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Professional Discourse
Continuum Discourse Series
Series Editor: Professor Ken Hyland, Institute of Education, University of London.
Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in the

humanities and social sciences as it concerns the ways language mediates and shapes
our interactions with each other and with the social, political and cultural formations
of our society. The Continuum Discourse Series aims to capture the fast-developing
interest in discourse to provide students, new and experienced teachers and research-
ers in applied linguistics, ELT and English language with an essential bookshelf. Each
book deals with a core topic in discourse studies to give an in-depth, structured and
readable introduction to an aspect of the way language in used in real life.
Other titles in the series (forthcoming):
Academic Discourse
Ken Hyland
Metadiscourse: Exploring Interaction in Writing
Ken Hyland
Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis
Paul Baker
Discourse Analysis: An Introduction
Brian Paltridge
Spoken Discourse: An Introduction
Helen de Silva Joyce and Diana Slade
Media Discourse
Joanna Thornborrow
School Discourse
Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling
Frances Christie and Beverly Derewianka
Britt-Louise Gunnarsson
Britt-Louise Gunnarsson
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane,
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038
© Britt-Louise Gunnarsson 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, record-
ing, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writ-
ing from the publishers.
Britt-Louise Gunnarsson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-9213-5 (hardback)

978-0-8264-9251-7 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Publisher has applied for CIP data.
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books, Cornwall
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Introducing the topic and the book 3
1.1 Why is it important to analyse professional discourse? 3
1.2 What is professional discourse? 5
1.3 What distinguishes professional discourse from
other types of discourse? 5
1.4 What is the purpose of the book? 11
1.5 How is the book organized? 12
2. A theoretical model for contextual analysis of professional discourse 16

2.1 The construction of professional discourse 16
2.2 The contextual dependence of professional discourse 20
2.3 Model for the contextual reconstruction of
professional discourse 26
2.4 Conclusions 27
3. Methodology to explore the dynamic relationship between

text and context 29
3.1 Cognitive analysis 30
3.2 Pragmatic analysis 38
3.3 Macrothematic analysis 43
3.4 Conclusions 49
SECTION 2: SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE

4. The socio-historical construction of medical discourse 55
4.1 A constructivist approach to medical discourse 55
4.2 Excerpts from medical articles from different periods 57
4.3 Stages in the development of medical science 61
4.4 Scientificality in medical articles from 1730 to 1985 62
4.5 The relationship between text and context for
scientific medical writing 69
4.6 Conclusions 70
5. Non-verbal representation in articles within technology,

medicine and economics 72
5.1 Theoretical background 72
5.2 Non-verbal representation in scientific articles 74
5.3 Discussion 79
5.4 Conclusions 80
Contents
6. From a national to an international writing community:

The case of economics in Sweden 81
6.1 The Swedish economics community over three centuries 82
6.2 The change from a journal in Swedish to a journal in English 84
6.3 Homogenization of article patterns 88
6.4 Discussion 91
6.5 Conclusions 94
SECTION 3: LEGISLATIVE DISCOURSE

7. The functional comprehensibility of legislative texts 99
7.1 Comprehension and comprehensibility 99
7.2 Pilot studies 103
7.3 Pragmatic analysis of legislative texts 104
7.4 Law-texts for different functions 108
7.5 Schema for function-centred analysis of laws 109
7.6 The alternative law-text 111
7.7 Test on functional comprehensibility 114
7.8 Discussion 121
7.9 Conclusions 122
8. The legislative writing process 123

8.1 Introduction 124
8.2 Societal constraints on lawmaking 126
8.3 The case of Swedish lawmaking 130
8.4 The legal writing process 132
8.5 The process and its product 137
8.6 Conclusions 141
SECTION 4: WORKPLACE DISCOURSE

9. Communication at work: A sociolinguistic perspective on
workplace discourse 145
9.1 A sociolinguistic framework 145
9.2 Communication in a local government office 151
9.3 Conclusions 170
10. The multilingual workplace: Discourse in a hospital and

a large company 173
10.1 Theoretical approaches 174
10.2 Presentation of the research project 177
10.3 The organizational structure of text and talk at work 179
10.4 Workplace languages 181
10.5 Foreign language users at work 183
10.6 Workplace interaction from a diversity perspective 188
10.7 Conclusions 191
vi
Contents
SECTION 5: DISCOURSE IN LARGE

BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
11. The multilayered structure of enterprise discourse:
The case of banks and structural engineering firms 195
11.1 The sociolinguistic order of communication in
a close-knit working group 196
11.2 A model of communication in large enterprises 197
11.3 Presentation of the research project 199
11.4 Discourse in European banks and
structural engineering companies 200
11.5 The construction of an ‘organizational self’:
The case of European banks 208
12. Business discourse in the globalized economy:

A diversity perspective on company websites 220
12.1 The construction of an ‘organizational self’ on the internet 221
12.2 The balance between local and global concerns 222
12.3 The balance between economic concerns and
social/societal values 224
12.4 Discussion 233
SECTION 6: CONCLUSIONS
13. Professional discourse in the twenty-first century 239
13.1 Professional discourse in different domains 239
13.2 Large organizations in the twenty-first century 241
13.3 The multilingual workplace 244
13.4 Workplace discourse in the ‘new work order’ 249
13.5 Topics for future research 251
References 255
Index 267
vii
Acknowledgements
This book results from a long-lasting and great research interest of

mine in professional discourse. Over the years I have explored text
and talk in various professional contexts and carried out several stud-
ies, both at Stockholm University and Uppsala University. Students
and colleagues have been involved in many of the research projects
which I have directed at these universities. I have not space to enu-
merate all persons in these project teams nor to list all those scholars
in different parts of the world with whom I have had inspiring con-
versation and correspondence. Throughout the book, however, their
names will appear in the text and in references.
A few names, however, should be acknowledged on this page. First
I would like to express my appreciation to Ken Hyland for inviting me
to write this book in Continuum Discourse Series. I am also grateful to
David Jones for correcting my English and to Marco Bianchi for help-
ing me with the figures and tables. Finally, my thanks go to Elving
Gunnarsson for his constructive comments on the book in draft form
and for his constant support and encouragement.
viii
Section 1
Introduction
This introductory section comprises three chapters. In Chapter 1, I set

out to answer a number of questions related to the topic of ‘professional
discourse’ and to this book in particular: Why is it important to ana-
lyse professional discourse? What is professional discourse? What dis-
tinguishes professional discourse from other types of discourse? What
is the purpose of this book? How is the book organized? I distinguish
six set of features which are more characteristic of professional than
non-professional discourse, e.g. that professional discourse is formed
in a socially ordered group, dependent on various societal framework
systems and dynamically changing.
These more general ideas about the topic are developed in Chapter 2
with a description of my theory of the contextual construction and
reconstruction of professional discourse. The construction of profes-
sional language is explored in relation to cognitive, social and societal
dimensions and its continuous reconstruction in relation to different
contextual layers: the situated frame, the environmental framework
and four societal frameworks. This theoretical model offers deeper
understanding of how – and why – professional discourse in differ-
ent domains and for different purposes varies and changes. It is the
basis of the contextual analysis of the empirical studies discussed in
this book.
In Chapter 3, I present a multidimensional, textlinguistic method-
ology which explores the dynamic relationship between text and dis-
course. A central tenet developed throughout the book concerns the
dual relationship between professional discourse and its contextual
frameworks. This relationship entails a two-sided complexity, which
means that discourse, i.e. professional text and talk, should also be
analysed at different levels and in relation to different types of lin-
guistic patterns. The multidimensional methodology, which exam-
ines texts at cognitive, pragmatic and macro-thematic levels, enables
in-depth analysis of diachronic and synchronic variation and change.
It has been applied to large corpora and in several studies, some of
which will be discussed in this book.
1
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1 Introducing the topic and
the book
Why is it important to analyse professional discourse? What is pro-

fessional discourse? What distinguishes professional discourse from
other types of discourse? What is the purpose of this book? How is the
book organized? In the first chapter of the book, I set out to answer
these questions, thus introducing the reader to the topic ‘professional
discourse’ and to this book in particular.
1.1 Why is it important to analyse

professional discourse?
Professional discourse plays a great role in modern society. It lies at the
heart of the business world and the state. It is discourse that enables the
creation and maintenance of organizations and institutions as groups
working for common goals. Discourse is also important in the develop-
ment of an open and productive internal workplace climate and for the
establishment of positive external relationships with those outside the
group. Good contacts with clients and customers, owners and partners,
mass media, government officials and politicians are of great import-
ance for the survival of any professional group, and written and spoken
discourse forms the core of a great deal of professional activity.
Written texts, spoken discourse and various forms of non-verbal
communication have all played essential parts in the (historical) cre-
ation of professional practices, and they continuously contribute to
the gradual reproduction and reshaping of these practices. Though the
processes are as old as the professions, the interest in the understand-
ing of the dynamics of professional discourse is quite new and grow-
ing among researchers as well as practitioners.
Probably due to the ongoing differentiation and specialization of pro-
fessions, more and more people are becoming aware of the importance of
effective communication between organizations and individuals in busi-
ness and government. Not only do the old academic professions, such as
lawyers and doctors, rely heavily on writing and speaking skills, but lan-
guage has become one of the most important tools in most working-life
contexts. Meetings, negotiations and conferences have become the
3
cornerstones of contacts between professionals and between profes-

sionals and lay people. In the majority of cases, these spoken events are
intertwined with, preceded and followed by writing practices, leading
to an abundant production of memos, reports, contracts, proceedings,
etc. The most recent technological advance has also created new forms
of communication, leading to increased demands on the communicative
competence of the individual. The internet is used to spread informa-
tion to large reader groups and also for more individualized interaction.
Emails, telephone calls, text messages are used for person-to-person con-
tacts, in many cases with professionals attached to call or service centres
remote from the organizations that employ them and from the individu-
als they communicate with. The ongoing globalization of professional
life has also led to increased demands on language knowledge and lan-
guage skills as well as cultural openness. Contacts over language and
cultural borders are a common phenomenon in large organizations and
institutions. Many people’s professional activities consist of an intricate
interaction between people and advanced technical equipment and sys-
tems. It is also frequent for professionals to need to use several different
languages during a working day.
There is without doubt a growing demand among practitioners
for increased knowledge about professional discourse in real life.
Organizations and institutions have become aware of the importance
of efficient and adequate communication, which means that they
increasingly require specialized language and communication skills.
We therefore find more and more cross-disciplinary programmes,
courses, workshops and conferences that focus on problems related to
discourse in the professions. For teachers and trainers this has of course
also led to the demand for more knowledge about discourse in authentic
working-life situations. General knowledge and skills no longer suffice
to handle the complexity of discourse in a globalized working life.
The growing interest among practitioners is also reflected among
researchers. During the last few decades, therefore, we find a steady
increase in studies of specialized language and professional dis-
course. We also find a gradual shift in focus, from a mainly linguistic
analysis of language variation to a multidisciplinary analysis of the
dynamic and context dependent character of professional language
and discourse. Discourse in real life occurs in situated professional
events, which in turn take place in a complex set of contextual frame-
works. In order to understand how professional discourse is created
and recreated in real life, we must use a multidisciplinary approach
to combine our linguistic analysis with knowledge from sociology,
social constructivism, cognitive psychology, organization theory, and
management and media studies.
4
Introducing the Topic and the Book
Professional discourse has thus become an important area within

applied linguistics. The study of discourse in authentic professional
settings has made it necessary to further develop earlier theories and
methodologies. The close relationship between discourse and context
in professional settings, which means that professional discourse is
situated and dynamic in a way that it is possible to explore, has led
to new theoretical insights about language in general as well. Studies
of professional discourse have therefore led to new knowledge about
how professional life functions and also about how language works in
different situations and contexts.
1.2 What is professional discourse?

The term professional discourse will be used in this book to cover
text and talk – and the intertwinement of these modalities – in profes-
sional contexts and for professional purposes. This means that profes-
sional discourse includes written texts produced by professionals and
intended for other professionals with the same or different expertise,
for semi-professionals, i.e. learners, or for non-professionals, i.e. lay
people. It also means that it includes talk involving at least one profes-
sional. Professional will here be used in a wide sense, e.g. as a syno-
nym to ‘paid-work related’. The term will thus cover both unskilled
and skilled paid jobs, i.e. both cleaners and doctors who work in a
hospital, both white and blue colour staff in a factory etc.
1.3 What distinguishes professional

discourse from other types of discourse?
Let us look a little closer at what professional discourse is. Fully aware
of the fact that it is impossible to draw a clear-cut borderline between
professional discourse and other types of discourse, I will here dis-
tinguish a set of features which more characterize professional than
non-professional discourse. The following features will be discussed:
(1) Expert discourse related to different domains, (2) Goal-oriented, sit-
uated discourse, (3) Conventionalized form of discourse, (4) Discourse
in a socially ordered group, (5) Discourse dependent on various soci-
etal framework systems, and (6) Dynamically changing discourse.
1.3.1 Expert discourse related to different domains

Professional discourse plays an important role in the construction
of knowledge related to the domain, and the language and discourse
used by professionals within a field reflect their expert knowledge
5
and skills and therefore distinguishes them from experts within other
fields as well as from non-experts and learners.
The expert character of professional discourse distinguishes it from
private discourse, which we gradually learn from the time we are
born. Whether we come to learn English, German, French or Swedish
depends on whether we grow up in England, Germany, France or
Sweden. Private discourse belongs to everyone in a language com-
munity, while professional discourse is owned by the members of a
specific group, a specific discourse community. If we choose a special-
ized education and working-life career we will be taught a particular
expert language and discourse, which means that we will gradually
be socialized into a particular professional community. Private dis-
course is mainly learnt unconsciously whereas professional discourse
is taught to us as part of our professional or vocational training.
Professional activities entail domain-specific knowledge and skills
which are created by – and reflected in – language and discourse.
Terminology, text genres, conversation patterns vary from domain to
domain. Interesting research questions are therefore how different
professional languages have emerged, why they became different, and
how and why they have changed over time.
1.3.2 Goal-oriented, situated discourse

Professional discourse is goal-oriented. From a pragmatic perspective,
all types of discourse can be analysed in relation to ‘goal’. For profes-
sional discourse, however, this goal-orientation is often explicit, not
seldom specified in documents.
A professional environment (a working group/an organization/an
institution) is held together by a set of common goals, often specified in
documents, e.g. in annual reports, mission statements, goals and strat-
egies booklets, contracts, instructions, etc. For different professions and
trades we often find job descriptions and the like.
The explicit goals are often related to actions leading to concrete
results. Hospitals are supposed to cure patients who are ill, which
means that the doctor should examine the patient and prescribe medi-
cine. Courts are supposed to see that justice is done, which means that
the public prosecutor should question the accused, the judge should
impose a penalty, etc.
Professional discourse is also to a large extent explicitly situated.
Most professional discourse takes place in situations which are speci-
fied in terms of communicative event, participants and place. This does
not mean that all professional discourse is related to one particular type
of situation. It means instead that each group/organization/institution
6
establishes a set of goal-oriented professional situations and these include

who communicates with whom, how and where.
Professional discourse can occur in different types of communi-
cative events involving different constellations of participants: sin-
gle person communicative events (individual writing and reading),
two-person events (face to face interaction, written dialogues: letter
exchange, emails, chat) and group events (small group meetings, writ-
ten group correspondence, collaborative writing, collaborative pres-
entations, discussions, large group meetings, debates). It includes both
communicative events in which all participants are in the same room
as well as communication at a distance, via telephone, internet, video,
mail, etc.
Of course, specialized, goal-oriented situated discourse can also,
and not infrequently does, lead to asymmetries between the partici-
pants in the event: between experts and lay people, between experts
and learners, between experts in different areas. Asymmetries have
been analysed in many studies within applied linguistics, in particular
asymmetries which cause comprehension problems, e.g. in communi-
cation between experts and lay people. In order to explore comprehen-
sion problems related to knowledge gaps, different types of data have
been analysed, e.g. spoken interaction between doctors and patients
in hospitals, interaction between judges and witnesses in courts, lay
persons’ reading and comprehension of legislative texts.
1.3.3 Conventionalized form of discourse

