METHODS OF ANALYSIS

In the study, genre analysis was used to investigate email messages in their context of production and use. The methodology allows for a detailed linguistic analysis of genre exemplars, while it simultaneously accounts for the social purposes in the corporate environment in which the messages are embedded by drawing

on the users’ own views and also the overall context affecting genre use (see Miller 1984, Swales 1990, Fairclough 1992a, Yates

& Orlikowski 1992, Bhatia 1993). In the study of discourse, genre approaches are versatile as they provide the researcher with a tool kit including the methodology and the theoretical framework discussed in Chapter 2.

The way in which the corpus-based textual analysis was combined with triangulated data provided by questionnaires, an interview, the communication survey (Louhiala-Salminen 2002b), and other literary data about the company (www.storaenso.com) aimed at a Geertzian thick analysis (Geertz 1973; for a summary of the methods favored in different branches of genre study, see Yunick 1997: 325 and Hyon 1996: 696). In other words, this study aimed at an analysis of language use grounded in the knowledge of the relevant social purposes within which the texts were embedded rather than a surface-level formal analysis of the text in the messages.

As discussed in Chapter 2, genre approaches have been applied successfully to the study of goal-oriented communication as social action in business settings (Bhatia 1993, Akar 1998, Akar

& Louhiala-Salminen 1999, Rogers 2000). They have also been applied in investigations of internal email messages with a focus on native-speaker discourse (Yates & Orlikowski 1992, 2000;

Orlikowski & Yates 1994) but also on those having both native and non-native participants (see e.g. Nickerson 2000, Louhiala-Salminen 1999b for similar research settings).

The genre analysis in the present study was performed by drawing on Bhatia’s (1993: 22–36) framework for the study of unfamiliar genres. It accounts for both the discourse and context of the genres. The linguistic analysis of the primary corpus focused on the discourse on three separate levels: first, on the lexico-grammatical features and their frequency; second, on the rationale behind such features; and third, on the cognitive structure of the prospective genres by focusing on the moves in them. The specific frameworks and models used to investigate the discourse on these

three levels can be found from Table 6. For example, in addition to the analysis of the moves, the analysis of discourse was performed by comparing it to features of Involvement (Chafe 1982) and to recommended usage in business communication textbooks (Locker 1998, Bovée et al. 2003, Munter 2003).

The methods and models used in the analysis of data are presented in Table 6.

TABLE 6. Methods/models focusing on text and context used to meet the aims of the study.

Aim Focus Methods/models Methods/models

No focusing on text focusing on context

1 Organizational yFairclough’s (1992a) ySuchan & Dulek’s context of genres manifest inter- (1998) Business

textuality Communication

Systems Framework yRogers & Hildebrandt’s yQuestionnaires (a) and

(1993) Competing Values (b)

Model yInterview with one

yJohnson & Bartlett’s (1999) informant

concept of International yFocus group survey Business English

2 Communicative yContent analysis yQuestionnarie (b)

purpose and yFocus group survey

action of genres

3 Discourse features yBhatia´s linguistic analysis yQuestionnaire (b) of genres yFairclough’s (1992a) yInterview with one

manifest intertextuality informant

yFairclough’s (1992a) yFocus group survey constitutive intertextuality

yInvolvement (Chafe 1982) yComparison to business

communication textbooks (Locker 1998, Bovée et al, 2003, Munter 2003)

4 Salutations, yLinguistic analysis yQuestinnaire (a)

Closing, yInterview with one

Signatures informant

5 Requests yLinguistic analysis yQuestionnaire (b) yInterview with one

informant

While the explanation of the linguistic analysis is detailed in Bhatia’s (1993) framework, that of the analysis of context remains on a more general level. Bhatia (1993) maintains that it involves knowledge of the discourse community, their conventions, goals, practices, and beliefs as well as the situational and institutional contexts, but he does not specify the tools to perform the analysis.

To situate the email messages in their organizational context, the present study used ethnographic methods such as questionnaires to the informants, an interview with one of them, and a focus group of business practitioners. In addition, a number of frame-works and models were used to analyze the corpus in the corporate context such as Suchan & Dulek’s (1998) Business Communication Systems Framework, focusing on the context, and Rogers & Hildebrandt’s (1993) Competing Values Model, Fairclough’s (1992a) notion of intertextuality, and Johnson &

Bartlett’s (1999) concept of International Business English, focusing on the text.

Finally, triangulation was employed to illustrate the phenom-enon researched from different perspectives. In this way trian-gulation contributed to the trustworthiness of the study since the consistency of outcomes could be put to test (see e.g. Patton 2002:

247–251). For instance, data triangulation was used to meet all five aims of the study. Three data sources, for example, were used to meet aim 2, to identify the communicative purposes of and action in the messages: the email corpus, Questionnaire (b) to the informants, and the focus group survey (see Table 5 in 4.1.2). In the questionnaire, two questions were used to shed light on the purpose and action: one asking about the purpose specifically and another asking about the reaction to the message, i.e. what the informant did/would have done on receipt of the message.

In addition to data triangulation, a second evaluator, another genre analyst, provided independent analysis about the purposes and moves of some messages. Thus, the communicative purposes were identified by two genre analysts (the author and one other)

and the identification of the moves was peformed by means of linguistic analysis by the same two analysts.

Further, the identification of the features contributing to the spoken and/or written quality of the messages (see 7.1 and 7.2) was performed by means of linguistic analysis, on the one hand, and by asking the informants to comment, on the other. In this way, the outcomes from the linguistic analysis could be tested against the informants’ choices of telephone, fax, internal mail, etc. representing the traditional spoken and written media.

Looking at these data from independent vantage points was intended to enhance the credibility of the outcomes and thus reduce the “skepticism that greets singular methods, lone researchers, and single-perspective interpretations” (Patton 2002: 556). Still, there is no denying of the fact that the qualitative researcher is a lonely instrument of data analysis and is forced to rely on his/

her own interpretation skills in the particular context. No matter how good those skills may be, they are not omnipotent: when something is in clear light, something else is left in shadow.

5 SHARED CONTEXTUAL FEATURES