una riflessione relativa alle strategie di apprendimento linguistico da parte dei bambini. Sotto questo profilo, lo studio si propone di individuare e classificare i principali canali di apprendimento qualile attività di drammatizzazione e i giochi.

1999 - Reading for Research in Psychology [Monografia/Trattato scientifico]
Alessi, Glen Michael; Garton, Susan
abstract

This Volume is for elementary and intermediate level students who are studying for a degree in Psychology. The aim is to help students to read texts in English more efficiently. This could be for research purposes, for example writing dissertations, or also in their daily work lives. Students are introduced to a variety of texts, mainly specialist or semi-specialist, and their attention is drawn to characteristics of each particular type, in terms of format, overal organisation and language. Topics covered include such issues as educational psychology, social psychology, stress, dreams and nightmares, alcoholism and eating disorders.