Another feature I wish to mention here relates to the conventional-
ized form of professional discourse. Practices established within a
profession are created to attain professional goals in specific situa-
tions, which means that they become strongly conventionalized. The
doctor-patient interaction, for instance, follows an established pattern:
the doctor greets the patient, asks what is wrong with the patient, asks
the patient to lie down for examination, etc.
The fact that professional discourse is conventionalized distin-
guishes one professional group from another; we do not expect a judge
to use the same type of discourse as a salesperson. The conventional-
ized feature is also part of what distinguishes professional discourse
from private discourse; we do not expect judges to talk in court in
the same way as they do when they chat with their friends over a
cup of coffee. The conventionalized form of professional discourse
also makes it possible to teach students, and indeed also for students
to learn, how to communicate in a professionally appropriate way:
among other things, education at universities/colleges and training at
7
work have the goals of socializing the students or trainees in a suitable

communicative behaviour. We can talk about a professional commu-
nicative competence which entails being able to distinguish a pro-
fessional from a non-professional through their spoken and written
discourse.
1.3.4 Discourse in a socially ordered group

Professional discourse is often a part of a socially organized and
structured set of activities within a workplace unit. The social order
within the particular workplace is created and recreated in the vari-
ous communicative situations, i.e. social patterns related to power,
dominance, friendship and group feeling form a part of the commu-
nicative order at work. The social and communicative orders are thus
intertwined.
Small group structures are established at different levels within an
organization: there is a social group structure among those who are
attached to the top level of the organization as well as among those
who work on the factory floor. The various groups and structures are
also interrelated and interdependent. The small, close-knit working
group is related to other working groups and also dependent on the
other levels within the organization, e.g. on the larger workplace, on
the organization as a whole, on cooperation.
The social structure entails different problem areas related to the
internal communicative structure and discourse flow. Within organi-
zations, for instance, the top-level managers need to find an appropri-
ate discourse for direction of the organization; middle managers need
to find ways to lead and communicate with their working groups, and
employees need to develop their communication skills to be able to
obtain influence over what they do.
Much professional discourse is the result of collaboration between
professionals within the working group, between professionals
from different working groups and from different levels within an
organization. Professional discourse is therefore to a large extent
a collective responsibility and behind many products we find sus-
tained, collective processes, e.g. the writing of an important docu-
ment, the creation of advertisement campaign, the planning of a press
conference, etc.
1.3.5 Discourse dependent on various societal framework systems

What also characterizes professional discourse is its dependence
on various societal framework systems. I will here distinguish four
8
framework systems: a legal-societal framework, a technical-economical

framework, a socio-cultural framework and a linguistic framework.
Beginning with the legal-political framework, I will focus on the
fact that specific genres are attached to specific professional activities
in specific situations, which often also entails conventionalized dis-
course patterns. In some cases these patterns are a result of internal
regulations, i.e. rules controlling discourse have been issued by a
board attached to the profession, the organization, the workplace, etc.
In many cases, however, these patterns emanate from external regu-
lations. The local government, the state, the superstate impose laws
and other types of regulations on professional activities and on pro-
fessional discourse. We find, for instance, that many documents are
produced as a result of such external regulations – annual reports,
mission statements, contracts, anti-discrimination plans – and also
many spoken events – annual general meetings, press information,
hearings, etc.
Turning next to the technical-economical framework, I will claim
that technology and technological advances are important for the
dynamism within organizations of various kinds, as are the economy
and economically driven changes. Professional life concerns the pro-
duction of goods and services and finding markets for them. Product
development, company mergers and workforce mobility create a frame-
work which force organizations to develop a competitive and flexible
structure, also in relation to communication.
The third framework, I wish to focus on is the socio-cultural frame-
work. Cultural patterns, attitudes and social values are also essential
aspects of communication in the professions. It is by means of dis-
course that socio-cultural frameworks are formed, at the same time
as these frameworks are reconstructed over and over again in actual
communication. Although we still find professional organizations
which could be described as socially homogeneous and monocul-
tural, social diversity and multiculturalism are more characteristic
of organizations today. Furthermore, as many organizations wish to
be distinguished by a specific culture and social ideas, professional
discourse is often sustained in a complex socio-cultural framework
system, where national and local frameworks are intertwined and
interdependent.
The fourth framework which I claim is important for professional
discourse is the linguistic framework. Every communicative event
is also related to one or several languages. What characterizes pro-
fessional discourse is the role played by the organization’s language
choice and language policy for work-related communication. There are
indeed workplaces which are monolingual, i.e. where all employees
9
can use their mother tongue at work. Throughout the world, however,
we probably find more workplaces which are multilingual in terms
of their workforce, where some employees cannot use their mother
tongue at work and where some have little knowledge of the majority
language at work. As large organizations often choose a global lan-
guage as their corporate language, various linguistic frameworks are
often intertwined in professional communicative events.
1.3.6 Dynamically changing discourse

The use of professional language and discourse is of ancient origin,
stemming from the human need to adapt language to suit different
types of activities. Consequently professionals have always created
appropriate linguistic terminology, expressions and textual patterns
to enable performance of the tasks assigned to them. From the point
of view of our discussion here, what is relevant, however, is how and
why professional discourses change from time to time.
Looking back a few hundred years we find that the language and dis-
course used by many professional groups have undergone changes in
relation to purpose, content and language as well as to linguistic form
and patterns. There have been variations in what knowledge is relevant
and which skills are required for professionals within a domain over
time. Changes are also related to the labour market so that some profes-
sional groups have become larger while others have dwindled or disap-
peared and some professional groups have enhanced the extent of their
domain while others have given ground. Political changes are indeed
also related to professional discourse. The establishment of new states
and superstates often has consequences for professionals who even
may have to use another language. Internationalization and globaliza-
tion also affect professional discourse as do technological advances.
Borders between states and cultures are being eliminated in today’s
professional world, which means that questions like who owns and
directs activities, who works in a particular organization, who is
interested in the products and services offered, etc. find different
answers from time to time. The organization and its communicative
patterns have to be structured in a way that makes change possible
and the employees have to be flexible and able to learn and relearn.
The ongoing globalization and technologization of professional dis-
course means that the relationship between near and distant, and now
and then, is transformed. New jobs and new professions are created
and this raises the communication skills and flexibility required of
the individual. The rapid changes are also reflected in instability and
in the necessity to build up new forms of social organization.
10
In today’s professional world we find an increasing number of glo-

bal organizations which operate in different countries and which use
different languages for their communication, with both customers and
clients and with employees, partners and shareholders. Information
about the organization, its products and services need to be presented
in several languages and for audiences with different cultural affilia-
tions so that organizations experience an increased need for transla-
tion, interpretation and parallel writing in different languages.
The ongoing globalization of the economy has also led to a global
job market and increased workforce mobility. All over the world we
find multilingual and multicultural workplaces. Many large, trans-
national organizations have chosen a cooperative language, not sel-
dom English. English does not, however, work as a lingua franca in
large parts of the world (in South America, the Middle East, Asia and
Africa). It is also a fact that the use of English as a corporate language
often creates a social divide between the top managers and the ordin-
ary employees even in countries which teach English as the first for-
eign language. Multilinguality and multiculturality are thus issues
that have to be handled by large organizations and institutions. They
need to create policies on language and diversity issues in relation to
the board, managers and employees.
1.4 What is the purpose of the book?

The purpose of the book Professional Discourse is to explore text
and talk occurring in different environments in order to deepen our
understanding of what professional discourse is, how it varies and
why it changes. A central tenet elaborated in the different chapters of
the book is the dual relationship between professional discourse and
its contextual framework. This relationship is analysed as a two-sided
complexity, i.e. as both a discourse-related and context-related com-
plexity. As I will claim in this book, an in-depth analysis of variation
and change should explore this two-sided complexity and also the
dynamic character of professional discourse, how professional lan-
guage and discourse is continuously contextually reconstructed.
The book gives a broad and multifaceted perspective on discourse
in the professions, including law, business, medicine, science and the
academic settings, technology and bureaucracy. The case studies pre-
sented are based on authentic texts and spoken data, collected within
different environments and relating to different domains. The aim
of each section is to offer theoretically grounded and systematically
investigated answers to questions of relevance for advanced learn-
ers, practitioners and academic scholars. Each section will therefore
11
include discussions of both theory and methodology to provide tools

for applications and further studies.
In comparison to the majority of earlier studies on professional lan-
guage and discourse, the studies presented in this book are totally
innovative in their theoretically grounded and systematically under-
taken analysis of authentic data (cf. overview in Gunnarsson, 2008).
The theoretical basis of the case studies dealt with in this book derives
from a range of disciplines: textlinguistics, pragmatics, genre studies,
sociolinguistics, interactional sociolinguistics and sociology, psycho-
linguistics and cognitive psychology.
What all sections share, however, is the discussion of linguistic
variables in relation to psychological, social and societal variables.
Professional language and discourse are viewed as being constructed
and reconstructed in relation to a system of contextual frameworks.
As this book shows, we reach a deeper understanding of the emergence,
development and constant change of professional discourse, if we dis-
cuss our findings in relation to contexts at different levels: the situated
communicative event, the environmental framework (the workplace,
the organization/the discipline) and the societal frameworks (the legal-
political, the technical-economical, the socio-cultural and the linguis-
tic frameworks).
Another factor common to the studies is that they all are based on
detailed analysis of linguistic data. The book therefore develops and
discusses applications of different methodologies: textlinguistic ana-
lysis of large corpora, concordance analysis, function-oriented text
analysis, psycholinguistic experiments, ethnographic observations,
interviews and discourse analysis.
Furthermore, several chapters focus on how and why professional
discourse has changed over time and how it is likely to change in the
future. One purpose of the book is thus to explore the dynamic and
complex socio-historical reconstruction of professional discourse.
1.5 How is the book organized?

The book starts off with three introductory chapters. After this first
chapter, the following two chapters present the main theoretical and
methodological approaches of the book. In Chapter 2, I develop my the-
oretical model for contextual analysis of professional discourse. The
construction of professional language is explored in relation to differ-
ent dimensions – cognitive, social and societal – and its continuous
reconstruction in relation to different contextual layers – the situated
frame, the environmental framework and the four societal frameworks.
This theoretical model is the basis of the contextual analysis in the
12
various empirical studies discussed in this book. Chapter 3 presents

a multidimensional, textlinguistic methodology. This methodology,
which explores the dynamic relationship between text and discourse,
has been applied to several large corpora. It examines texts at cogni-
tive, pragmatic and macrothematic levels, thus making possible an in-
depth analysis of diachronic and synchronic variation and change.
These introductory chapters are followed by four thematically
organized sections on Scientific discourse, Legislative discourse,
Workplace discourse and Discourse in large business organizations.
The section on ‘Scientific discourse’ comprises three chapters on
the emergence and development of academic writing within differ-
ent domains. Chapter 4 concerns the socio-historical construction of
medical discourse. Medical articles from three centuries – the eight-
eenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries – are analysed and dis-
cussed in relation to a pre-establishment stage, an establishing stage
and a specialized stage. The multidimensional methodology is here
used to analyse changes in text patterns at cognitive, pragmatic and
macro-structural levels. The chapter also discusses changes in lin-
guistic expressions of evaluation over time. In Chapter 5 my analysis
concerns non-verbal representation in 90 scientific articles within
technology, medicine and economics from 1730 to 1985. This chap-
ter also concerns the construction of scientific discourse, in this case
with a focus on graphic representation, formulas and tables. Chapter 6
views the development of the academic writing of economists from the
perspective of internationalization and globalization. I analyse how
textual patterns changed when what was originally a national jour-
nal of economics switched language from Swedish to English lingua
franca and became an international journal with a global readership.
My analysis focuses on the design of the journal, the general outline
of its articles and the gradual changes in journal and article patterns.
The development is discussed from the perspectives of the national
scientific and linguistic communities.
The second thematically organized section is on ‘Legislative
discourse’. Legislative texts are used for a discussion of the goal-
orientation and situatedness of professional discourse. I analyse the
communicative processes attached to laws and their varied use from
different perspectives: a function-oriented, or pragmatic, perspective,
a psycholinguistic perspective and a sociolinguistic one. In Chapter 7,
I present a theory of the functional comprehensibility of legislative
texts and discuss the results of an experiment designed to test this
theory. A model of law-text reading and comprehension is developed,
which systematically analyses the context base of the law from the
point of view of the citizen’s use of the text. An alternative law-text
13
was written based on this model. Reading and comprehension of laws

relate to the more general issue of asymmetries between expert and
lay discourse, and this experiment points to a way of improving legis-
lative texts as well as other types of official documents. Chapter 8
explores the drafting of legislative texts from a combined cognitive-
rhetorical and sociolinguistic perspective. Problems of law-text com-
prehensibility are here related to the legislative writing process. Using
an ethnographic methodology I followed as an observer the drafting
process of three pieces of consumer laws at different stages. My dis-
cussion of this study focuses on the stages of the writing process, the
professional composition of the committees involved, the societal con-
textual frameworks and the readers targeted.
In the third thematically organized section, I deal with studies of
‘Workplace discourse’. Professional discourse is discussed here in
relation to the situated frame and the socially ordered working group.
Chapter 9 elaborates and evaluates a sociolinguistic framework for
the study of communication at work. The two concepts ‘communica-
tive community’ and ‘professional group’ are introduced. In addition,
the chapter includes a study of communication at a local govern-
ment office. By means of a survey and in-depth interviews, I studied
the organization of writing within the office, the interplay between
speech and writing as well as collaboration. This study sheds new
light on the social organization of writing within a small, monolin-
gual workplace. In Chapter 10, my concern is the multilingual work-
place. The complexity of workplace multilingualism is explored from
a variety of perspectives, that of the professional group, the linguis-
tic-cultural community and the individual employees. In addition
to theories related to group formation, my theoretical approach also
includes language dominance issues and interactional sociolinguis-
tics. The empirical data focused on emanate from a research project
which aimed to explore the daily work-related interaction at a public
hospital and an international company in Sweden. An ethnographic
methodology – comprising interviews, on site observations, record-
ings and text collection – was adopted for this project. Both work-
places are multilingual and multicultural in terms of their staff, and
my discussion of results concerns the organizational structure of text
and talk at work, workplace languages and the interaction of foreign
language users at work. Asymmetries due to varied cultural and lin-
guistic background will be dealt with.
The fourth thematically organized section analyses ‘Discourse in
large business organizations’. Chapter 11 explores the complex rela-
tionship between enterprise and discourse. Professional discourse is
related to different contextual frameworks: the environmental framework
14
and the various societal ones. A model of communication is presented

which depicts the multilayered framework of texts within large organ-
izations. With this model as a background, results from a research
project on banks and structural engineering companies in Britain,
Germany and Sweden are discussed. A series of interviews were con-
ducted with managers and staff involved in writing and a large text
corpus was collected and analysed. The first part of my analysis of the
results concerns differences between the two sectors (banking and
engineering), between organizations within one sector, and differences
at national level. The second part presents an analysis of the construc-
tion of an ‘organizational self’ within the three banks. In the last part
of the chapter I discuss how the simple sociolinguistic order found
at small workplaces is intertwined in large organizations with vari-
ous levels of other orders leading to a multifaceted and multilayered
disorder. Societal frameworks at national and supranational levels
influence discourse in large enterprises. Chapter 12 explores company
websites from a diversity perspective, which means that I analyse the
construction of an ‘organizational self’ from the perspective of the out-
siders, i.e. the readers. Here my sociolinguistic framework is extended
to include ideas about marginalization within sociology and political
science. The reliance of modern companies on the internet for exter-
nally addressed information entails a complexity of a new kind while
at the same time their policies and practices in relation to language
and culture include or exclude readership groups. My analysis in this
chapter concerns the customer-related and career-oriented websites
maintained by five transnational companies. I explore these websites
from a critical, sociolinguistic angle thus focusing on how the com-
panies strike a balance between different concerns and values: local
and global, economic and societal. One aim of this analysis is to grasp
the company policies on diversity and multiculturality and the way
they handle their corporate social responsibility.
In the concluding section, chapter 13, my focus is on the future,
i.e. on professional discourse in the twenty-first century. I discuss the
effects of technological advances and globalization in relation to dif-
ferent domains and environments. Furthermore, I dwell on workplace
discourse in the ‘new work order’ and speculate about possible con-
sequences for the individual employee. I also sketch some topics for
future research. Finally, I sum up the main tenets of the book.
15
2 A theoretical model for contextual
analysis of professional discourse
In this chapter, I develop a theoretical model for contextual analysis of

professional discourse. This model will provide a basis for the empir-
ical studies discussed in the different chapters/sections of this book.
A consistent tenet in these discussions is that an in-depth understand-
ing of what professional discourse is, how it varies and successively
changes relates discourse to the contextual frames in which it occurs.
I will claim that we need to use a multidisciplinary approach includ-
ing cognitive, social and societal dimensions in our analysis.
In the first part of the chapter, I introduce my view on the roles
which the three dimensions – the cognitive, social and societal –
play in the construction of professional language and discourse. In
the second part, I broaden my constructivist approach to include
factors relating to the various contextual frames in which profes-
sional discourse is continuously reconstructed, i.e. a situated frame,
an environmental framework and four societal frameworks. Lastly,
I sum up my theory in a model of the reconstruction of professional
discourse.
2.1 The construction of professional discourse

