This research programme focuses on the study of communicative aspects of businesses’ and organisations’ international activities, broadly understood, and with related forms of professional activity in international contexts, such as those of the legal and financial professions. Language-based and multimodal texts constitute a central component of the research programme. Communication understood as dialogic activity, and the planning of communication for businesses’ international activities are also part of this research programme’s field of inquiry.
There are four overarching focal points within the research programme’s framework, and members of the research programme work within one or more of these focal points.
This focal point takes its starting point in the strategic, tactical and operational challenges in communication faced by international businesses and other types of organizations when they pursue their aims communicatively, e.g. disseminating information about who they are, and explaining and promoting their main activities, products and services. Research is therefore concerned with the narratives, dialogues and other textual and visual artefacts that construct, motivate and engage private and public organisations as well as actors in the third sector. As such, this focal point includes research across traditional and digital platforms and across linguistic and cultural boundaries within the fields of public relations, marketing communication and internal communication.
This focal point is concerned with the investigation of translation and interpretation in business contexts. Translation is understood in a broad sense, and includes localization, transcreation, subtitling and translation between genres. Research in this area explores the processes, products, contexts and actors in translation and interpreting; translation technologies and the professions of translation and interpreting are also key focal points. Research in this area has a significant practical element, and investigations and findings both focus on and are relevant for practising translators and interpreters, the users of their services and society as a whole.
This focal point is concerned with the professional, expert knowledge that serves as the basis for business and professional activities. The mental and social construction of knowledge, textual representation of knowledge and sociological contexts in which knowledge communication takes place, including knowledge asymmetries and how they are created through the construction of expertise, are key points for investigation.
This focal point is concerned with communication within the area of health with particular emphasis on written communication. Expert-lay communication, health literacy, user friendliness, patient education, computer-mediated communication, risk communication and ethics are just some of the topics that are covered.
Monthly reading group on mainly academic texts regarding how we conceive the future. For further information, contact Antoinette Fage-Butler – fage-butler@cc.au.dk.
