Representations of corporate philanthropy : a linguistic approach

This study analyses the discursive construction of philantrhopy in a selection of reports published on the British charity''s Art & Business''s website, identifying pattenrs of descripotion of corporate sponsorship of the arts and, more specifically, find linguistic and textual evidence of the way in which multiple motivations are represented and justified in reports about corporate giving. The findings suggest that the A&B reports support mode of corporate philanthropy which allows for multiple motivations and "accepts the possibility that the firm will attend both to business and society interests" (Moir/Taffler 2004: 151). This view is conveyed both by means of lexical choices - through a careful balancing of references to different stakeholder grups - and through syntactic patterns, by choosing verbal and de-verbal nouns whose role structures allow for a representation of sponsors and beneficiaries as involved in corporate philanthopy projects on a collaborative basis which is both musually and socially beneficial. The recurrence of argumentative patterns based on additive structures further supports this interpretation, as it aims to persuade potential critics of corporate philanthropy that multiple benefits are not only theoretically plausible, but have also been achieved in practice.