In every strand of human communication, discourse plays a role in the
formation of a social and societal reality and identity. This is also true
of the formation of the different professional and vocational cultures
within working and public life. Historically, discourse has played a
central role in the creation of different professions and it continues to
do so in the development and maintenance of professional and insti-
tutional cultures and identities. Societal, social and cognitive factors
all play important roles in the construction of professional cultures.
Professionals try to create a space for their domain within society, to
establish themselves in contact and competition with others within
their group as well as with other groups. Their knowledge base and its
linguistic forms are created in a societal and social framework.
The public sector, the academic world, and working life are con-
tinuously changing. New professions and trades appear, others dis-
appear, and there is a continuous process among professionals to
16
Contextual Analysis of Professional Discourse
create and recreate their respective domains. Due to the specializa-

tion, technologization and professionalization of modern society, we
have many more different kinds of professional language than a hun-
dred years ago, and there are greater differences between the language
varieties used for professional purposes by different expert groups.
The tower of Babel metaphor has often been used to describe language
situations, and it is most certainly an appropriate metaphor for profes-
sional language. Professionals have not finished building their tower
of Babel; construction is always in progress. They are constantly chan-
ging their language and discourse as they try to make themselves both
well-known and unique. In today’s professional world, however, we
also have to consider a language dominance dimension. Due to global-
ization and technological advances, the tower of Babel metaphor has
come to include the choice of language as well. Professional discourse
has come to be pursued in a second, third or fourth language in many
contexts, as a result of the increased use of English lingua franca in
professional life.
Written texts and spoken discourse therefore play and have always
played an important role in forming the professions. Originally all
professional communication was oral. Laws were drafted orally and
memorized by lawmen, who could then quote them from memory in
court. Medical advice and prescriptions were transferred through
spoken discourse, and economic transactions were entered into and
preserved orally. Gradually, written texts came into use and became
the traditional form for more important purposes. Laws were written
down, and so were contracts, and prescriptions were collected in phar-
macopoeias. However, it is important to bear in mind that the written
form represents a late stage in the history of professional discourse. It
is only in recent centuries that writing has become widespread in pro-
fessional practice. The functional divide between writing and talking,
which has become part of our stereotype picture of the two media, has
only developed gradually and, in terms of the history of humankind,
quite recently (see Danet, 1997).
In modern society, written texts and spoken discourse have taken
on new and more varied roles. New technology is leading to new ways
of communicating, ways for which both the written-spoken dichotomy
and the verbal-non-verbal dichotomy seem inappropriate. Distant
communication is no longer only possible in writing, and spoken dis-
course can be preserved just as well as written texts. The new tech-
nologies are contributing to a change in the communicative situation
in working life, among other things involving new and less distinct
functions for written texts and spoken discourse, and for words and
visual elements.
17
The written and spoken sides of communication are also difficult

to keep apart in other respects. In modern society at least, the produc-
tion of texts is largely a collective process, and one in which writing
is intermingled with speaking to such an extent that it is difficult to
know what role each medium plays. Behind a written document there
is often a long process in which speech – meetings, discussions, com-
ments – plays just as essential a role as the actual writing. In modern
professional life, writing and talking are often strongly intertwined.
Both media contribute to the form and content of the other, and grad-
ually the functional distinction between oral and written discourse is
disappearing, and both forms of communication are becoming equally
important in the formation of professional cultures. What character-
izes professional communication in the twenty-first century is also
the extended use of computers, mobile phones, internet etc., thus
encompassing new multimodal types of discourse.
To understand professional language and communication we must
study it in its rich and varied totality. We must study the dynamic
processes behind the construction of professional discourse. One rele-
vant question is therefore what constitutes these processes, i.e. what
dimensions have been involved in the construction of professional
texts over time. In what follows I distinguish three dimensions – a
cognitive, a societal and a social – which, I argue, must be considered
if we are to acquire a holistic picture of the emergence and continuous
re-creation of professional discourse.
2.1.1 Cognitive dimension

Every profession has a certain way of viewing reality, a certain
way of highlighting different aspects of the surrounding world.
Socialization into a profession means learning how to discern the
relevant facts, how to view the relations between different factors.
We are taught how to construct and use a grid or a lens to view reality
in the professionally appropriate way. Written and spoken discourse
helps us in this construction process. We use language to construct
professional knowledge.1 And if we consider a professional group as
a whole, we see that its professional language has developed as a
means of expressing this professional view of reality. Legal termin-
ology, legal sentence structures, legal text patterns, and legal text
and discourse content have developed as a means of dealing with
reality in a way that suits the purposes of the law. Attitudes and
norms are also built into the cognitive structure. The legal perspec-
tive entails attitudes and norms regarding what is legally acceptable,
what is right and wrong, etc.
18
The knowledge base of one domain has a network of relations with

other domains. The cognitive structure of a professional language thus
reveals its dependence on and relationship to other knowledge domains
and this knowledge-based network can vary over time. Metaphors,
terminology, argumentation, and diagrams reveal the contribution of
adjacent domains to the construction of professional knowledge. For
example, many domains owe a debt to statistics, psychology, math-
ematics, sociology, physics, economics, politics and religion, and this
debt can be seen in the language used.
The cognitive dimension is, of course, related to psychological proc-
esses within the individual members of a profession, e.g. to how they
perceive and understand reality in professional communication.
2.1.2 Social dimension

Every professional group is also, like other social groups, formed by
the establishment of an internal role structure, group identity, group
attitudes and group norms. The need for a professional identity, for
a professional ‘we’ feeling, for separation from the out-group, has,
of course, played an important role in the construction of profes-
sional group discourse and constantly inspires people to adapt and
be socialized into professional group behaviour. Socialization into
a group also means establishing distance from people outside the
group.
2.1.3 Societal dimension

Furthermore, every professional group stands in a certain relation-
ship to the surrounding society: it exerts certain functions and is
assigned a certain place within society. Its members play a role in
relation to other actors in society, and the group they constitute acts
in relation to other groups. They play – or do not play – a role in polit-
ical life, within the business world, the education system, in relation
to the press etc. And this cluster of societal functions is essential for
discourse. It is via discourse that professional groups exert their soci-
etal function. If they are going to play a political role, they have to
construct their communicative behaviour in a way that is appropriate
for this purpose.
Relationships to texts and spoken discourse and to different gen-
res are also important. Professionals adapt to established genres, but
are also involved in forming new ones. The societal dimension is, of
course, related to economic and political factors, to power and status
patterns in society.
19
uage-Discou
ng rs
La
e
societal cognitive social
Society Domain Group
Figure 2.1 Model of the construction of professional language and discourse

(Adapted from Figure 1 in Gunnarsson, 1998: 25)
2.1.4 Model of the construction of professional

language and discourse
The three dimensions discussed above are strongly related to the emer-
gence and continuous re-creation of language and discourse in the
professions. Figure 2.1 illustrates the roles played by the three dimen-
sions in the construction of professional language and discourse.
2.2 The contextual dependence of

professional discourse
In order to understand the dynamic character of the reconstruction
of professional discourse we must consider its contextual depend-
ence, and also the complex interplay between different levels in this
process. With a background in the three dimensions outlined above
(in part 2.1), I will here continue with a discussion of the various con-
textual frameworks influencing professional discourse. I will then
distinguish contextual frames at three levels: the situated frame at
a micro level, the environmental framework at a macro level, and the
societal frameworks at a supra level.
2.2.1 The situated frame

Professional discourse is situated and dynamic, which means that an
analysis at micro level should focus on the dynamic character of the
20
Goal Domain Conditions
Situated frame
Dialogic purpose Collaborative nature
Communicative event
Asymmetries Social structure
Participants
Figure 2.2 The situated frame
situated frame in which a communicative event involving one or sev-

eral participants takes place (Figure 2.2).
As stated in the first chapter of this book, I use the term professional
discourse to ‘cover text and talk – and their intertwined relationship –
in professional contexts and for professional purposes’. The domain,
i.e. the professional context, and the goal, i.e. the professional pur-
pose, are thus constitutive of a situated frame. The frame also varies
with the external conditions, such as place, tools, time allotted etc.
Where the communicative event is concerned, our starting point is
that such an event can involve both written and spoken discourse as
well as their interplay. We should further note that a professional com-
municative event can involve one or several participants. A lawyer
writing a text, a doctor tape-recording a medical report, an engineer
reading an instruction and a secretary listening to a recorded report
are therefore considered professional communicative events, even if
these professionals are sitting alone in their offices. What is import-
ant for this classification is that the writing, recording, reading and
listening, in these cases as well, have a dialogic purpose, i.e. the indi-
vidually performed tasks are a beginning of – or part of – an exchange
of texts and messages which form a dialogue. Although we find com-
municative events in professional contexts with individuals working
alone, a characteristic feature of professional discourse is thus its dia-
logic nature.
Another feature, I wish to stress here, is the collaborative nature
of professional activities. Many professional events are dyadic, i.e.
they involve two participants, engaged in face to face interaction,
telephone conversation or the exchange of written messages. Other
21
professional events involve several participants, convened as tempor-

ary or more permanent groups. Small group meetings, written group
correspondence, collaborative writing, collaborative presentations,
discussions, large group meetings, and debates are examples of group
events. Collaboration in group events is thus a common phenomenon
in professional life.
This further means that professional activities often entail a shared,
collective responsibility for the end-product – the document, the pres-
entation, the report – and a possibility for group members to influence
the process. The social dimensions of the collaborative work should
therefore be included in the analysis of a communicative event. For a
more permanent professional group, the social structure of the group
and the relationships between the group members shape the situated
frame of each event. In professional life we also often find communi-
cative events which are linked by a common goal, thus forming a com-
municative chain. This means that each communicative event is not
only directed towards the future but also part of a history involving
earlier constellations of participants.
Another structural feature relates to possible asymmetries between
the participants. In communicative events involving professionals
with similar expertise, we are likely to find a fairly symmetric struc-
ture, while in many other events, differences in pre-knowledge, dis-
course strategies, attitudes and intentions will create an asymmetric
structure. Communication between professionals in different posi-
tions or with different expertise can therefore be as asymmetric as
communication between professionals and semi-professionals or lay
people. Asymmetries, however, can also be due to external conditions.
Place, time allotted and the assistance available can lead to asymmet-
ries. If, for instance, we compare the situated frame for a participant
who is given plenty of time and adequate auxiliary help to read and
interpret a written report with the situated frame for another partici-
pant who is short of time and lacks help, we find considerable asym-
metries, which indeed can result in differences in comprehension and
interpretation.
To sum up, an analysis of the (re)construction of professional dis-
course at micro level should include cognitive and social dimensions
and also take into account the particular conditions of the situation.
2.2.2 The environmental framework

An in-depth analysis of the reconstruction of professional discourse
must also include the macro level, i.e. the environmental frameworks
in which the communicative events, or chain of events, occur, and in
22
which patterns for writing and talking at work are created. Text and
talk in a small, close-knit working group with its particular social
and communicative order therefore form part of traditions that evolve
within an environmental structure, i.e. the small working group is
included in a larger unit such as a workplace, which in its turn belongs
to a local branch of a large organization. In many cases, we further
find additional organizational levels, i.e. the organization belongs to
a corporation, which in turn might belong to a net of attached work-
ing partners. Figure 2.3 illustrates the environmental framework of a
working group that forms part of a large organization.
Although the number of levels varies from workplace to work-
place and from organization to organization, a common denominator
is the interdependence and interrelationship between various levels
of the environmental framework. In one way or another, an environ-
mental framework is held together by common goals, operative areas
(domains) and markets. Further, a professional framework is attached
to an organizational structure (involving hierarchies, clusters, group
structure) and a certain social division of work (e.g. the relationship
between qualified staff, skilled and semi-skilled workers, between
seniors and learners, and between employer and employees). Some
frameworks are also held together by explicit management ideas and
attachment to social values. The environmental framework can thus
be said to constrain the reconstruction of discourse at various levels.
The social and communicative order of a small working group thus
depends on the structure and ideas of the organization as a whole.
To sum up, an analysis of the (re)construction of professional dis-
course at macro level should include both a social and an organiza-
tional dimension. The analysis should then also consider how the
Attached working partners
Corporation
Organization
Workplace
Working group
Figure 2.3 The environmental framework
23
interdependence and interrelationship between various levels of the

environmental framework influence discourse.
2.2.3 The societal framework systems

A further characteristic of professional discourse is that to a large extent
it is regulated and steered from the ‘outside’, i.e. from different societal
frameworks, while at the same time it is an essential part of the con-
struction of these frameworks. The relationship between professional
discourse and societal frameworks is thus dual. My perspective below,
however, will mainly deal with the way the societal frameworks con-
strain discourse. I will dwell on social and societal variables which are
relevant for an analysis of professional text and talk. For the purpose of the
studies presented in this book, I have chosen to distinguish four types of
societal frameworks: a legal-political framework, a technical-economical
framework, a socio-cultural framework, and a linguistic framework. These
frameworks can be described at different levels: at a local level (e.g. the
town or the region), at a national level (e.g. the country or the nation state)
and at a supranational level (e.g. the union, the superstate, the inter-
national region). In various ways these frameworks, or rather framework
systems, constrain text and talk in professional contexts.
Figure 2.4 illustrates the relationship between frameworks and lev-
els. The four framework systems will be described in some more detail
below.
Figure 2.4 The societal framework systems
24
2.2.3.1 The legal-political framework

