The language of Entrepreneurship (3): Creativity in language and visual communication
Release Date: 03/12/2021
Financial Communication
Words and Actions
How do you talk money without losing trust—or your audience? From quarterly earnings calls to investor pitches, the world of financial communication is a tightrope walk of clarity, persuasion, and credibility. What makes numbers sound good? When does transparent/positive become too transparent/positive? And why does jargon sometimes feel like the best financial armour? Tune in for a lively dive into the art (?) of financial storytelling—with three experts sharing plenty of insights, red flags, laughs, and a nudge to rethink your next fiscal update and/or investment, especially when your...
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Language in Business, Language at Work
Words and Actions
Wait a minute. Why does ‘corporate consultant’ sound more prestigious than ‘business consultant’? Or does it? Do they mean the same thing? How does organizational communication differ from corporate or business communication? And what topics, genres and text types should textbooks on communication in these settings tackle when the genres themselves are blended? Welcome to the challenges of three authors revising a textbook on the power of language in business(?), now turned into a podcast episode and made even more interesting with Wittgenstein and Jonathan Clifton joining the writing...
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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Language Discrimination
Words and Actions
Raves, poker nights and Marvel movies – no costs or effort were spared in this final episode on CSR to raise awareness about one of the most pervasive manifestations of discrimination: accentism. In the presence of experts, we uncover what is hidden beneath the surface, and just when we thought we would never judge someone based on the sound waves they produce, we dare(d) ourselves and you to eat the pudding… Long Notes: More information, a full transcript and academic references on wordsandactions.blog. We start episode 28 by critically reflecting on anti-discrimination efforts...
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Language awareness in the age of AI
Words and Actions
ChatGPT & company are here to stay. And so are linguists. Find out why in our exploration of the capabilities and shortcomings of generative AI and how it will affect the competences of lecturers, students and practitioners in business communication and beyond. Via tricks and tips on how to integrate these powerful text production tools in and outside the classroom, W&A once again underscores the crucial importance of language awareness and the human touch in the digital era. The discussion will take us past proper prompt engineering, output analysis, digital sweatshops and...
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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Ecolinguistics
Words and Actions
Prepare to meet some ignorant pigs and silly cows in our second episode on CSR... Together with an expert in ecolinguistics, we will explore the discursive construction of our ideology-laden relationship to nature (and animals in particular!) via the analysis of presuppositions and metaphors, going from tepid COP27 implementation plans on global heating to Chinese self-serving CSR reporting. It will become painfully clear how and why language matters and you'll find out more about your ecosomatic awareness. As always, you can find more information, references to research and a...
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The Language of Corporate Social Responsibility: Responsible Communication
Words and Actions
All good things come in threes. Or more. Add a Chief Sustainability Officer, a body positive Barbie doll, a purple inclusive M&M and an actual expert in applied ethics and you get a lively discussion on true colours, washings and genuine CSR efforts in the first episode of our new mini-series (it comes in threes) on corporate social responsibility. Have a listen and find out more, including how energy companies account for their profits and your bills via legitimisation strategies. More information about the podcast and a full...
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Selling Hard and Soft
Words and Actions
Are you one of those people who is always tricked into doing or buying things you don’t want? Do you want to find out how they do it or how to do it yourself? You’re in luck! If you listen to this episode, you will find out all about it! You will even get free access to all the other W&A episodes on language in business, politics and beyond and you’ll discover that your current annoyance and reluctance by reading this is caused by genre awareness. Do it now or regret it later! #hardselltacticsshamelesslybroughttoyoubuyW&A. The episode, as always, is accompanied by a blog...
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Language and Identity Online
Words and Actions
Your identity is a right old mess. As is ours, mind you… and don‘t get us started on Marcus Rashford! In this episode we delve into the different layers and facets of identity construction in digital space. Via small stories, solo selfies and networked narratives, we offer ways to inspect different senses of selves as they are created in online environments. The journey will take us past talking dogs, overpowering teacher personas (yes, we are talking about ourselves!) socially constructed bosses, and walking gods. And we will get started on Marcus Rashford. For...
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Language and Technology
Words and Actions
Yesterday’s sci-fi has become today’s reality. Join us as we venture our way into the ever-growing domain of Language Technology in which we discover and discuss current and future developments in speech recognition, automated literary translation, opinion mining and open domain chatbot applications. Not only do we find ourselves having cheeky chats with clever cars and critical conversations with experts, we also ponder over the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence and assess our position as linguists (and one alleged Professor of Disco Studies) in view of these...
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Translation and Interpreting When the Stakes are High
Words and Actions
We eavesdrop on police interrogations, wire-tapping and immigration interviews, and sneak on a Keolis bus (on board entertainment: The Interpreter) to explore the complex processes of translation and interpreting in high stakes contexts. Joining us are a forensic linguist, an expert in asylum seeking procedures and a researcher on multimodal translation, who illustrate the pervasive impact of translators as important decision-makers that may affect the future, safety and prosperity of people and businesses.
info_outlineIn this episode we talk about creativity in language and visual communication. We published many of the images and logos we mention on our website, http://wordsactions.blog. Here you can find the full transcript, too.
In the first part of the episode, Erika mentions the following study on how colour influences investment decisions:
Chan, C. R., & Park, H. D. (2015). How images and color in business plans influence venture investment screening decisions. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(5), 732-748.
Veronika published some of her work on the links between colour and language in this article:
Koller, V. (2008a). ‘Not just a colour’: Pink as a gender and sexuality marker in visual communication. Visual Communication, 7(4), 433-461.
Moving on to individual logos, here are the Toblerone bear and the crest of the city of Bern. Veronika’s research on city brands, including a categorisation of their logos, was published as
Koller, V. (2008b). ‘The world in one city’: Semiotic and cognitive aspects of city branding. Journal of Language and Politics, 7(3), 431-450.
We specifically mention the logos of three places where we live or were born, resp.: Ghent (Belgium), Dunaszerdahely (Slovakia) and Stroud (UK). We also discuss what changes in logos and type fonts can signalise, and Veronika mentions the case of Lancaster University, which had such a change in 2014. Some fonts can indeed elicit strong reactions, as evidenced on the website comicsanscriminal.com. The form and connotations of type fonts were theorised by Theo van Leeuwen:
van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Towards a semiotics of typography. Information Design Journal, 14(2), 139-155.
For a general interest read, try this book:
Garfield, S. (2010). Just My Type: A book about fonts. London: Profile Books.
Bernard then reveals a different side of himself when he talks about the irregular type fonts and idiosyncratic spelling used by heavy metal bands. At the end of the first part, we talk about names for a company and Erika mentions a study showing a correlation between length of a domain name and visits to a website.
In the interview, Chris Arning mentions, among other works that have influenced him:
Jakobson, R. (1981). Linguistics and poetics. In Selected Writings. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 18-51.
In the third part of the episode, we analyse linguistic creativity on the website visiticeland.com. This is not an overview website but one to be explored through interacting with it, so have a look. Erika observed that the designers seemed to have followed a model developed under the name of ‘brand linguistics’:
Carnevale, M., Luna, D., & Lerman, D. (2017). Brand linguistics: A theory-driven framework for the study of language in branding. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(2), 572-591.
The red thread for this episode has been travel. You can take a flight of fancy and read about the language and semiotics of luxury destinations here
Thurlow, C., & Jaworski, A. (2012) Elite mobilities: The semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege. Social Semiotics, 22(4), 487-516
or learn about Gosia Drewniok’s research on the language branding of luxury hotels here – happy travels and see you again for the next episode.