The Language of Insurance Adjustments as Paralegal communication: Accident Reports Acting as Legal Depositions

The Language of Insurance Claim Adjustment as Paralegal Communication : Accident Reports Acting as Legal Depositions. Insurance adjusters in the United States are hired as independent accident claims investigators by insurance companies to produce investigative accident reports which prove crucial in helping the insurance company determine liabilitycompensation. A written corpus of 400 adjuster-written accident reports, totalling 795,674 tokens, was examined using corpus-assisted and critical genre analyses approaches to question whether the language used in these reports might reveal features of paralegal communicative practice. The reports were seen to perform two potentially conflicting functions: first, by assembling facts and impartially narrating the events of the accident, and secondly, by interpreting and grading reliability of witness testimony. The adjuster’s choice of attributors in the reports proved crucial, when both narrating and evaluating, as carrying potential bias and indirectly assigning blame. The reports mirrored elements of conventional and standardized moves found in Bhatia’s four move legal case analysis (Bhatia: 1993), and relied heavily on lexico-grammatical and generic borrowings from investigative practices found in the disciplinary cultures and discursive procedures characteristic of legal practice and law enforcement. While the communicative purposes may appear straightforward to all parties as producing an accurate and unbiased account of events in fulfillment of a business- to -client relationship, the reports' interdiscursive and intertextual features place it within professional and organizational discourse practices which are also aimed at defending, accusing or convicting, and therefore should be more accurately viewed as constituting investigative paralegal discourse

Strategic Communication: Views on how practitioners enact discursive strategies.

Glen Michael Alessi University of Modena and Reggio Emilia - ITALY Strategic Communication: Views on how practioners enact discursive strategies. Strategic communication, as a field of study in professional and public spheres has been tagged as being a misunderstood, ambiguous, contested or neglected area of professional communication (Holltzhausen and Zerfass, 2015). Despite efforts to better define and give focus to its applications in a variety of professional contexts through conferences, academic journals such as The International Journal of Strategic Communication, online courses and monograph textbooks, each initiative appears to add to or create even further nuanced interpretations which avoid an overall unifying perspective. This study does not assume there is one exclusive top-down catagorisation of strategic communication, but wants to explore strategic communication as being sector and task specific to each practitioner, while at the same time sharing lexico-grammatical and interdiscursive strategies across disciplines. This study addresses practitioners in a variety of professional contexts to see if, how and which discursive strategies such as lexico-grammatical choices, thought to be integral to their notions of strategic communication, are realized through their discursive choices

Modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies: methodologies fro tracking language change over recent time.

This paper presents a description of the tools and methodologies employed in the novel discipline of modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies. The main instruments are a set of three ‘sister’ corpora of parallel structure and content from different moments of contemporary time, namely 1993, 2005 and 2010, along with a number of corpus interrogation tools. The methodologies are the particular techniques devised by the research team to which the author belongs (the SiBol group) for employing these interrogation tools to shed light on the various research questions treated in the paper. The first part of the paper outlines ways in which these tools and techniques can be used to track changes in the grammar, lexis and discourse practices of UK broadsheet or ‘quality’ newspapers. Given the important role of newspapers, some of these changes may well be indicative of general changes in UK written English. The second part, instead, describes a number of studies conducted by the research group into how the reporting of various social and cultural themes and issues, ranging from what is seen as a moral issue, to the rhetoric of appeals to science, to how antisemitism is debated, has developed over the time period in question. The concluding section discusses the relationship between the methodologies employed in modern diachronic corpus-assisted language studies and wider scientific research methodology. SiBol is a portmanteau of Siena and Bologna, the two universities involved in initiating the project. http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/clb

Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran Desert

Glen Michael Alessi Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert Publications addressing sustainable regional culinary systems, along with 'Real' and 'Local' food movements have sprung up all over the United States. These "Edible Communities" publications exist in localized versions as quarterly magazines and websites represented in 85 regions. They address issues of producing, preparing, serving and promoting locally sourced food. The magazines include stories, interviews, recipes and writing about heritage foods, local ecologies, farming, marketing and locally sourced foods. In the state of Arizona, two distinct 'Edible Community' publications exist: Edible Phoenix and the award-winning Edible Baja Arizona; the latter covering the greater Tucson area into northern Sonora, Mexico. These two distinct areas have distinct histories, local cultures, identities, and politics. Phoenix is regarded widely as a politically conservative, displaced 'Midwestern' city, while Tucson (the only U.S. city to be named World City of Gastronomy by UNESCO) as a city which prides itself on its pre-statehood status, progressive values, and its Hispanic and Native traditions. These distinct identities may likewise be reflected in lifestyle choices and related perspectives, discussions and language choices regarding food, cuisine, sustainability and ecological issues. This work-in-progress takes these two Edible Communities publications as its starting point in investigating the breadth and depth of discourse surrounding regional food and culinary issues. Borrowing frameworks from critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2012) and corpus-assisted discourse studies (Partington 2012), it explores how these publications may (or may not) less-knowingly reveal marked local ideologies, regional values and distinct identities through language choices when discussing locally produced food and food culture

Edible Arizona: The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert

Edible Arizona : The discourse of foodways in the Sonoran desert Publications addressing sustainable regional culinary systems, along with 'Real' and 'Local' food movements have sprung up all over the United States. These "Edible Communities" publications exist in localized versions as quarterly magazines and websites represented in 85 regions. They address issues of producing, preparing, serving and promoting locally sourced food. The magazines include stories, interviews, recipes and writing about heritage foods, local ecologies, farming, marketing and locally sourced foods. In the state of Arizona, two distinct 'Edible Community' publications exist: Edible Phoenix and the award-winning Edible Baja Arizona; the latter covering the greater Tucson area into northern Sonora, Mexico. These two distinct areas have distinct histories, local cultures, identities, and politics. Phoenix is regarded widely as a politically conservative, displaced 'Midwestern' city, while Tucson (the only U.S. city to be named World City of Gastronomy by UNESCO) as a city which prides itself on its pre-statehood status, progressive values, and its Hispanic and Native traditions. These distinct identities may likewise be reflected in lifestyle choices and related perspectives, discussions and language choices regarding food, cuisine, sustainability and ecological issues. This work-in-progress takes these two Edible Communities publications as its starting point in investigating the breadth and depth of discourse surrounding regional food and culinary issues. Borrowing frameworks from critical genre analysis (Bhatia 2012) and corpus-assisted discourse studies (Partington 2012), it explores how these publications may (or may not) less-knowingly reveal marked local ideologies, regional values and distinct identities through language choices when discussing locally produced food and food culture

Business English as a lingua franca in Chinese-Italian business negotiations: A corpus assisted case study of communicative strategies