It is self-evident that professional discourse is constrained by the
legal-political framework at local, national and supranational levels.
Politics and legislative traditions are reflected in legislation, in laws
and regulations which regulate professional discourse. The legal-
political structures are also reflected in basic and higher education,
welfare and the public ideology disseminated by the press. If we look
more closely at professional documents, we find that a great number
are produced in compliance with requirements from the local govern-
ment, the state or the superstate, e.g. annual reports, contracts, pro-
tocols, environmental reports, mission statements, equal opportunity
plans.
2.2.3.2 The technical-economical framework

Professional discourse is also strongly related to the technical-economical
framework. Economy and technology are essential for the growth and devel-
opment of professional activities and, indirectly, for the type and content
of its discourse as well. Technological advances, economic growth and
professional discourse are intertwined and interdependent at local,
national and supranational levels. An organization depends on its pro-
duction and also on its success in various markets: the seller–buyer
market and also the job market.
Professional discourse plays an essential role as a tool for the creation
and maintenance of an organization. It is by means of discourse that
organizations and institutions manage to attract shareholders/owners,
producers/working partners, customers/clients and future employees.
It is therefore important for an organization to be visible and com-
petitive in the various markets related to the technical-economical
framework. Indirectly, this also means that an organization or insti-
tution needs to appear attractive and competitive in the eyes of poli-
ticians, journalists and the general public. Professional discourse
therefore plays an essential role in providing a positive foundation
for interaction with other professionals, semi-professionals and lay
people.
2.2.3.3 The socio-cultural framework

Professional discourse is also constrained by the socio-cultural
framework. Though vague as a concept, it is often relevant to distin-
guish between different cultures at different levels: local, national and
supranational. At national level, for instance, we can find culturally
25
formed ideas as differences in views on collectivism versus remote

power, self-assertiveness versus modesty, and competition versus
solidarity and negotiation. The ethical codes adopted in a particular
professional environment reflect, to a large extent, ideologies and
ethics in the relevant socio-cultural framework. Ideologies related
to citizen’s rights, democracy and tolerance form the backbone of
the societal ethical system and these are in turn reflected in the
social values of professionals and of professional groups at various
levels.
2.2.3.4 The linguistic framework

Professional discourse is indeed also dependent on the linguistic
framework. The local language community, the national language
community and the supranational or global language community
establish and follow language laws and policies which directly or
indirectly influence text and talk in the professions. Language choice
and language practice in professional environments follow, to a large
extent, the practice in the relevant discourse communities. Policies
and practice on language dominance issues (local language versus glo-
bal language; majority language versus minority language), functional
language stratification (diglossia) and on social language stratifica-
tion (elite and non-elite languages) formed within the various lev-
els of the linguistic framework influence communicative events for
professional purposes in terms of language choice and practice. The
language knowledge of the participants in a professional encounter,
whether professionals or non-professionals, reflects language politics
and laws.
2.3 Model for the contextual reconstruction of

professional discourse
Professional discourse is thus constructed and reconstructed in
a complex interplay between different framework systems. As
Figure 2.5 illustrates, professional discourse is reconstructed in a sit-
uated communicative event occurring within a working group which
is a part of an environmental framework which operates at differ-
ent levels: a local, a national and a supranational. At each of these
levels professional discourse is also constrained and intertwined
with different societal frameworks: a legal-political framework, a
technical-economical framework, a socio-cultural framework and a
linguistic framework.
26
Figure 2.5 Model for the contextual reconstruction of professional discourse
2.4 Conclusions
The theoretical model presented in this chapter will be used to ana-
lyse the dual relationship between context and professional discourse.
The model will be referred to in the discussions of the results of
empirical studies of professional discourse in different domains and
for different purposes. A purpose of these studies, which are based
on authentic data, is to deepen our understanding of how, and also
why, professional discourse varies and changes. The dual relationship
between professional discourse and context is in turn related to a two-
sided complexity. This means that we also need to find a tool for a
micro analysis of professional discourse which grasps its contextual
dependence. In the next chapter, I will introduce a multidimensional
texlinguistic methodology which explores the dynamic relationship
between text and context.
Note
1. Within the sociology of science tradition, many studies have analysed the role of
texts in the establishment of scientific fact (e.g. Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Latour and
27
Woolgar, 1986 and Bazerman, 1988). A social constructivist approach in relation to

written texts more generally is further found in Bazerman and Paradis (1991). In
Gunnarsson et al. (1997), which examined both professional written communica-
tion and spoken interaction, the central theoretical issue is how language, written
genres and spoken discourse are constructed as successive and continuous inter-
play between language and social realities.
28
3 Methodology to explore
the dynamic relationship
between text and context
In this chapter, I will present a multidimensional methodology the aim

of which is to explore the dynamic relationship between text and con-
text. The methodology, which examines texts at cognitive, pragmatic
and macrothematic levels, enables in-depth analysis of diachronic
and synchronic variation and change. As an introduction to the pres-
entation of each aspect of the methodology, I will outline its theor-
etical background. For the cognitive aspect, which is an innovation,
I will begin with a discussion of what a cognitive viewpoint can entail
for text analysis. For the pragmatic and macrothematic aspects of the
methodology, I will present earlier studies of relevance. The multidi-
mensional methodology, which has been applied to several large text
corpora, has also been used for contrastive comparisons, e.g. between
English, German and Swedish.
The theoretical framework introduced in the previous chapter pro-
vides the basis for the methodology at cognitive level. This analysis
makes it possible to analyse content more deeply than can normally
be achieved by text linguistic methods. The contextual (re)construc-
tion of texts is related to an examination of the content of the text at
a very abstract level. This is undertaken by assigning each element of
information contained in the text to one of five cognitive worlds: sci-
entific, practical, object, private and external, and within these to dif-
ferent content aspects. The content of the texts is further classified as
state-descriptive or action-descriptive, as well as shifting to and from
several (time-) dimensions. The cognitive worlds function much like
the schemas and frames of cognitive psychology in that they serve to
organize situation-bound knowledge and to provide a framework for
the integration of new information.
The pragmatic and macrothematic aspects of the methodology also
provide tools for an in-depth analysis of how contextual factors shape
genre. Context, i.e. the situated frame in terms of goal, event and con-
ditions, relates to genre conventions and textual patterns. The prag-
matic method of analysis involves a categorization of the illocution
29
types of the clauses, and a categorization of the subsidiary function

of the text parts in the structure of the text as a whole. The mac-
rothematic method of analysis involves a categorization of the texts
according to the content structure into superthemes and further into
macrothemes.
Originally, I developed this multidimensional methodology for an
analysis of the diachronic and synchronic variation of scientific and
popular science articles on economics, medicine and technology dur-
ing three centuries, the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centur-
ies. Three hundred and sixty articles published in Swedish journals
and periodicals during six periods from 1730 to 1985 are included in
this corpus (Uppsala LSP corpus).1 The methodology has also been
found useful for contrastive analyses of large corpora, e.g. for an
analysis of the variation between texts of different kinds written in
English, German and Swedish and produced within banks, structural
engineering firms, university departments of history and occupational
medicine in Great Britain, Germany and Sweden in the 1990’s (Uppsala
contrastive corpus).2 In another contrastive study, Fredrickson com-
pared American and Swedish appeal court documents (1995).3 The
cognitive analysis has also been applied to a number of smaller cor-
pora, which indeed show its broader relevance.
As several chapters of this book (4, 6 and 11) refer to results based
on studies using this methodology, I here present the methodology in
some detail and also sketch its theoretical basis. I begin with the cog-
nitive analysis, then continue with the pragmatic analysis, and lastly
with the macrothematic analysis.
3.1 Cognitive analysis

The innovation in the multidimensional methodology lies primarily
in the cognitive analysis, which examines the content of the text at
a very abstract level. As this aspect of the methodology is original,
I have found it relevant to first outline what a cognitive viewpoint
can entail for a text analysis. As mentioned above, the methodology
at cognitive level is closely related to the theoretical framework intro-
duced in the previous chapter. My outline in this chapter, however,
will approach matters from the perspective of the author(s) and their
collective formation of genre patterns.
3.1.1 Theoretical background

If written texts are viewed from a cognitive viewpoint, they can be
seen as reflections of how the authors perceive matters. By studying
30
The Dynamic Relationship between Text and Context
the cognitive content of a text we should, therefore, be able to grasp

how its author structures the world. This way of looking at things
is, however, too simple, as a text undoubtedly also reflects how the
author thinks matters should be presented, i.e. his or her conception
of the contents required by the actual text type, or to put it another
way the author’s stored cognitive genre frame. However, the genre
frame is in its turn formed as a reflection of the collective beliefs
within the professional community. Genre developments thus reflect
developments in the collective belief system, or in other words gen-
res have developed as a means of expressing a professional view of
reality (cf. Chapter 2).
A text reflects the beliefs and norms of the professional community
to which the author belongs. The cognitive level of the text reflects
how the author structures the knowledge he or she wants to present,
or at least what the author believes is the accepted way of structuring
this knowledge within the school or group to which he or she belongs.
The text can thus be seen as the product of the author’s adaptation to
the requirements and his or her own unique way of structuring the
subject matter.
Rather than an opposition between belief structure and cognitive
genre frame, there exists a mutual correspondence. The cognitive
structure the readers can discern in the texts they read influences
their way of thinking so that texts are factors in the formation of a
collective belief system. On the other hand, the way authors men-
tally structure reality is reflected in the texts they write, which
means that we can study changes in the collective belief system of
a group of people by studying the cognitive content of the texts they
produce.
We must also consider that these collective belief systems are formed
within society and within subgroups in this society. This means
that the cognitive content of texts reflects the contextual framework
in which the texts are produced. It also means that changes in the
societal framework of a text genre are reflected in the genre patterns.
Genre developments thus reflect developments in sections of society
and in society as a whole.
As mentioned in the introductory part of this chapter, the cogni-
tive analysis method was originally developed as a means to grasp
how contextual factors shape scientific and popular science discourse
during different periods. I have therefore found it relevant to also
distinguish three frames: a situated frame, a disciplinary framework
(cf. environmental framework), and a societal framework. Figure 3.1
gives an idea of the contextual framework for scientific writing within
different disciplines.
31
Societal sectors
Academic Professional life Educational Public sector Private life

community sector
Discipline
Theory base Age as established Professional

science situation
Situation
TEXT
Figure 3.1 Contextual frames shaping writing in the professions (Adapted from
Figure 1 in Gunnarsson, 1992a: 208)
The inner frame, regarding the actual production of the text, is more
or less unique for each text. The production of the text can be seen as a
communicative event, or a chain of communicative events. For genre-
bound changes, however, the other two frames are the most important,
the middle frame showing factors unique to each discipline and the
outer showing factors common to discourse during a certain period.
Turning to the middle frame, my claim is that in many respects,
each academic discipline has developed in its own specific way.
Theory bases are unique to each discipline, and have certainly not
been static in any discipline. Such changes in theory and in method-
ology can be assumed to be reflected in the related texts.
Disciplines differ in how long they have been established as sci-
ences. Medicine, seen as a whole, is an old science. Technology and
economics, on the other hand, are new and part of their evolution into
established academic disciplines has taken place since the end of the
nineteenth century. The process of becoming established can be seen
as a change of worlds from a professional world of work with its rules
to an academic world with its rules.
The professional situation is a third factor that is unique to each
discipline. The role and status of the main professions in the three
disciplines have changed. In 1980, doctors, engineers and economists
had a high status in society and played important roles. The picture
was, however, somewhat different in the eighteenth century and also
32
at the beginning of the twentieth century, and these changes in the sta-
tus and role of the professions are liable to be reflected in the texts.
Texts in each discipline can thus be assumed to follow their own
specific courses of development due to their unique histories. In many
respects, however, their development may be assumed to be the same,
reflecting changes in society as a whole. As the outer frame shows
(Figure 3.1), I have chosen to distinguish five sectors within the soci-
etal framework: Academic community, professional life, educational
sector, public sector and private life. My claim is that these sectors are
relevant for variation and change at cognitive text level.
3.1.2 Method for cognitive analysis

I will now continue with a presentation of the method for cognitive
analysis. The aim of the methodology can be captured by the following
questions: (1) How can we obtain a comparable picture of the content
of texts on different subjects, in different languages and from different
disciplines and periods? (2) How can we capture the changes that are
relevant from a sociolinguistic point of view?
The aim of the cognitive analysis is thus to describe the content, i.e.
the knowledge, presented in the text in a way that makes comparisons
possible and relevant. The content in fact varies from discipline to dis-
cipline, from subject to subject, from text to text. At an abstract level
it can, however, be said to vary with regard to five cognitive worlds: a
scientific world, a practical world, an object world, a private world and
an external world. These worlds can be related to the different sectors
of society distinguished above (Figure 3.2).
Cognitive worlds Societal sectors
Scientific world Academic community
Object world Educational sector
Practical world Professional life
Private world Private life
External world Public sector
Figure 3.2 Cognitive worlds and sectors of society (Adapted from Figure 3 in
Gunnarsson, 1992a: 212)
33
My world concept has similarities with the schema concept

which we are familiar with from theories within cognitive psych-
ology. There, schema is used to cover quite different types of storing,
that of:
1. Specific, situational knowledge. Often the term script is used
for situation-bound knowledge (e.g. Schank and Abelson,
1977) and the term domain-related knowledge for sector-bound
knowledge (e.g. Spilich et al., 1979, Voss et al., 1980).
2. General knowledge, i.e. prototypical knowledge of a general
kind – e.g., knowledge of text types, speech acts, personal-
ities and so forth – that can be activated in different types of
situation. The term frame is often used for this kind of know-
ledge (Bartlett, 1932, Thorndyke, 1977, Kintsch, 1978).
3. Global structuring, meaning that the individual sees reality as
a whole from a certain perspective (Schutz and Luckmann,
1984).
My world concept has similarities with the schema concept, in
the sense of specific and general knowledge. The five worlds – sci-
entific, practical, object, private and external – are possible know-
ledge structures, which means that they form a background for
idealized authors when they construct texts and for idealized read-
ers when they try to build up a mental representation of the text
they read. Reading as well as writing is thus seen as a text world
production based on a common storage of cognitive and linguistic
operations and using similar knowledge (e.g. van Dijk and Kintsch,
1983, Kucer, 1985).
This does not, however, mean that these worlds are equally avail-
able to all authors and all readers of professional texts. On the con-
trary, one of the purposes of analyzing texts by means of cognitive
worlds is to describe the differences between authors belonging to
different expert disciplines and specializing in different subjects,
between authors from different periods and between authors with dif-
ferent pictures of their readers.
In the cognitive analysis, each item of information contained in
a text is assigned to one of the five worlds. By means of the world
analysis, we thus obtain an overall picture of the knowledge struc-
ture of a text. Figure 3.3 shows the five cognitive worlds and their
related categories aspect and dimension. I have found it relevant to
distinguish between two types of text content (text types): state-
descriptive and action-descriptive. This distinction is not relevant
for a categorization of the texts as a whole but rather of their con-
stituent parts.
34
Phenomenon
Process
Change
Cause
Theory
Scientific world Classification

Experiment
Work
Practical world
Interaction
Phenomenon
Object world Part focused
Whole focused
Experience
Private world
Personal situation
Soc. econ. conditions

