Handbook of Business Communication

Nina Janich

3Genres in the business context: An introduction

1.Introduction: State of the Art

2.From language to communicative practices and their ordering

3.Communicative practices in business: Linguistic perspectives and issues

4.Business communication as profession

5.Conclusion

1Introduction: State of the Art

Business activity is, in general, constituted through language.1 All production processes are organized and mediated through language. Language – in both its written and spoken forms – must therefore be viewed as central to any work carried out in a business context. As has already been shown in Müller and Kieser (2002), this fact has given rise to highly diverse genres in business communication, among other things.

Written forms of communication ...