Understanding CSR discourse : insights from linguistics and discourse analysis

Understanding CSR Discourse: Insights from Linguistics and Discourse Analysis The discourse surrounding the rise and consolidation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a business practice has been the object of increasing attention in recent years, though seldom in a linguistic perspective. This book contributes to scholarship in the field by adding to the existing literature novel insights from linguistics and discourse analysis. The volume takes a linguistic approach to the CSR discourse produced by business actors, investigating the function and positioning of CSR within their textual representations of the role of business in society. The framework for the study is discourse analytical, and rests on a view of discourse as social action which continually shapes – and is shaped by – social reality. Investigating the discursive articulation of CSR is therefore essential for an understanding of its grounding in social practice, as it can help uncover the underlying assumptions and beliefs upon which it rests and the way in which they are reinforced and reproduced in discourse. The study combines macro- and micro-levels of analysis, focusing on the functions performed by micro-level linguistic features in the discursive construction of CSR to explore the embedded structures – at discursive, rhetorical, syntactical and lexical level – constituting its conceptual scaffolding.