External world
Soc. econ. measures
Figure 3.3 Cognitive worlds, aspects and dimensions: state-descriptive text parts
(Adapted from Figure 6.2 in Gunnarsson, 1997a: 111)
Within each world, I identify certain abstract categories that are

common to different texts. On one level these categories relate to dif-
ferent aspects: within the scientific world to theory, classification and
experiment; within the practical world to work and interaction; within
the object world to phenomenon, part focused and whole focused;
within the private world to experience and personal situation; within
the external world to conditions and measures of social, economic and
political kinds.
On another level, these categories relate to different (time) dimensions.
For state-descriptive texts, these (time) dimensions are cause, phenom-
enon, process and change. For action-descriptive texts, they are prevent-
ive measure/cause, phenomenon, measure/process and change/result.
From this general, or invariant, description of the worlds and their
subcategories, I will now turn to a more specified one. The worlds and
categories also appear in variant forms. We can thus describe one text
35
universe for the medical discipline, one for the technical discipline,
one for the economic discipline, one for legal texts, one for business
discourse etc. Figures 3.4a and 3.4b show the object world and its
related categories for the medical discipline.
As mentioned above, the worlds and categories appear in variant
forms for each discipline. In the medical discipline, the practical
world becomes the hospital world and the object world becomes the
disease world. As for the categories, cause becomes medical cause,
object becomes disease, process becomes disease process and so on.
Figure 3.4a concerns elements of texts that are state-descriptive
and Figure 3.4b those of texts that are action-descriptive. The (time)
Phenomenon
Process
Change
Cause
medical disease disease medical

Phenomenon
cause process change
Disease world
cause of organ process rel. change in

medical to organ organ
Part focused attack on
organ
earlier patient process rel. change in

Whole focused general to general general
condition condition condition
Figure 3.4a Object world for the medical discipline. State-descriptive text parts
(Adapted from Figure 5a in Gunnarsson, 1992a: 217)
Change/Result
Phenomenon
Process
Cause
prevention disease treatment result of

Phenomenon treatment
of disease
Disease world
prevention organ treatment result rel. to

Part focused of disease rel. to organ organ
rel. to organ
prevention patient treatment result rel. to

of disease rel. to patient’s
Whole focused rel. to general general
patient condition condition
Figure 3.4b Object world for the medical discipline. Action-descriptive text parts
(Adapted from Figure 5b in Gunnarsson, 1992a: 217)
36
dimension is also present in these figures along the horizontal

axis. In state-descriptive texts, disease is central within the dis-
ease world. The disease is preceded by medical cause (to the left
in the schemata) and is followed in time by the disease process
and the medical change (to the right). In action-descriptive texts
(Figure 3.4b), the treatment is central within the disease world.
Treatment is preceded by disease and by prevention of disease (to
the left in the schema) and followed by the result of the treatment
(to the right).
The vertical axis allows different aspects to be focused on. Disease
is described with the focus on the phenomenon, the disease (at the top
of the schema), on some part, an organ (in the middle) or on the whole,
the patient (at the bottom). Treatment is described with the focus on
the treatment as such (at the top of the schema), on treatment of an
organ (in the middle) or on treatment of the patient (at the bottom).
To conclude this presentation of the cognitive methodology, I will
show some examples of the categorization of the content. The relevant
aspect is shown in brackets below each example.
Scientific world
(1) Muscular palsy is a possible explanation, and this has been
demonstrated up to six months after subcostal incisions.
(Aspect: Theory)
(2) But pneumothorax is quite commonly regarded as a result of
diagnostic or therapeutic measures or as a complication of compli-
cated or advanced lung disease.
(Aspect: Classification)
(3) During the period January 1977 until March 1978 29 patients
were treated in 36 different cases of pneumothorax using the
Heimlich valve (Table II).
(Aspect: Experiment)
Object world
(4) Tuberculosis is an infectious disease which is caused by a liv-
ing organism invisible to the naked eye, the tubercle bacillus, and
which occurs not only in human beings, but also in animals.
(Aspect: Phenomenon)
Practical world
(5) Insertion of the chest drain was preceded by premedication
with pethidine and careful local anaesthesia.
(Aspect: Work)
37
Private world
(6) For the first few days after the insertion of the drain, many
patients feel considerable pain.
(Aspect: Experience)
External world
(7) Introducing the simplified method of treatment proposed
would result in significant savings.
(Aspect: Measures)
3.2 Pragmatic analysis

The second part of the methodology which I will present in this chap-
ter analyses the texts at pragmatic level. For texts produced and used
in the professions, goal-orientation, domain specificity and situated-
ness are constitutive features of the texts. As a theoretical background
to the methodology I have developed, I will give a brief overview of
the pragmatic field.
3.2.1 Theoretical background

In his Foundations of the theory of signs from 1938 Morris launched a
semiotic theory in which he distinguished a semantic, a pragmatic and
a syntactic level. When he used the term pragmatic for ‘the relation of
signs to their interpreters’ (p. 30), he consciously connected his theory
with the school of language philosophy called pragmatism. According to
Peirce, one of the advocates of pragmatism, the meaning of a linguistic
statement is the practical consequences which follow from the statement
if this is true. ‘To act is to act meaningfully’ is a central idea within prag-
matism, and, as Morris claimed, all our actions are goal-directed, which
means that they can be described and explained fully, only if one can
grasp the motives and purposes which lie behind them.
The cross-disciplinary character of pragmatics is also relevant for the
methodology which I will describe below. The pragmatic analysis relates
language practices to psychological, social and situational factors, thus
also providing a basis for multidimensional understanding of linguistic
actions. Pragmatic theory therefore has much in common with sociolin-
guistics, anthropology and ethnomethodology and is a useful tool for the
analysis of both spoken and written discourse (cf. Levinson, 1983).
‘Speech act theory’ also developed within the philosophical trad-
ition. In a series of famous lectures, Austin developed his ideas about
performatives, which means that words, such as an utterance or a sen-
tence, can perform an act if the situated frame is appropriate and in
38
line with established convention (1976: 14–15). In his lectures, Austin

further distinguishes three different senses or dimensions of the ‘use
of a sentence’ or of ‘the use of language’: the locutionary act, e.g. the
meaning, the illocutionary act, e.g. the conventional force of the utter-
ance, and the perlocutionary act, e.g. what we bring about or achieve by
saying something (p. 109). The illocutionary effect is achieved when an
utterance/sentence is performed in a given context. The perlocutionary
effect is related to non-verbal actions, which are performed as a conse-
quence of the locutionary and illocutionary acts.
Searle (1969) developed Austin’s ideas further, thus making it
possible to apply them to authentic text and talk. One problem with
Austin’s theory was related to intention and effect. Austin stated that
the illocutionary force is the successful achievement of the speaker’s
intentions. This, however, leads to difficulties for the analyst. How
should one separate the speaker’s intention from the effect? Instead
Searle attaches the illocutionary force to the listener’s interpretation
of the utterance, or the reader’s interpretation of the sentence.
Searle also distinguished some basic illocutions, under which all
other illocutions could be categorized: Representatives, Directives,
Commissives, Expressives, Declaratives. As many analysts have
found, it is not always easy to assign one single force to an utterance
in an authentic conversation or negotiation, where what is shown at
a surface level, e.g. directly expressed, not infrequently differs from
that which underlies it, e.g. indirectly meant. Spoken discourse is
indeed a process where meaning is constructed successively and col-
lectively. For the analysis of written discourse, however, I have found
that speech act theory provides a useful tool to grasp the action orien-
tation of the text at a micro level.
The conventional contract-bound character of discourse is also
central for the ideas developed in Grice (1975). Grice, who was also
a philosopher, proposed four conversational maxims that arise from
the pragmatics of natural language and which were related to quality,
quantity, relation and manner. The contract between speakers/authors
and listeners/readers thus means that speakers/authors are assumed
to follow certain maxims, i.e. to say or write what they believe is the
truth (quality), make their contributions as informative as is required
for the current purpose of the exchange (quantity), say what is rele-
vant (relation) and express themselves in an orderly and clear way,
avoiding obscurity and ambiguity (manner). Grice did not assume
that all people should constantly follow these maxims. Instead they
should be understood as describing the assumptions listeners and
readers normally make about the way speakers will talk. If the overt
surface meaning of a sentence, however, is not consistent with the
39
Gricean maxims although the circumstances lead us to think that

the author/speaker is nonetheless obeying the cooperative principle,
we tend to look for other meanings that could be implied by the sen-
tence. In a communicative event when the speaker/author – either
purposefully or unintentionally – flouts or violates the maxims,
some other, hidden meaning might be implied. If someone (A) has
suggested a game of tennis to a friend, who in turn just replies with
‘It’s raining’, this short utterance is indeed a violation of the maxims
of quality and quantity of spoken language. In the particular situated
frame, however, the reasoning behind the utterance becomes clear to
A, i.e. she understands the implied meaning.
A central idea in Grice’s theory is the assumed contract between
the participants in the communicative event. A similar contract lies
behind the pragmatic approach, developed for instance in Rossipal
(1978), which views all communication as directly or indirectly action-
directed. The author or speaker is considered to have a main purpose
in making the statement, and this main purpose can be traced to one
or more parts of the text or sequence. This part of the text/sequence
can be described as its goal information. The purpose of the other
parts of the text is to help make readers cooperate, understand, agree
to and know how to act in accordance with the author’s goal. This later
information is called auxiliary information. These categories and sub-
categories will be referred to in 3.2.2.2., where I present the method for
pragmatic analysis at macro level.
3.2.2 Method for pragmatic analysis

The pragmatic methodology described below is directed towards both
the micro and the macro levels. The categorization of the illocution
types of the clauses is directed towards the micro level of the text,
while the categorization of the subsidiary function of the text parts is
directed towards the macro level. The pragmatic analysis is therefore
undertaken in two steps.
3.2.2.1 Micro analysis: illocutions

The first step of the pragmatic analysis has as its aim a micro analysis
of professional texts and the method used is based on speech act the-
ory, as this was developed by Searle (1969). Taking Searle’s categories
as a starting point (cf. above), I distinguish the following five main
speech act types: informative, explicative, expressive, argumentative
and directive. I further distinguished a sixth type, named metacom-
municative. This type covers metacomments related to the text and
40
comments on the disposition of the text. Under each of the other main
types of illocutions a set of subcategories was distinguished.
Informative: Describe
Assume
Explicative: Explain
Clarify
Compare
Conclude
Describe and explain
Describe and clarify
Expressive: Express involvement

Question, doubt
Disagree
Agree
Criticize negatively
Argumentative: Maintain, claim
Directive: Recommend
Require
Prohibit
Permit
Request
Metacommunicative: Make metacommunicative comments

Indicate text disposition
Cite
Each macrosyntagm, or clause, of a text is categorized in relation to

illocution. This categorization is based on the main verb of the clause,
and in ambiguous cases also on surrounding adverbials.
3.2.2.2 Macro analysis: goal-directed structure

The second step of the pragmatic analysis is directed towards the macro
level. Inspired by scholars who posited the action and goal-directed
structure of communication (e.g. Rossipal, 1978), I developed a method
41
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somewhat at the sound of Sonya’s shrill voice.
We mounted past the stricken guards. They moved slightly; they
were recovering. At the top, I stood, and with vehement thoughts
commanded them to move aside. They swayed, moved a few steps,
like sleep-walkers.
“Hurry, Sonya! They’re recovering! Tell your girls to stay where
they are, down there! If they move, I’ll strike them as I struck the
guards. Tell them that!”
A lone hand! But I was winning. We came to the front of the
balcony stairway. The guards up there had vanished in fright. I
mounted the steep stairs, with Sonya close under me. Down on the
terrace top, the guards had recovered, but they were too frightened
to do anything but stare up at me.
I reached the balcony, moved to where there was no door behind
me, where I could not be attacked unawares. And I drew Sonya to
the balcony rail. Beneath us in the yellow moonlight the great throng
of men, the girls, and the vanquished guards stood silently gazing up
at me.
“Now, Sonya, I’ll talk to them! Tell them I am Leonard Gray, the
Earthman. Remind them that their king is dead; their prince is
captured by a horrible unknown enemy that menaces us all! Tell
your girls that they shall have justice. Tell the men that we are going
to rescue our prince! All of us united, not fighting one another.
“Tell them they have seen a little of my power. I want to use it
for them, for you all, not against you! All of us united to rescue our
prince. And until that is done—Leonard the Earthman is their ruler!”
XII
THE PRISONER IN THE CAVE
Jim had been received by the dying king. For what seemed hours
he sat with Ren in a castle room waiting to be admitted to the royal
bedside. To Jim it was irksome. He was afraid the king would die,
afraid something would go wrong, and we would all be held as
prisoners again.
But he finally saw the king. Jim took the oath of allegiance,
swore he would do what he could to rescue the prince.
They started back through the city streets. At this time I was
with the girls on the Island of the Virgins. The moon had just risen.
They were in the main lower street before our house. The moon
was still low at the horizon; its light was cut off by the houses. The
street lamp shone full on the railed flower bed, but close to the
buildings, under the pedestrian levels, the shadows were black. Jim
suddenly became aware of peering green eyes, a black shape that
leaped at him. Other shapes, with great wobbling heads.
A giant shape of human form had knocked Ren down. Another
struck Jim, bore him with its weight to the pavement. His senses
faded from a blow on the head, and blackness, smothered by
clanging gongs in his ears as he lost consciousness.
For a moment, after an interval of what length he never knew,
knowledge that he was still alive came to him. He seemed to
remember that a giant manlike shape with a bullet head had leaped
upon him. It had another head, huge, wobbling like a balloon. But
the large head had fallen off it; the large head lay on the ground,
with tiny arms supporting it.
The phantasmagoria of a dream. But Jim’s head was clearing
now, just a little. Something was holding him, and he could feel
movement—a rhythmic jogging. He opened his eyes. A city street
was passing. A great hairy arm was about his middle; he was being
carried by something that walked; being held horizontal, his head,
arms and legs dangling.
A giant, brown, hairy shoulder was over him; and above that, the
great bulge of a head—a smooth, dead-white inflated membrane—a
head that bounced and wobbled as the thing strode forward.
A brief consciousness, a vague, dreamlike impression, scarcely
strong enough to make a memory, and Jim’s senses again faded into
a black void of silence.
When Jim came fully to himself he was lying in a glow of yellow
moonlight. Beneath him was a smooth, curving metal surface. His
head ached horribly; a lump was upon it, and there was matted
blood in his hair.
He was sore, bruised all over, but with returning strength he
realized that he was not seriously injured.
He lay a moment, trying to remember what had happened, and
the memory came, distorted and vague. Over him spread the canopy
of stars, with a great yellow moon rising. The curving metal surface
beneath him was gently swaying. Was he on a boat? He was still no
more than half conscious. He murmured, “Ren! Ren!”
“Yes, Jim? Jim, is that you?”
Jim struggled up on one elbow. Ren was sitting hunched beside
him. Ren—alive, seemingly uninjured.
They were on a boat, lying in its bottom, a small, narrow metal
boat, six feet wide perhaps, and perhaps five or six times as long.
Its gunwale curved up two or three feet over Jim’s head. They were
lying in the narrowing of its bow.
Farther astern, in the yellow moonlight, were figures, brown,
hairy bodies—men; or were they giant gorillas? They had small
bullet-like heads, faces flat-nosed, with receding forehead and
receding chin, and two small eyes that blazed green.
Jim very slowly sank back, but in a posture where he could see
the length of the boat. The figures there were not animals; they
were men of brute force and brute intelligence. Four of them, with
powerful, hairy bodies, wide-shouldered, deep-chested, with short,
thick legs and very long arms.
They were clothed in what seemed trunks of animal skin, and a
skin fastened over the bulging chest to one shoulder. And each had a
broad, tightly drawn belt at his waist.
To Jim came the memory of his capture. It was no fantasy, his
memory of a hairy body, with a balloonlike, wobbling head. The four
huge heads were here now, in a group near the center of the boat.
Each was about four feet in diameter. A dead-white membrane, with
bulging, distended veins on a forehead, over a grotesque flat face.
Heads, belonging to these four bodies? Jim realized it was not
that. These were separate living entities, which had been riding
astride the shoulders of the four.
Intelligent, reasoning beings—it seemed monstrous to call them
men—beings which were nearly all brain, just as the others were
nearly all body, heads so distended that they sagged of their own
weight.
As he regarded them, Jim became aware that to each of the
great heads a shrunken semblance of body was attached. Two tiny
arms, which came out directly from the sides of the head, and were
now turned down, with hands pressing the boat to give balance.
From the wide, convex face, beneath what might have been a
bloated chin, a shriveled body dangled: a trunk and legs some two
feet long. They lay shriveled beneath the heads. Useless appendage!
But all of these shrunken, dangling bodies were clothed with colored
fabric, and upon the breast of one was an ornate metal ornament.
Jim whispered: “Ren?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Something struck me. Then somebody, something
was carrying me. Men! I heard their voices. I tried to scream; a
hand went over my mouth. I knew we were captured. I thought—”
“Hush! Not so loud! They’re here . . . with us now.”
“I know. They were talking a while ago. They—hear them now,
Jim?”
Low, gutteral voices sounded back there—the brute men. The
brains, the balloon heads, were talking also, low, suave voices in a
foreign tongue.
“Jim! Jim, one of these men here in the boat with us—” Ren’s
voice held a quiver of fear. “He’s, Jim, I can receive thoughts now
. . . like Dolores did from a distance. It seemed, just a little while
ago, that I was getting Len’s thoughts. He was triumphant, exulting
over something. But it was gone. Then I—”
“You get the thoughts of someone here in the boat?”
“Yes. I guess so. Someone . . . the thought came to me that he
called himself Talon. I just now got it again. Talon. He’s been
studying thoughts from me. Putting them into my language. He’s
doing it now. It’s very easy for him, studying my thoughts, our
words . . . my words to you now. He can understand them.”
“Hear us now?”
“Yes. Or hear the thought of our words. We can’t escape! Can’t
do anything secretly! He’s laughing at us. He—”
Jim saw one of the heads raise itself up on its hands. Its
shriveled body hung limp, the body with the ornate cross on its
breast. The arms bent, then straightened with a snap; the head
bounded a foot or two in the air, landed again on its hands, and
again leaped.
It was hitching itself the length of the boat, its shriveled body
trailing after it. One of the giant, hairy brutes of men moved aside to
let it pass.
Jim whispered, “It’s coming!”
A revulsion of horror swept him—a repugnance to have this great
bloated head come near him. He strove to master the horror. This
was a man. Strange of form, but a living, mortal being. A man—an
enemy. Nothing supernatural, not gruesome, merely strange, an
enemy with whom he had to cope.
Jim sat up abruptly. His shoulder touched Ren’s. From down the
boat the bloated head came hitchingly forward. A few feet from Jim
and Ren it stopped, rested with a slight swaying upon the tiny body
hunched under it.
Jim stared into a huge, convex face: round green eyes, holes, a
circular rim of them, for nostrils, a wide mouth, thin-lipped. The
mouth seemed almost a human feature; it was smiling. A soft, suave
voice said,
“I . . . Talon.” And corrected itself, “I mean . . . I am Talon.”
It seemed to Jim in that instant that with those few spoken
words the thing itself had removed most of the horror with which its
outward aspect invested it.
A sense of relief swept over Jim. His tenseness relaxed. He said
slowly: “What do you want of us, Talon?”
“Yes . . . Talon.” His arm had a hand, with a sheaf of broad, flat
fingers. He pointed to the ornament hanging on the chest of his
shrunken body. “Talon . . . leader of my people.” He spoke haltingly,
groping with the unfamiliar words, and carefully, as though to avoid
error. “Called Talon. You . . . lie quiet and soon my words are more. I
study. Lie quiet . . . until I speak again.” He gestured. “Lie quiet, or
—”
Another more vehement gesture. It embraced Jim and Ren. Jim
understood the threat. The voice repeated very calmly, “You had
better lie down . . . now!”
The eyes seemed leaping pools of green fire.
They sank back. With his elbows slightly raising him, Jim watched
the head of Talon hitching itself to the stern of the boat.
The moon had risen high above the horizon. From where Jim lay
he could see its yellow, horn-shaped disk. That, and a narrow
segment of the star-strewn sky, was all that showed above the
gunwales of the boat. The stars rolled with a lazy swing; the boat
was throbbing, propelled evidently, by some invisible engine, over a
calm, rolling sea, and in the silence Jim could hear the water slipping
past the boat’s smooth sides.
He wondered how far from shore they were? If he and Ren, with
a leap, could plunge overboard, a mad, fool-hardy attempt, of
course, but still he must see where they were, try and plan
something.
“Ren?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Move over a little. I’m going to get behind you and sit up, see
where we are, how far from shore.”
Jim cautiously raised his head. He half expected a command from
the rear of the boat. But none came.
They were on a broad expanse of calm water. The moon made a
yellow shimmering path into which they were heading. Jim sank
back. It would have been folly to have attempted an escape. For a
long time he and Ren lay quiet. An hour, perhaps, or more. The boat
sped rapidly on.
Its invisible engine made a hiss, and a line of bubbles rose from
its sides. Jim had noticed them when he sat up; the boat seemed
traveling on a continuous, rising mass of bubbles. There was a queer
acrid smell in the air from the gas of them.
Jim learned later from Talon the details of this boat. It was built
of metal which, with its load, would barely float. Beneath its hull was
a chamber through which the water circulated. A grid of wires was
there; a current heated the wires, decomposed the water into its
two component gases, hydrogen and oxygen.
The bubbles were buoyant. The rising flow of them lifted the
boat, so that in truth it skimmed forward upon the gas bubbles
beneath it. The generation of gases was controlled, so that the boat
floated high or low at will. The engine was similar. The forcible
ejection of gases from a tube extending under water from its stern
propelled it forward. The tube was movable, like a rudder, to give
direction.
An hour passed. Then the hairy brutemen who had been sitting
quiet got to their feet, fumbled at the gunwales. An oval metal cover
rolled from beneath the gunwales up like a canopy to enclose the
boat overhead.
Jim had taken a last swift look outside, before the arched metal
cover rolled and closed them in. The boat was now making for a
sheer wall of cliff that lay directly ahead.
But in one place, for which they were steering, the cliff dropped
sheer, unbroken into the water. Above the cliff, behind it, a jagged
mountain range stood yellow in the moonlight, tumultuous, naked
crags.
The cover closed overhead. A tiny green light winked on. Within
the boat, lurid in the green glow, the four brutemen moved about
with swift activity; the soft voice of Talon was directing them; his
great head was raised on his hands as he followed their movements.
They bolted the metal over, adjusted other mechanisms which
now came into use at the stern. A lessening of the flow of gas from
beneath the hull; the water filled the chamber there. The rear power
tube now pointed downward, to dip the bow. Other tubes, one on
each side below the water line, pointed upward, with powerfully
ejected streams of gas.
The bow of the boat dipped; it sank beneath the surface. Jim had
no idea then of the mechanisms, but he knew the boat was under
water. One of the great heads was busily adjusting a mechanism to
purify the air they were breathing. Another was seated at what
seemed a mirror; gazing ahead through the water, steering the boat
with his fingers on a row of buttons which governed the controls.
Another hour. Jim and Ren whispered occasionally. The boat was
speeding uninterruptedly beneath the surface. At last Jim called,
“Talon?”
“Yes. What is it?” the head of Talon answered him.
“Come here. You can talk better now, can’t you?”
Talon evidently was amused at the imperative tone. “Yes. I can
talk better now.”
He came hitching forward; his great face was broken by a
grotesque grin. “What is it?”
“Who are you?” Jim demanded. “What do you want of us? Where
are you taking us?”
Talon was willing to talk. He sat, his fingers toying with the metal
ornament, his head resting against the side of the boat for support.
He and his fellows were of a race which he called the Intellect. They
came from a distant world in the sky, a dark planet, satellite of one
of the remote suns up there.
Five thousand or more of them, adventurous Intelligences like
himself, had built a great ship and come to this foreign world. They
had landed in mountains, a wild, desolate country. Their ship had
been destroyed, irreparably broken in landing. They could not get
back.
There were, he explained, in this distant world two distinct races
of beings, those like himself, for countless ages bred to develop the
intellect so that their bodies shriveled and dwindled from disuse, all
their physical powers nearly gone. And another, quite opposite race,
bred for physical strength and power, the brutemen, of slight mental
capacity but powerful of body.
He gestured. “You see four of them? They do our bidding
unquestioned. They supply the body for us; we are the mind.”
“You ride on their shoulders,” said Jim.
Talon’s eyes gleamed. “We more than ride on them.” He showed
Jim where from beneath his head a ropelike sinew depended. “This
we fasten upon a nerve-center of their backs. Their little brain is
dulled, unconscious then of existence. Our brains take command.
“The body is ours, for the time! We can feel its physical power;
our brain animates it. We are one being. One entity when that
connection is made.”
Ren spoke up softly, “Why did you go to that city where you
captured us? Those people there haven’t harmed you. But you
captured their prince and princess.”
The huge face grinned with a look of cunning. “We cannot get
back to our world. We do not like these bleak mountains, these dark
caves where we have been living. We must have a better land, and
other people; we want to establish our own race. And there is little
food, here in the mountains. We began wandering, searching. We
brought this one boat with us from our own world.” He described the
workings of the boat, and went on. “One day I came upon that man
and that woman you call prince and princess. He says he is called
Altho. They escaped from me, climbed to a cliff. But we caught them
again finally.”
He paused. Then he added slowly: “The princess is dead now. I
did not want her to die . . . but the prince killed her.”
It brought a shudder to Jim. He said, cautiously, “What are you
going to do now? What do you want of us?”
“I was thinking that if you were important, like Prince Altho, to
this other world, I might offer to release all of you, not kill you, if
they would let us live among them in the city. But I have decided
now not to bother with that. I think, if you annoy us too much, we
shall kill you before we start.”
“Start where?” Ren demanded. His voice was steady.
“Start upon our attack. We brought little with us from our world,
a few devices and scientific supplies; but for all this time since we
arrived we have been manufacturing. It is difficult with so few
materials at hand. But we are nearly ready. When I return now, we
will start our last preparations.”
His voice rose to a sudden grim power, “We have prepared well
for this conquest. It is a beautiful land down there; the women, so
many of them like the princess, are very beautiful. The men, they
are not like you two—they are already afraid of us. Some have seen
us wandering near the cave entrances. They always run in terror.”
His chuckle had a horrible gloating. “They will be easy to kill. A
swift attack upon the city; we are almost ready for it now!”
The boat at last came to the surface; the cover rolled back; the
stars gleamed overhead as before, but the yellow moon had crossed
the sky and was falling to the horizon behind them. Jim saw that
they had come to the surface of a very small lake.
He could see all around its shore, a circular lake of black, cold-
looking water. It lay unrippled, smooth as polished black stone,
unbroken except as the boat’s gas bubbles rose, and by the V-
shaped waves the boat left behind it.
Around the shore was a ring of mountains. Bleak, naked cliffs of
rocks came down sheer to the water; behind them the mountains
rose in tumbled, serrated ranks, naked crags and spires, snow-
capped with yellow snow where the moonlight struck them.
Here in the remote mountain fastness, Talon had established his
stronghold. This was an isolated lake, which a subterranean boat
had been plowing.
At Jim’s elbow, Talon said, “These mountains seem to extend
back endlessly. But I have another base already established on the
Warm Sea, and from there I will make my attack. I have planned
well.”
Ahead of them, in one small place the mountains were broken. A
narrow canyon-like valley was open to the water, with a fringe of
black-sand beach. Cave mouths showed along the sloping valley
sides. Lights moved. The mouths of the caves were outlined by a
green-white glare from within.
The boat landed on the black beach. Brute figures crowded
around it in the fading moonlight, sinister giant figures. Huge
gruesome heads came bouncing forward over the sand. Voices
sounded. Questions. The voice of Talon shouted commands.
Half a hundred of the brutemen lifted the boat bodily from the
water, deposited it on the beach. Jim and Ren were carried up the