BELF in Chinese-Italian Business Negotiations: A corpus-assisted case-study of communicative strategies. Glen Michael Alessi Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia This paper addresses issues of Business English as a Lingua Franca (BELF ) in the context of spoken and written business communications between Italian and Chinese interlocutors. The first section examines communicative strategies used in spoken BELF during negotiations between a Modena based import-marketing firm and their mainland Chinese suppliers, while the second section looks at strategies used in written correspondence , with particular regard to unsolicited Chinese "sales letters"in email format. The methodology of this case study combines, qualitative close conversation analysis (Levinson 1983/7, Handford 2010), along with from corpus-assisted analysis (CADS: Stubbs 1996, Partington 2008) and ELF interactional pragmatic perspectives (Cogo, Dewey 2012). Evaluations also included observations on intercultural ELF strategies and cross-cultural L1 strategies (Hofstede, 1991, Gesteland, 2003 and Spencer-Oatey, Xing 2008). The focus of part one is to examine how Italian and Chinese interlocutors employ spoken conventions in workplace ELF to acheive cooperation and to avoid miscommunication, and, in response to the Italian company's requests, it also attempts to point out communicative shortcomings and furnish recommendations to the Italian company on how future interaction might be improved. A corpus of 30 minutes of taped and transcribed negotiations, comprised of 787 turns with 19,140 tokens, were examined using Wordsmith Tools and Sketch Engine to isolate relevant conversational features which included: turn-taking, turn-giving, turn-keeping, starters, verbal fillers, uptakes, alerts, meta-comments, silent pauses, repetition, politeness strategies, hedging and tag questions. Results revealed conscious efforts, on the part of the Chinese participants, to establish politeness while maintaining distance and formality. The Italians used interactional strategies which often neglected distinctions between non-understanding and misunderstanding, and generally furnished far fewer supportive moves (back-channel, repetition, reformulation) while at the same time they regularly provided dispreferred response formats. References Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print. Cogo, Alessia, and Martin Dewey. Analyzing English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus- driven Investigation. London: Continuum, 2012. Print. Gesteland, Richard R. Cross-cultural Business Behavior: Marketing, Negotiating, Sourcing and Managing across Cultures. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School, 2003. Print. Hall, Edward T., and Mildred Reed. Hall. Understanding Cultural Differences:. Yarmouth: Intercultural, 1996. Print. Handford, Michael. The Language of Business Meetings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print. Hofstede, Geert H., Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print. Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Print. Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid, and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013. Print. Spencer-Oatey, Helen. Culturally Speaking: Culture, Communication and Politeness Theory. London: Continuum, 2008. Print. Stubbs, Michael. Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer-assisted Studies of Language and Culture. Oxford, OX, UK: Blackwell, 1996. Print

The language of insurance claims adjustments: interviews or interrogations

The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustment Interviews: interviews or interrogations? Glen Michael Alessi Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia Insurance adjusters in the United States act as independent third parties, interviewing accident victims in order to establish both an accurate report of events as well assess degrees of testimony reliability. The resulting information helps in determining who is at fault, and influences assigning liability for damages. Adjusters are hired by insurance companies to provide impartial expertise in accurately reporting the context, sequence, conditions and chronology of events involved in the accident. When impossible to conduct a face to face interview at the scene of the accident, interviews are conducted via telephone. The interviews follow a predictable sequence of guided semi-scripted questions on the part of the adjuster and unscripted recall on the part of the interviewee. The study here presented is based on spoken corpus of 17 taped and transcribed adjuster-victim interviews comprising 98,936 tokens . It describes the discourse features found in these assessment interviews and compares them with features found in police interrogations. Initial observations revealed highly predictable formulaic question types and sequencing of interrogatives which establish and confirm shared knowledge. Adjusters encourage spontaneous and unsolicited information through open questions only after confronting factual minimal response answers from closed questions. Open questions may elicit more detailed yet tenuous information along with unsolicited answers, contradictions, silences or corrections ; which, as in interrogations, may prove self-accusatory and influence establishing reliability of testimony and assigning fault. Interviews began with closed questions requiring minimal standardized responses. Further on, questions evolved into open questions requiring more detailed yet tenuous information, evaluation and occasional interpretation by interviewee. “ So” questions implying accusation or a presumably shared assumptions were generally used more to restate and summarize information given by the interviewee in the previous turn. The adjuster firmly manages the conversation and elicits information through careful back-channelling, topic management, turn-taking, name repetition, tags, and selection between characterisation and relational identifications or numerical and official identifications. References Buenker, Josef F. The Interpreter's Guide to the Vehicular Accident Lawsuit. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Print. Drew, Paul, and John Heritage. Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, 1992. Print. Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise. Professional Discourse. London: Continuum, 2009. Print. Heydon, Georgina. The Language of Police Interviewing: a Critical Analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print. Holt, Elizabeth, and Rebecca Clift. Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. Koester, Almut. Workplace Discourse. London: Continuum, 2010. Print. Magarick, Pat. Casualty Investigation Checklists. New York, NY: C. Boardman, 1985. Print. Martin, Warren. "Warren, M. 2009. The Phraseology of Intertextuality in English for Professional Communication. Language Value 1/1: 1-16." Language Value 1.1 (2009): 1-16. Print. Pomerantz, Anita. "Descriptions in Legal Settings." Ed. Button Graham. Print. Rpt. in Talk and Social Organization. Ed. John R.E. Lee. Vol. 1. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, 1987. 226-43. Print. Shuy, Roger W. The Language of Confession, Interrogation and Deception. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998. Prin

