‘Metaphoring’ People out of this World: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Chairman’s Statement of a UK Defense Firm

Accounting Forum, Vol. 36 No. 3 (2012), pp. 178-193

38 Pages Posted: 20 May 2011 Last revised: 27 Apr 2013

See all articles by Doris M. Merkl-Davies

Doris M. Merkl-Davies

Bangor University

Veronika Koller

Lancaster University - Linguistics and English Language

Date Written: 2011

Abstract

We introduce Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an interdisciplinary approach to analysing written and spoken texts, which provides accounting researchers with a range of resources to analyze corporate narrative documents more systematically and in more detail from a linguistic perspective. CDA addresses how the content and the linguistic features of texts influence, and are in turn influenced, by the contexts of text production, distribution, reception and adaptation, and by the wider socio-economic context in which texts are embedded. We apply Fairclough’s (2003, 2006) Dialectic-Relational approach to the analysis of a chairman’s statement of a UK defence firm. The focus of analysis is on the grammatical devices used to represent organisational activities and outcomes in ways which obfuscate social agency (impersonalisation), and to evaluate social actors, entities, and social events (evaluation). We find that impersonalisation and evaluation are used strategically to guide organisational audiences’ interpretations of financial performance and to legitimise and normalise violence and destruction by depicting it in an abstract and sanitised manner.

Keywords: Corporate Communication, Impression Management, Critical Discourse Analysis, Obfuscation, Interdiscursivity

JEL Classification: M41

Suggested Citation

Merkl-Davies, Doris M. and Koller, Veronika, ‘Metaphoring’ People out of this World: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a Chairman’s Statement of a UK Defense Firm (2011). Accounting Forum, Vol. 36 No. 3 (2012), pp. 178-193, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1839174 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1839174

Doris M. Merkl-Davies (Contact Author)

Bangor University ( email )

Bangor Business School
Hen Goleg
Bangor, Wales LL57 2DG
United Kingdom
0044-1248-382120 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/business/staff/doris_merkl-davies.php.en

Veronika Koller

Lancaster University - Linguistics and English Language ( email )

Bowland College
Lancaster, LA1 4YT
United Kingdom

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