valley, and into the green glow of a cave mouth. Ren seemed
entranced.
Prince Altho faced Jim and Ren in the dimly lighted cave. Talon
had left them. At the cave-mouth, barely beyond sight and hearing
around an angle of its narrow entrance passage, two of the
brutemen stood on guard. Altho’s cave had been his home during
most of his captivity. Jim saw it as a small room of glittering black
rock, dimly lighted with pale green radiance from a ceiling tube from
which green-glowing wires depended.
There was a bed of skins, crude stone furniture, a mere slab of
rock for a table, upon which food now lay. Draped skins walled off a
corner where the bed was placed.
Altho could not talk with Jim, but he very soon established that
he was friendly. He was a man about Jim’s height, this prince, but
delicate, almost frail of build. A handsome square-jawed face, had
the delicacy of royalty stamped upon it. A high, white forehead was
topped with curly hair like pale gold.
He smiled and shook his head at Jim’s voluble words. He shook
hands with smiling puzzlement at Jim’s insistence. He seemed to
understand Ren’s condition.
They sat, earnestly trying with gestures and words to make each
other understand. Hours passed. Altho prepared some skins for
beds, and gestured that they should sleep. Ren lay down, but Jim
refused.
Another interval. A bruteman came with food. One of the heads,
like Talon, came hitching itself in, looked around, spoke to Altho, and
withdrew.
Jim ate some of the food. He had thought Ren was asleep, but
when he questioned him, Ren sat up at once.
“Jim, what are we going to do?”
Jim was wondering that himself, and wondering also what fate
Talon had in store for them. Abruptly Ren murmured,
“Awhile ago, Jim, I was sure I was getting someone’s thoughts.
Not Talon’s; he’s hiding them from me now. Someone like Len, or
Dolores. Or perhaps it was Sonya.”
Jim’s heart leaped. Something was impending! He sat between
them tensely; his hand touched Altho’s arm; his eyes flashed at
Altho with eager questioning.
Ren murmured, “I’ve got it now, Jim! It’s Sonya! She says, I am
Sonya. We know you are with Altho. I am getting his thoughts too!”
A silence. Altho sat cross-legged on the stone floor, as Jim and
Ren were sitting, with the stone slab of table before them; the green
glow of light nearby threw shadows behind them. Altho was sitting
with closed eyes, his hands to his temples. He looked up
momentarily; his gaze rested on Jim and Ren with a new
understanding, a new friendship.
Ren murmured, “She’s telling Altho about us. She says, Hold
connection! I’m telling him . . . he’s telling me—”
Altho’s lips were moving with his thoughts to Sonya. The girl,
over all this distance, was translating from the universal language of
thoughts for these two strangers at Jim’s elbow.
Ren added, “Altho says to us in his thoughts, Talon had promised
not to kill him; Talon now thinks he will be useful after our city of
Kalima is conquered. But one of Talon’s men—that head who was in
here a while ago—he said they had decided we all three were to die.
I’m asking Altho what he thinks we can do to escape.”
Altho raised his head at the question; his eyes searched Ren’s
face. His lips moved.
“Jim! Jim, she says, We are coming to try and rescue you! If you
or Altho can direct us . . . we’re coming . . . in the air now.”
Altho was on his feet. He seemed to be warning Sonya back.
“No!” cried Ren. “Altho says no, they must not come! But they’re
coming! Sonya and . . . she doesn’t say who’s coming.”
“What’s that?”
Altho and Jim stiffened. From the entrance passage a figure had
emerged, a giant, hairy bruteman. He stood with swaying, dangling
arms, green eyes blazing in the pale green cave light; a leer on his
small flat face, a black tongue like an animal’s, licking his black lips
with murderous anticipation!
XIII
CROWDED HOURS
“Sonya,” I exclaimed vehemently, “stay beside me! Don’t leave
me!”
How I cursed my inability to speak this language during those
crowded hours following the king’s death! At every turn, with every
move I was handicapped, the force of my words lost since I had only
a girl for mouthpiece.
Yet Sonya did well. The crowd in the garden had dispersed;
Sonya had led the girls into cheering me. I had made a speech
promising them justice in their cause, and sent them away, not to
the Virgins’ Island, but peacefully back to the homes they had left.
They were glad to go; there was no government now to force them
into a distasteful marriage.
The guards had come before me, at first with an indecision, a
sullenness, but the old men counsellors had swiftly abdicated.
“Tell them, Sonya, I want all their advice; whatever they think
should be done, I will listen.” I strode up and down the huge
audience chamber of the castle, while the old men watched me with
whispered, frightened words among themselves.
There was so much to do! I had made a speech to the men in
the garden before they dispersed. Our prince must be rescued. They
had a man of power and action leading them now.
My words, and perhaps my aspect as I stood up there in the
moonlight, aroused them to enthusiasm. They were men.
Courageous. Patriotic. They had never yet had a real leader. But they
had one now.
It stirred me, as I had stirred them, when I heard them cheering.
I summoned the chief of the guards before me, a slim, straight
young fellow with flashing eyes. When I demanded his allegiance—
he and all his fellows’—he swung on his heel to the old men who
were ranged along the side of the room. They nodded timorously,
and he turned back and bowed before me.
“Tell him, Sonya, that I want ten of his men always patrolling the
castle grounds. And others, he can use his judgment as to numbers,
patrolling the city. If there is any sign of disturbance, notify me at
once. I want the people all to go to their homes and stay there.”
There was so much that I did not know! “Sonya, are there any
cities beside Kalima?”
“No,” she said. “Only small villages. And there is the village on
the Virgins’ Island.”
I nodded. “I want messengers sent out, to tell everyone of the
change of government and a warning to beware of the Nameless
Horror. It is abroad; it may appear anywhere. Have the people in the
rural districts gather food and bar their homes, stay indoors. Sonya,
who has been in charge of organizing the army?”
She named him, but it transpired that there had been nothing at
all done, as yet, except a manufacturing of the weapons of war.
“Send him to me,” I ordered. “And the leader of the scientists—
he has been in charge of the manufacturing? I want to see him
also.”
Crowded hours! And I could not leave those girls on the Virgins’
Island; a few of them had remained there with the old women and
children. I ordered them all brought in; ordered such of them as
could to return to their former homes; the others were to be
quartered in the castle.
Hours of swift, decisive commands followed. And there was no
one in that busy castle, save possibly Sonya, who realized how I was
groping. The government I had seized—I was the king now—a
simple, primative organization, but to me, so ignorant of its
workings, it seemed complex indeed.
But I was learning. One by one, I had the leaders of its various
departments brought before me, and from each, though they did not
realize it, I learned a little more.
They were all very human. None were very hostile to the virgins;
many now hoped they would be given their way.
All were afraid of the Nameless Horror, but all loved their prince
very dearly. It seemed that I would have no trouble with internal
conditions.
Sonya soon realized it. Her voice carried a more commanding
ring. Poor little Sonya! After hours of translating, issuing my
commands, running my errands, she was on the verge of
exhaustion. But, as in us all, the spirit of battle was upon her. An
enemy was at our doors, and soon everyone realized that every
command I issued was to make us stronger to resist that enemy.
It had been well over an hour after my abrupt seizure of the
castle, before I even thought of Alice and Dolores. They were
unharmed. Sonya had kept them away from the castle steps; for half
an hour they had been in the room with me, watching and listening
with wide eyes and solemn faces, a half hour before I saw them.
They did not question, but ran to Sonya and me to be of such help
as they could.
Once Alice insisted, “You must rest, Leonard. You can’t keep this
up, you and Sonya.” I had never before seen the light of love for me
in her eyes, but I saw it then!
I had sent the girls into a castle room to sleep. At last I was
alone with food, and a hot stimulating drink, like coffee, before me. I
was seated at a table, in the king’s huge chair. I was the king. Alone
here in my audience room. Through the windows, the falling moon
threw a yellow glow. The time of sleep was nearly over. The city was
awakening; I could hear its voice awakening to the round of daily
activity.
My city now! But the thought brought no exultation. This new
day would be dark like the other. If the Nameless Horror were
abroad in the city—Had I not better form an armed street patrol?
And keep the people indoors? I needed more messengers.
The young men from the outlying districts must be ordered in to
enroll with my recruiting staff. Suppose the people outside of Kalima
revolted against me? Would I have to go out and overawe them with
the Frazier beam?
Maxite, the scientist was coming back to talk with me presently. I
thanked God that he at least had learned from Ren my language. So
much to do, and I was so tired!
My head fell to my hands on the table. Alone there at last in the
great, silent room, I fell asleep.
“Why—”
“You’ve been asleep, highness. I did not want to awaken you.”
Maxite sat across the table from me. I aroused myself, rubbing
my eyes, embarrassed at my undignified position. Maxite had
evidently been sitting there a long time, waiting for me to have my
sleep out. The moonlight was gone. The windows were black
rectangles, the stars hidden by dark-gray cloud masses. But the city
was awake, its new day now fully advanced.
Maxite smiled. He was a small, gray-haired man of middle age,
black-robed, with gray ruching at his throat and wrists, and with a
yellow ball ornament dangling from a chain at his neck. He said,
“Others, too, are waiting to have your orders, highness. But we
knew you needed rest.”
At the farther door of the large apartment a group of men and a
few girls were standing. One by one, I saw them. My chief of the
guards reported that the city seemed normal; the Nameless Horror
had not appeared. A messenger from the rural districts along the
Warm Sea said the people were frightened.
They were obeying my orders to stay indoors; but the young
men were demanding that I let them come at once to Kalima, to get
from me weapons with which to defend their families.
Three girls presented themselves, with a petition that the girls be
allowed to join my army. Five hundred names were on it. A fat,
affluent-looking individual, a wealthy land owner he told me, came
to present his claim to immediate marriage to a girl who was now
returned from the Virgins’ Island. I sent him brusquely away.
There was some confusion over the return of the refugees from
the island. Some of the infants could not be returned to their homes;
the mothers were afraid to have them. Some of the virgins lived in
the rural sections; they wanted their parents brought into the city for
greater safety. And some of the old women had not been welcomed
home, and had been brought to the castle.
I did my best to straighten it out. Enlistment in my army had
already begun. I interviewed three trainers of the military animals,
for use on land, in the water, and in the air. The animals were ready.
The mechanical equipment was very nearly complete.
I sent word to the rural districts for all young men to come in and
present themselves to my recruiting officers. And any family that
wished, could come also. I issued a proclamation to the city, that all
homes be prepared here in Kalima to care for at least one family of
refugees, at government expense if necessary.
Expense! My national treasurer was already in despair. I knew
almost nothing of my nation’s finances, but I did not admit it. I
would learn, devise some methods of raising money. Already a
dozen ways were springing to my mind. That fat, middle-aged
landowner, for instance, he and others like him would not be so rich
when I got my government properly operating.
Maxite and I were alone again. “Come,” I said. “I’m ready.”
We had planned that he would show me through the arsenal. I
wanted first to see the small hand weapons. Maxite had told me that
we had a room with a thousand or more electronic needle pipes, a
simple hand device which generations ago had been used for
hunting birds.
The army would be equipped with it, Maxite planned. I thought,
too, if it were sufficiently simple, I would send it into the rural
districts, so that each home might be armed for defense.
“I want also,” said Maxite, “to show you our aerial image-finders.”
These, which he had already described, I needed at once. Our
enemy—I still could only call it the Nameless Horror—probably had a
base near Kalima. Prince Altho perhaps was in captivity there; Jim
and Ren, if they were alive, might be there also. This aerial device
might enable me to locate the enemy base.
Maxite and I were descending into the lower floors of the castle.
We passed rooms where the refugees were huddled. Girls had been
organized to care for them. On another, still lower floor, I saw my
guard pacing back and forth through dim stone corridors. We were
now below the terrace level, but higher than the level of the back
street.
We descended other floors, came to a narrow dark corridor. This,
Maxite told me, was at the street level of the back castle wall. I
remembered walking along that curving street, at the base of the
wall, remembered a small door there.
“It’s here,” said Maxite.
We stood in a dim blue radiance at the intersection of two
corridors. Ahead lay a floor-opening, where down a flight of curving
stone steps was the entrance to the first of the subterranean arsenal
rooms. To the right, a branching passageway led to the small street
gateway.
“A guard is there,” said Maxite, “armed with a fire-flash for close-
range work. He could kill anyone who came near him. Oh Grett!”
He called the guard but there was no answer. His soft voice
echoed between the narrow passage walls. We hastened to the gate
door. The guard was not there! But in the darkness we heard a
sound. Maxite’s hand-wire in its blue tube flung a faint beam around
us. On the stone flagging a figure lay twisting. We had heard the
scrape of its movement. It was the guard, lying there bound and
gagged!
XIV
FUGITIVES IN THE STARLIGHT
I had sent Alice, Sonya and Dolores into one of the castle
bedrooms. They were all tired and overwrought with the excitement
through which they had passed. A dream awakened Sonya, after
how long an interval she did not know—several hours undoubtedly.
She dreamed she had been talking with Prince Altho: he was in a
cave; Jim and Ren were with him.
For a long time Sonya lay pondering. Then she awakened the
other two girls.
“Listen, I want to go and try and rescue Altho.”
She told them her plan. They could take a small flying platform,
with a few birds. Once away from the city, the distraction of the
thought-waves of all its people, she would be able to communicate
with Altho or with Ren. Communicate with them, find them—rescue
them!
A mad, impossible adventure, perhaps, but to the girls it looked
feasible.
“Oh, Alice, oh, Dolores, shall we try it? Leonard will be many
days getting his army together. That is too dangerous, to wait so
long.”
Dolores turned to her with shining, tearful eyes. “If I could only
get to Jim, help him to safety.”
Sonya had other plans. She could get weapons, a small weapon,
the electronic needle pipe. She knew where they were kept, and
how to use them.
“I heard Ren discussing it one day with Maxite the scientist. And
there are image-finders stored in the same room. I think I know how
to use them.”
The girls decided to try it. They slipped unobserved from the
room. Sonya found them long, hooded black cloaks. In the darkness,
mingled with the confusion of arriving refugees, they got out of the
castle without being recognized.
“Where are we going?” Dolores whispered. They were all three
tense with excitement. Sonya had turned toward the rear of the
castle, into the dimly lighted street along the base of the wall.
“A gate-door here,” she whispered. “It is guarded by Grett. Quiet!
Stand close beside me, but do not speak. But be ready to do what I
say. Soon we will have the weapons.”
In the castle bedroom, before leaving, Sonya had tom a garment
into long, narrow strips, a staunch, tough fabric. She handed the
strips now to Alice. At the small door in the wall, they paused.
“Keep behind me,” Sonya whispered. “Over there in the shadow.
But be ready.”
The street along here was dark; it was a street little used and at
the moment it was empty. Sonya knocked boldly on the door.
“Grett! Oh, Grett!”
In her own language from within came the muffled question,
“Who is there?”
“It’s Sonya.”
“Yes?”
“Open the door.”
“No. I must not.”
“It’s only Sonya. Don’t you know my voice?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I’ve news from Ren. He is . . . oh Grett, you must let me show
you.”
There was the sound of dropping metal bars. The doors opened
cautiously a trifle.
Sonya put her hand casually on the door. “It’s only Sonya, Grett.
See here what I have.”
She tugged at the door. The guard was revealed, standing with
the leveled metal pipe in his hand. Sonya touched the weapon. “Turn
that away, Grett. It . . . frightens me!”
There was a low cry, a scuffle. Sonya had snatched the pipe. She
leaped backward, swung it level.
“Don’t move, Grett! Don’t make a sound! If you do I . . . I’ll kill
you!”
“Sonya!”
“I’m desperate! Can’t you see it? Get back in there!” She called
softly, “Alice! Dolores! Here! Come inside, quickly.”
She had backed the frightened, surprised young man into the
corridor, with leveled weapon and crisp menacing words. In the glow
of the passageway’s single light, she held the weapon while Alice
and Dolores bound the man’s legs and arms with the strips of fabric.
Sonya gagged him, and they rolled him along the floor to the wall
and left him.
Alice was grim and pale, frightened at what they had done.
Dolores was trembling. “We haven’t hurt him, have we?”
Sonya bent down, loosened the gag a trifle. “No, he’s all right.
Lie quiet, Grett. And when they find you, tell them you’re not to
blame. Sonya tricked you. We may be back by then, anyway, and I’ll
take the blame.”
The girls hurried down the corridor, down the stone steps into
the arsenal room. Sonya had been here once before with her uncle.
The place was dark, but Sonya found a hand-wire and Alice carried it
above her head. Its light glowed dimly blue, in a big room of
fearsome shadows. Overhead they could hear the faint tramp of a
guard. Every moment they expected to be discovered.
Sonya seized one of the electronic needle pipes, and the range
apparatus with which to operate it. And a large metal cylinder in
which was packed a group of image finders and their aerial controls.
With their loot under their cloaks, the girls hastily retreated. At the
gate-door they switched off the corridor light. Sonya murmured,
“Good-bye, Grett!”
They closed the gate-door after them. From the outside it
appeared barred. With the cloaks shrouding them they hurried to
Sonya’s home.
In a moment they had six birds harnessed to a small platform,
and were in the air.
Within the cave, Altho, Jim and Ren faced the giant murderous
intruder. The bruteman stood licking his lips, an imbecile leer on his
face.
There was a brief silence.
Altho spoke soft, soothing words to the hairy giant, and then
ripped out a sharp command. It went unheeded. The bruteman’s
