Communicating Professions via Blog. An Applied Linguistics Approach

Document from the year 2019 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, University of Brescia, language: English, abstract: After outlining the potential of the use of professional blogs in general, the present study will focus on three separate but interconnected studies that present telling examples of their use at the service of a profession undergoing a change in image (office workers), a pioneering profession in need of validation within the scientific community and connection with potential users (media psychologists), and a highly specialised profession with a culture and lifestyle of its own for its professionals and their family members (the American military). By analysing the multimodal, textual, discursive, linguistic and rhetorical dimensions of these blogs, the study sheds light on particularities of professional online discourse and concludes by observing how the situation of these professions and blogs have developed and how they reflect trends on online discourse and in professional practices and interpersonal relationships. In today¿s highly digitalised and communicative world, information is no longer produced and presented as a product to be merely consumed. Rather, it has become a negotiated flow that is adapted based on the needs of a determined professional community of practice. This expansion has contributed to an ongoing democratising change in power of and over discourse concerning both traditional and emerging professions, as testified by the increasing use of new and social media, which have become an important tool for companies, employers and employees alike. In such a context, blogs have gradually become essential and widely accessible points of reference and knowledge dissemination for developing fields and issues and stand out as a hybrid and idiosyncratic solution within an environment self-directed discourse.