Abstract

Research investigating the interplay between discourse, gender and professional communication has grown rapidly over the last decade in a wide range of geographical locations. Professional communication is defined here as spoken and written communication, including all electronic forms, that takes place with at least one person occupying a professional role. Following Gunnarsson (2009: 5), ‘professional’ is defined in general terms as ‘paid-work related’, and therefore applies equally to skilled/non-skilled workers and to white-collar/blue-collar workers. ¹ Professional communication should thus be viewed as an overarching category, which incorporates more specific terms in discourse analysis research within its definition. This includes work-place discourse (Koester, 2010), business discourse (Bargiela-Chiappini et al., 2007) and institutional discourse (Sarangi and Roberts, 1999).