IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/accfor/v36y2012i3p178-193.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Metaphoring’ people out of this world: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a chairman’s statement of a UK defence firm

Author

Listed:
  • Doris M. Merkl-Davies
  • Veronika Koller

Abstract

We introduce Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an interdisciplinary approach to analysing written and spoken texts, which provides accounting researchers with a range of resources to analyse corporate narrative documents more systematically and in more detail from a linguistic perspective. CDA addresses how the content and the linguistic features of texts influence, and are in turn influenced, by the contexts of text production, distribution, reception and adaptation, and by the wider socio-economic context in which texts are embedded. We apply Fairclough’s (2003, 2006) Dialectic-Relational approach to the analysis of a chairman’s statement of a UK defence firm. The focus of analysis is on the grammatical devices used to represent organisational activities and outcomes in ways which obfuscate social agency (impersonalisation) and to evaluate social actors, entities, and social events (evaluation). We find that impersonalisation and evaluation are used strategically to guide organisational audiences’ interpretations of financial performance and to legitimise and normalise violence and destruction by depicting it in an abstract and sanitised manner.

Suggested Citation

  • Doris M. Merkl-Davies & Veronika Koller, 2012. "‘Metaphoring’ people out of this world: A Critical Discourse Analysis of a chairman’s statement of a UK defence firm," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(3), pages 178-193, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:36:y:2012:i:3:p:178-193
    DOI: 10.1016/j.accfor.2012.02.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/j.accfor.2012.02.005
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.accfor.2012.02.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yubin Qian & Ya Sun, 2021. "The Correlation Between Annual Reports’ Narratives and Business Performance: A Retrospective Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, July.
    2. Yubin Qian & Ya Sun, 2022. "Bibliometric analysis of literature on narrative discourse in corporate annual reports (1990–2019)," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 429-446, April.
    3. Beattie, Vivien, 2014. "Accounting narratives and the narrative turn in accounting research: Issues, theory, methodology, methods and a research framework," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 111-134.
    4. Huabin Wang, 2023. "Instrumentalisation of critical discourse studies: a linguistic analysis of public relations concepts in the CDS journal article abstracts (2000–2020)," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    5. Paola Vola & Lorenzo Gelmini & Lucrezia Songini, 2021. "What does the Business Model tell us about Natural Capital? Insights from African Integrated Reports," MANAGEMENT CONTROL, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2021(suppl. 1), pages 75-96.
    6. Lorenzo Gelmini & Valentina Minutiello & Patrizia Tettamanzi & Maurizio Comoli, 2021. "Rhetoric, Accounting and Accountability: COVID-19 and the Case of Italy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-21, April.
    7. Ben-Amar, Walid & Bujaki, Merridee & McConomy, Bruce & McIlkenny, Philip, 2021. "Gendering merit: How the discourse of merit in diversity disclosures supports the gendered status quo on Canadian corporate boards," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:accfor:v:36:y:2012:i:3:p:178-193. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/racc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.