Whose loss? Whose fault? The language of insurance claims adjustments, from interview to final report

Insurance adjusters in the United States act as independent third parties, interviewing accident victims to establish an accurate report of events and to judge whether the testimony is reliable. In this context, this work serves as an investigation of how to contextualize the language of insurance claim adjustments, in the attempt to identify areas of linguistic inquiry and to highlight the relationship between assessment interview questioning and interrogation questioning. On the basis of both an oral and a written corpus, the analysis reveals the presence of highly predictable wording, formulaic question types and sequencing of interrogatives to establish and confirm shared knowledge in the telephone interviews. In addition, data show that reporting verbs are often used in reports in order to skilfully qualify information reported in the prior sentence as being tenous. Overall, findings suggest that language use in the setting of insurance claims points to generic hybrids defining themselves somewhere between neutral business sector institutional discourse and investigative paralegal discourse

Standardizing the Language of Corporate Internal Investigative Reports: Linguistic Perspectives on Professional Writing practices.

Drawing on Bhatia's (2008) notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, this study examines generic and lexico-grammatical features found in a corpus of anonymised internal investigative reports produced by a large multinational company. It considers how insights gained from genre analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Partington 2008, 2013; Alessi 2013 ) may furnish the company with future recommendations in fine-tuning these reports for a previously unaccounted for external readership by lawyers and paralegals. On a more general scale, my interests attempt to illustrate how academic research findings, based on the study of existing communicative practices, might better inform, improve and shape future professional practice. My study addresses reports produced by a large multinational corporation, which conducts internal investigations regarding problematic employee behaviour, such as misconduct, accidents, theft, complaints, and issues of compliance. These reports are based on investigator-employee interviews, which were intended only for internal use only. They may however be unexpectedly required, at a future date, for legal purposes such as in litigation cases between an employee and the company. The company involved, expressed interest in employing external linguistic expertise - or mediation - in examining how individual reporting could be best standardized, in order to avoid detailed editing and re-writing. In an effort to establish more uniform lexical and grammatical choices amongst authors, the company hopes that the reports might create higher degrees of shared certainty and more objective evaluation of the circumstances between the various cases and investigators. A principle aim is to produce standardized documentation, which foreseeably could be better defended in court. In linguistic terms, the company is intent on imposing register variation and re-contextualizing language of these internal reports in order to create documentation, which can be legally defended while using English as a Lingua Franca. Corpus-assisted and genre-based approaches, together with Sketch Engine applications, will provide input into describing current report macrostructure, lexico-grammatical choices, and what suggestions can be made to standardize and render reports written by international agents legally resistant. Particular attention is given to prescribing choice of reporting verbs, contents and moves of the executive summary, vague versus explicit language, expressing factuality and allegations. References Alessi, Glen M. "The Language of Insurance Claims Adjustments: Interviews or Interrogations?" Three Waves of Globalization: Winds of Change in Professional, Institutional and Academic Genres. Ed. Franca Poppi and Winnie Cheng. [S.l.]: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2013. 23-36. Print. Bhatia, V. "Genre Analysis, ESP and Professional Practice." English for Specific Purposes 27.2 (2008): 161-74 Partington Alan. 2008. The armchair and the machine: Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies, in Carol Taylor Torsello, Katherine Ackerley, Erik Castello (eds) Corpora for University Language Teachers, Bern: Peter Lang, 189-213. Partington, Alan, Alison Duguid & Charlotte Taylor. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and practice in corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins