The talk looks at the use of vague language in reporting social and environmental performance and impact. The issue is explored through linguistic elements (quantifiers, hedges and approximators) and rhetorical elements (with a focus on illustrations by example). These are related to reputation-building principles and key CSR issues.
The study looks at the language used to express the tension between measurable and unmeasurable elements in reporting social and environmental performance and impact. Using a small corpus of CSR reports in English, the talk looks at the issue from two points of view: linguistic (with a focus on quantifiers, adverbs of frequency, approximators and vague category identifiers) and rhetorical (with a focus on illustrations by example). Special attention is also paid to the multiplicity of social actors and stakeholders involved in the reporting of social and environmental performance and impact.Both perspectives are studied also in relation to visual elements that may offer relevant representations of data or exemplary cases. Drawing on tools of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, the analysis shows that: a) the presence of figures, quantifiers, hedges and approximators can only be interpreted in relation to their textual position, prominence and function in the rhetorical structure of the whole text; b) illustrations by example play a key role in representing social and environmental performance and impact. Attention to exemplary illustrations is shown to be in line both with common reputation-building principles and with key issues in the debate on CSR, such as leading by example and co-regulating CSR action.
