In recent years, the use of Web-mediated digital technologies has constantly grown in importance, reshaping the communication landscape in all professional activities. Web 2.0 applications and platforms have evolved dramatically, exceeding all expectations, and have had an impact on all areas of activity, from personal and social to political and economic. A crucial role in this radical transformation has been played by social media, i.e. online resources enabling users to connect, interact, and share contents. They have changed social relations profoundly on an individual level, but also in their professional dimensions, transforming the dynamics of how professionals work, share knowledge and relate to each other and to their clients. This book explores online professional blogging and networking platforms, discussing methodological issues involved in analysing webmediated professional communication in a genre- and discourse- analytical perspective, with a focus on the structural and textual properties of genres on the Internet. The discursive objects investigated include professional weblogs, and in particular law blogs, professional groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, and LinkedIn job ads. Among the aspects examined are continuity with pre-existing traditional genres, generic integrity, and the debated status of social networking sites as platform users’ communities of practice.

Giuliana Garzone is Full Professor of English, Linguistics and Translation at IULM University, Milan, where she co-ordinates the Master’s Progamme in Specialised Translation and Conference Interpreting. She formerly taught at Milan State University where she directed the PhD Programme in Linguistic, Literary and Intercultural Studies. Her research interests are mainly in ESP, which she has explored in a discourse analytical perspective, integrating it with corpus linguistics, and in Translation and Interpreting Studies. She has co-ordinated several research projects and published extensively on legal, scientific and business discourse as well as on translation and interpreting. She is co-editor-in-chief (with Paola Catenaccio) of the journal Lingue Culture Mediazioni / Languages Cultures Mediation. Her most recent publications include: “New Biomedical Practices and Discourses: Focus on Surrogacy” (2019); “The Interpreter Mediated Police Interview as Argumentative Discourse in Context: A Case-study” (2017), published in the volume Argumentation across Communities of Practice she edited with C. Ilie, and the volume Le traduzioni come fuzzy set. Percorsi teorici e applicativi (2015).

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