Doing Well by Talking Good

A Topic Modelling-Assisted Discourse Study of Corporate Social Responsibility

Dados Bibliográficos

ID22870833
AutoresJaworska (0000-0001-7465-2245, University of Reading, autor correspondente), Sylvia Jaworska, Anupam Nanda (0000-0002-3036-5890, University of Reading)
Ano2016
Páginasamw014
Data de publicação2016-06-06
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoApplied Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0142-6001 • E-ISSN: 1477-450X
EditoraOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/applin/amw014
OpenAlexW2419481308
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas23
Referências citadas41

Using the novel technique of topic modelling, this paper examines thematic patterns and their changes over time in a large corpus of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports produced in the oil sector. Whereas previous research on corporate communications has been small-scale or interested in selected lexical aspects and thematic categories identified ex ante, our approach allows for thematic patterns to emerge from the data. The analysis reveals a number of major trends and topic shifts pointing to changing practices of CSR. Nowadays ‘people’, ‘communities’, and ‘rights’ seem to be given more prominence, whereas ‘environmental protection’ appears to be less relevant. Using more established corpus-based methods, we subsequently explore two top phrases—‘human rights’ and ‘climate change’—that were identified as representative of the shifting thematic patterns. Our approach strikes a balance between the purely quantitative and qualitative methodologies and offers applied linguists new ways of exploring discourse in large collections of texts.

Corporate social responsibility · Discourse analysis · Geography · Linguistics · Political science · Public relations · Qualitative research · Scale (ratio) · Social science · Sociology · Thematic analysis · Thematic map · Thematic structure · Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition