In this book, Elizabeth C. Tomlinson offers a rich analysis of the ways that rhetorical principles inform the world of work. With in-depth, engaging examples from across business, Tomlinson draws on a broad range of rhetorical scholarship including both ancient and contemporary works, as well as on select materials from management and entrepreneurship. The author shows how principles such as audience, ethos, stasis, kairos, metaphor, topoi, and visual rhetoric inform the development and survival of businesses. With extensive examples from surveys and interviews with business owners, archival trade journal data, business plans, annual reports, corporate social media, pitch competitions, ESG reporting, case studies, and business websites, Applied Business Rhetoric demonstrates how arguments can be successfully constructed across multiple business genres, and illustrates the usefulness of applied rhetoric for both building and analyzing arguments. Scholars of rhetoric, professional writing, and business communication will find this book of particular interest.

"So... eh... before I start, I would like to say a little about myself and a little about why I have chosen this theme..." "BY ALL MEANS NO! You have already started! Actually, you have jumped the gun and that is just as foolish as a musician starting to play his instrument in the wings or on his way onto the stage. There is only one start and that has to be distinct." Mette Højen does not beat about the bush when she with immaculate precision, and a twinkle in her eye points out the rhetorical bad habits of corporate life. In a simple and informal style, she shows us how you stand to gain more from your speeches, meetings and presentations by making a few rhetorical adjustments. It is plain speaking with one clear objective: maximizing the return on your allotted speaking time – or put differently maximizing your rhetorical ROI.

Business and professional communication takes place in a dynamic, ever-changing environment. How can we best help students prepare to communicate in such a challenging environment? The pedagogies of the twentieth century—lectures, quizzes, and exams—have not kept up to these new demands for student engagement. Business Communication: Rhetorical Situations supports more interactive and collaborative pedagogies to motivate students. Each chapter has two or three cases that challenge students to apply the business communication concepts they are learning to a specific set of circumstances. These cases are drawn from real-life communication situations and invite students to think through a communication situation and take action. After each case, challenges and exercises provide more opportunities for students to analyze and reflect on business documents and practice the skills discussed in the case themselves. Throughout, rhetorical concepts such as audience, genre, and purpose are central and collaboration and creativity are encouraged.

In spite of the day-to-day relevance of business communication, it remains underrepresented in standard handbooks and textbooks on applied linguistics. The present volume introduces readers to a wide variety of linguistic studies of business communication, ranging from traditional LSP approaches to contemporary discourse-based work, and from the micro-level of lexical choice to macro-level questions of language policy and culture.

The Handbook of Business Discourse is the most comprehensive overview of the field to date. It offers an accessible and authoritative introduction to a range of historical, disciplinary, methodological and cultural perspectives on business discourse and addresses many of the pressing issues facing a growing, varied and increasingly international field of research. The collection also illustrates some of the challenges of defining and delimiting a relatively recent and eclectic field of studies, including debates on the very definition of 'business discourse'. Part One includes chapters on the origins, advances and features of business discourse in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Part Two covers methodological approaches such as mediated communication, corpus linguistics, organisational discourse, multimodality, race and management communication, and rhetorical analysis. Part Three moves on to look at disciplinary perspectives such as sociology, pragmatics, gender studies, intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology and business communication. Part Four looks at cultural perspectives across a range of geographical areas including Spain, Brazil, Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam. The concluding section reflects on future developments in Europe, North America and Asia.