The Language of Business Meetings - Michael Handford

This innovative volume presents an in-depth study of the language used by participants in business meetings. The cutting-edge research draws on the Cambridge and Nottingham Business English Corpus (CANBEC), a unique resource which brings together meetings of different types both within and between companies, involving speakers whose roles and responsibilities vary, and who represent a range of nationalities and first languages. Keywords, concordance lines and discourse analysis provide thorough insights into aspects such as the structural stages of meetings, participants' discursive practices, interpersonal language and creativity, and power and constraint. The author concludes by making practical suggestions for using these findings to inform the teaching of business English.