Abstract:
The discursive construal of purpose by means of competence in German and English corporate mission statements
The current chapter shows the results of an ongoing research project into the discursive construal of corporate identity in German and English mission statements. More specifically, it focuses on the correlation between two key concepts that are at the core of effective mission statements, viz. purpose and competence. The corpus analysis shows that the concept of competence includes at least the qualities of volition and ability, two notions which are jointly described as subject-inherent in studies on modal semantics.The data show that the notions of ability and volition are means to achieve a purpose or to solve a problem.But also other means lie at the basis of successful achievement of the purpose and the desired future position stated in a mission statement. On the same level as expressions of volition and ability these different means (or paths) towards achievement include reference to social participants.These different means towards achievement have resulted in the threefold basic typology of competence which we propose as not just (a) volition and (b) ability, but also a third category (c) social participant-related means for corporate purpose, hence social competence.The basic threefold typology and the more fine grained subclassificationhave provided us with an overall typology which formed the framework for systematic analysis of the corpus data and for answering our research question, viz. how expressions of competence support the realization of goals in mission statement texts. On a theoretical level we hope that this study may also illustrate a relevant connection between linguistic semantics, more specifically the field of modality, and a broader discourse analytical approach on the one hand and management studies on the other. On an practical level the findings and proposed typology of competence may give rise to guidelines for corporate communication practitioners in terms of contents and strategies for writing mission statement texts.
Short title: Competence as means for purpose in mission statements
Keywords: discursive construal,corporate identity, purpose, means for purpose, competence, ability, willingness/volition, subject-inherent modality, social,corporate mission statement/Leitbild, German, English.
Bio:
Dr. Birgitta Meex is a lecturerof German at the Departments of Applied Language Studies and Business Studies of Lessius University College. She is a member of the Dutch, German and Computational Linguistics Research Unitat K.U.Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven) and a member of the Departmental Research Unit of Discourse Studies at Lessius University College.She teachescourses in internal communication, grammar, oral skills and business German. Her academic research is inspired by the ambition to incorporatethe disciplines of discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. She is currently investigating corporate identity in terms ofthediscursive and grammatical construction of values and purpose in the mission statement genre.
Dr. Heidi Verplaetse is a research assistant and English lecturer at Lessius University College. She is a member of the research unit of Functional, cognitive and descriptive linguistics: English, Spanish and Typology atK.U.Leuven, and a member of the Departmental Research Unit of Discourse Studies at Lessius University College. Her current teaching includes courses on corporate and public external communication, as well as writing and translation of business texts and scientific / medical texts. Her current academic research is inspired by the ambition to integrate the fields of modal semantics and cognitive linguistics on the one hand andcorpus based research and discourse analysis on the other.