dangling hand came up to his belt. But never reached it.
Jim screamed an exclamation to Ren, and leaped. His body
struck the bruteman full, a solid impact which would have flung Jim
back, but the giant’s huge arm went around him, lifted him like a
child. As he went up, he flung his arms around the thick, hairy neck
and clung.
His feet were high in the air as the bruteman straightened with a
savage, surprised cry. He tried to shake Jim off, but Jim clung with
one arm, with the other hand he gouged at the giant’s face.
Altho had leaped. The giant kept his feet, swaying, kicking; he
stopped, and with an upflung arm, dashed Jim’s body away. But Jim
was back at him again, he and Altho, now, clinging, kicking,
gouging.
And then Ren. The harrassed giant, fighting with scarce the
intelligence of a man, staggered across the cave with Altho and Jim
clawing at him. Their bodies struck Ren, and scrambling in the dark,
he caught a great hairy leg and wound himself around it.
In the pale-green glow of the cave, the giant bruteman surged
about. He tripped, went down, with the three men pounding on top
of him.
Jim shouted, “We’ve got him!”
But the giant was up, shaking them off, first one, then another,
tearing them loose, flinging them back. But always they returned to
claw at him. They fought silently, grimly, but the giant roared.
Harrassed, frightened, Altho had torn his belt away and flung it
aside. The giant stood panting, looking around to see where it had
gone. Altho was gripping his thick middle firmly with both hands;
Ren was wound about his legs.
Jim had been flung away again. He was picking himself up, but
he stopped. He had seen a jagged, metallic projection of the cave-
wall. It seemed loose. Jim tugged at it. The swaying bodies surged
past him. He tugged, worked it loose. It came free; in his hand he
held a heavy, jagged chunk of black metal.
“Ren! Work him over this way! Over here . . . here!”
Jim leaped to the slab of table for greater height. The giant’s
back was to it. Jim could not talk to Altho, and Altho could not see
him. But he could hear Jim’s reiterated call.
The bruteman tried to turn toward the insistent voice, but Altho
now understood and distracted his attention. And Ren at his legs,
was pushing him backward. A step; then another.
They came within reach of the table. Jim leaped into the air. He
struck the giant’s back; his hand went up, and the heavy chunk of
metal caught the bruteman full on the back of the skull.
He toppled, fell, writhing, jerking a moment, then lay still.
They disentangled themselves from him, and stood up. They
were all three bruised and winded. There was a jagged cut on Jim’s
forehead; he dashed the blood from his eyes.
“Let’s get out of here! Now’s the time! Now, or never!”
Altho’s pale face smiled at him questioningly.
Jim gestured. “Out . . . get out of here!” He added, “The belt.
What’d you do with the belt?”
The giant’s weapons. Altho could not understand the words, but
Jim saw the belt. He leaped over the huge, motionless body. Outside
the cave an uproar sounded.
Altho called a warning; he was gesturing vehemently at Jim to
come. Jim seized a small metal object at random from the giant’s
belt, an egg-shaped thing of white metal: a muzzle-projection, a
handle and a trigger.
Lights were moving nearby in the darkness with a confusion of
voices. The second of the giant guards at Altho’s cave had run away
in fear. He was shouting, gathering other guards around him. The
huge heads were bouncing forward over the rocks; calling
commands. The brute-bodies were running to them, each to his
master. The heads were mounting.
Jim turned to the right, up the valley. They were momentarily in
darkness, open metallic ground up a rocky slope, stars overhead,
lights and confusion behind them.
They ran. Jim had handed the giant’s weapon to Altho, thinking
he would know better how to use it. They ran swiftly. A tiny light to
one side picked them out, then it vanished. Jim pulled them sidewise
to change their course. Ren stumbled over the rocks as they ran, but
they kept him on his feet.
Jim panted, “A cliff . . . over there! We can climb it . . . or hide.”
Altho glanced back. The lights were rushing on up the valley. The
fugitives were running between jagged, tumbled boulders; Jim
thought they had eluded the pursuit. But suddenly ahead of them, a
head rose on its hands from behind a crag.
Jim jumped for it. He struck it. His fist struck the great face
between its green blazing eyes. The face smashed, cracked like the
shell of an egg. Noisome! His fist sank into a soft pulpy mass. He
jerked it free. The head rolled backward, the arms waving.
“Come on,” Jim shouted. He wiped his fist and arm on his jacket:
noisome, horrible!
“We’re on the ledge, Ren . . . can’t climb out of the valley. It’s too
steep.”
“Are they following us?”
“No. I can see lights going up the valley. Altho seems to want to
lie here, not try to climb higher. If only I could talk to him.”
“I’m trying to get Sonya’s thoughts, Jim.”
They lay on a dark ledge; a fifty foot drop was before them, a
sheer perpendicular wall. They had climbed beside it, where the
ground was broken. Over the ledge, some ten feet above it, was
another broader space with what seemed a cave-mouth behind it.
The crags were dim in the starlight; black gulleys, ravines were
everywhere. Below them spread the valley floor. Lights which
marked the pursuit had gone past.
For a time the three fugitives lay quiet. Jim’s mind went back to
the cave from which they had escaped. Two of the brutemen had
been on guard.
These brutemen were hardly more than animals, like tigers with
a lust for human blood. One had murderously entered the cave; the
other, listening, had become frightened and decamped, giving the
alarm.
Jim whispered impatiently, “Ren, can’t you get any thoughts from
Sonya?”
“No. I’m trying. I feel . . . I feel that Altho is getting them.”
It seemed so. Altho was lying with his head down on his hands.
Once he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and then he was
murmuring as though to himself.
“You’re right. He’s getting them,” Jim muttered. “Try again, Ren!”
Abruptly Ren exclaimed, “They’re coming! Sonya, with Dolores
and Alice.”
“Do they know where we are?”
“They’re trying to find us. Sonya says they haven’t seen any
lights yet to mark our valley. Altho has been trying to direct them.”
“Well, for a while we’re safe here. They—”
Jim never finished. From down the valley, by the cave-lights of
Talon’s encampment, a ball of fire mounted slowly upward, a tiny,
blazing white ball. It rose in a slow arc, and suddenly burst with a
blinding white glare.
The valley, the crags, the ledge upon which the fugitives lay were
all momentarily brilliantly illumined. Jim saw that beneath them in
the valley a hundred of the mounted heads were gazing upward.
And he knew too, that they had been seen upon the ledge.
A shout arose; a rush of the figures to climb. But a voice, Talon’s
voice, seemed commanding them to stop. Farther down the valley,
brutemen were dragging forward a heavy piece of apparatus, a huge
gun-muzzle on wheels, the muzzle pointed vertically upward.
Jim leaped to his feet. “We’ve got to get higher! Try to get to that
cave overhead.”
But Altho pulled him back. Altho still held the weapon Jim had
taken from the giant. He gestured with it. Jim sank back.
There was something going on down there in the valley. Jim
wondered if the weapon Altho had was of any use at this distance.
Altho seemed absorbed in thought communication. Suddenly from
over the cliff-tops across the valley, a small pink ball of light came
sailing, floating out over the valley in a huge segment of circle, a
thousand feet in the air.
A glowing pink ball; a concentrated radiance seeming to whirl
upon its axis, with tiny crescent streamers of light as it whirled. It
sailed in a curve above the valley, growing dimmer, as though
burning itself out, until in a moment it vanished.
Jim stared. But Altho knew what it was. He leaped to his feet.
XV
THE RESCUE
The small flying platform, with the girls prone upon its fur
covering, sailed up from Sonya’s home and over the city. The stars
were obscured by gathering black clouds, a threatening storm, but it
did not break. Sonya headed the birds for the Virgins’ Island.
They passed a thousand feet above it where a barge drawn by
swimming sea animals below was bringing the women and children
back to Kalima. Sonya had only the general direction of where she
wanted to go, the length of the Warm Sea toward the distant
mountains and caves. The Nameless Horror had been seen always in
that direction.
The girls lay silent. Sonya was in constant, though sometimes
vague communication with Altho. She knew the captives were in a
cave; then she got the thoughts clearer, and got Ren’s thoughts also.
But suddenly all the thoughts were broken.
The threatening storm passed. The moon was below the horizon.
But the stars came out clear and bright. The girls were calmer now,
grim with purpose. Sonya began connecting their scientific
apparatus, explaining it as well as she could.
The electronic needle pipe was a foot-long metallic pipe with a
diameter the size of a small human finger. It had a large, round-
metallic base, to be operated by two hands.
It projected a very small stream of electrons, which carried with
them a tiny, sharp-pointed fragment of metal, like a needle. The
needle flew with nearly the speed of light, expanding. But when it
struck it solidified.
There was a range finder for aiming, and a device for curving the
electronic stream, so that the beam could be sent to almost any
degree of curvature. In her heart, though she did not confess it even
to herself, Sonya was dubious of her ability to use the weapon.
She knew she could not aim it with any degree of skill. And she
did not know its range. This needle pipe was a very small size
projector, with a range, she thought, effective only a few hundred
feet.
The girls were now beyond the Warm Sea, flying over a broken,
mountainous country, black and desolate looking in the starlight.
Altho’s thoughts were with Sonya again. They had never been as
clear as this before. A fight, an escape, a dark ledge with a valley
below it. There were lights in the valley.
But where, in all this dark, mountainous waste, was that valley?
Sonya believed she was flying toward it. She had several times in the
last hour altered the direction of the flight. Altho’s thoughts, a dim
feeling of his approaching nearness, seemed to guide her.
It was very vague, an intuition more than a thought. Altho
himself did not know where he was, but the bond of love between
these two was very strong. Each could feel the other’s approaching
presence. He had tried to warn her away, but when she persisted,
he did his best to guide her.
Sonya murmured, “Now he says, Lights in the valley—you will see
the lights.”
But every desolate valley sweeping beneath them was pale and
wan in the starlight. Then Sonya prepared an image-finder. She
connected the batteries, the projector, and the grid of glowing wires.
Alice and Dolores held the grid between them. Sonya fired the
small projectile. It sailed off, a whirling pink ball. It was in reality a
small, flat disk with a lenslike eye and a whirling, pink, glowing
armature on top.
Over a radius of several miles Sonya’s raytron apparatus could
direct its flight, and back over the invisible connecting ray came an
image of all that the lens eye saw.
The pink ball of light sailed ahead and soon was lost to view. The
grid of wires which Alice and Dolores held glowed pink; then
suddenly glared white. A glare of white showed ahead in the sky. It
was the light flare Talon had sent up to locate the fugitives.
The flare went dark. The grid was pink again. Upon it, etched in
black, was a moving scene: mountains, crags, valleys, moving in
slow panorama, valleys all pale and empty in the starlight. Then one
showed dim, moving lights!
Alice cried, “Sonya . . . lights! We see them now!”
Sonya’s apparatus marked the position of the pink ball. She
turned the birds slightly, to fly after it.
The platform was almost over the valley. Sonya sent out another
pink disk. The girls bent over the grid, staring at the tiny movement
image; a dim, starlit valley. At the bottom of it, a group of busy
figures and a giant projector muzzle pointing vertically upward.
The girls watched the grid breathlessly. Its image, moving with
constantly changing viewpoint, was clearly etched, but dim and very
small: a cliff ledge with three figures upon it. From the ledge
suddenly a small red ring of fire leaped out. It sped downward,
struck a rock, and vanished with a puff.
It was Altho firing the weapon Jim had taken from the giant; in a
moment the still distant girls heard a report, like a tiny clap of
thunder, the sound of the red ring striking the rock. Down in the
valley the giant muzzle of the vertical projector began issuing a
stream of green light.
It mounted a hundred feet, sprayed out like a fountain column of
water. From the ground, huge black figures tossed a balloon head
into the column of light. The head rose, surged upward, until at the
top it hung in the light spray, balancing itself like a ball held at the
top of a jet of water.
It was all very swift, a moment or two while the girls stared at
the glowing grid. The head was nearly level with the ledge. In the
green light Altho’s figure showed plainly; he was standing at the
ledge, firing his red rings of flame.
But they were futile now. They floated slowly, and from below,
some hidden marksman was catching each of them with an upflung
pencil point of black light, a narrow beam, so dead black that it
showed clearly in the night. It caught the red fire rings; its rays
exploded them harmlessly in the air.
The grid went dark; the second lens disk had burned out. But the
platform itself now swept over the valley. The reality of the image
scene was spread beneath the girls. Sonya saw the ledge was large
enough to land upon; she guided the birds toward it.
She raised the electronic needle projector, fired it with a futile
aim and then cast it away. There was no time for her to attempt to
use it further. Her birds were swooping for the ledge, and they
needed her guidance. A moment, and they would be there.
But too late! The head in the fountain of green light held
something in his hands. A hum rose over the valley. Altho, standing
on the ledge, suddenly flung up his arms. His weapon fell from him.
He toppled, seemed trying to draw himself backward. But could not.
And then, forward from the ledge his struggling figure floated
into the air. On the ledge, Ren and Jim were frantically clinging to
avoid being drawn after him. The hum rose to a shrill whine.
In what seemed a whirlpool of air, or the levitation of an invisible
magnetic stream, Altho was drawn to the head on the supporting
green light beam. The green light slowly diminished.
The head, with arms holding Altho’s unconscious body, was
lowered to the ground. A voice down there shouted hurried
commands. The lights all went out sharply. In the starlight, Altho’s
body was surrounded by dark surging figures, and dragged away.
The platform swooped to the ledge, landed with a thump.
“Jim! Jim! Are you all right?” It was Dolores’s anxious voice. But
Sonya was cold, shuddering. All her hopes were vanished. She knew
that they could not go down into the dark valley, with all those
armed figures entrenched in the caves. Altho was lost to her.
Jim and Ren rushed to the platform. There was a moment of
confused greeting. Jim never knew how it quite happened, but from
the other ledge, ten feet above them, a head like Talon suddenly
leaped down. It flashed to Jim that the head must all this time have
been laboriously climbing in the darkness. Or perhaps had followed
some underground passage to the cave up there.
Dolores was standing slightly apart from the others. The head
seized her. On the upper ledge a giant bruteman was leaning down;
the head tried to lift Dolores to where the dangling arms of the
bruteman could reach her, arms which would have pulled her and
the head both up to the upper ledge.
It happened so quickly, it was so utterly unexpected, that Jim
and the other two girls were for an instant stricken with surprise.
Dolores screamed. It was the first that they knew of her peril. She
called, “Jim! Jim!”
But Ren was closer. He leaped before Jim, leaped in the dark for
the girl’s terrified voice. He struck the head with his shoulder. His
groping arms tore Dolores away.
There was a spurt of flame from some weapon the head was
carrying. It caught Ren in the chest, drilled him. He fell backward,
lay motionless. But he had saved Dolores from her captor. Jim and
Alice had reached her.
The bruteman leaned swiftly down. The head held up one of its
small arms. The bruteman drew his master to the upper ledge, with
a jerk as though he were raising a large, light ball. In the valley they
were trying to raise another beam of the green light.
Jim was carrying Dolores; he threw her to the platform and
dragged Ren’s inert body aboard, with Alice grimly helping him.
Sonya screamed at the birds.
From above, the head was sending down tiny spurts of flame.
They struck the fur coverings with the acrid smell of burning hair.
Jim flung the girls behind him; every moment he expected that the
flame jets would strike him.
It was only an instant, then the platform lifted, sailed away. The
ledge dropped beneath it. The dark, seemingly deserted valley
dropped and merged into the tumbled mountain waste.
The platform struggled on, sailing low. It was the Virgins’ Island
now. The moon was rising again with its flood of yellow radiance.
Ahead, toward Kalima, they saw a blob in the sky.
It was the large flying platform I had hastily equipped and
armed, coming out over the city to seek them.
But Ren was dead.
XVI
DEPARTURE FOR BATTLE
We were ready at last for our attack upon Talon’s forces. The
night had passed, and another long day, and night had come again.
Jim’s return, with what he had to tell us about Talon, was of
immeasurable help to me. I knew now what I was facing.
It was tremendously helpful also in arousing public enthusiasm
for the war. The Nameless Horror was nameless no longer. The
people recognized that a savage enemy was at their threshold, men
who would have to be fought and conquered.
I did not want a large fighting force, but I wanted it well armed
and trained, armed for defense also against what I could guess
Talon’s weapons might be. Jim had seen something of them.
I sent out scouting platforms with the aerial image finders. But
they brought me little information, for presently Talon realized what

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Philosophy of Personal Identity and Multiple

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The Everglades 1st Edition Sara Louise Kras

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MRCP PACES Manual Pastest 1st Edition Louise Pealing

Urban Youth and Education 1st Edition Louise Archer

Discourse is one of the most significant concepts of contemporary thinking in the

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© Britt-Louise Gunnarsson 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN: 978-0-8264-9213-5 (hardback)

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2. A theoretical model for contextual analysis of professional discourse 16

3. Methodology to explore the dynamic relationship between

SECTION 2: SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE

5. Non-verbal representation in articles within technology,

6. From a national to an international writing community:

SECTION 3: LEGISLATIVE DISCOURSE

8. The legislative writing process 123

SECTION 4: WORKPLACE DISCOURSE

10. The multilingual workplace: Discourse in a hospital and

SECTION 5: DISCOURSE IN LARGE

12. Business discourse in the globalized economy:

This book results from a long-lasting and great research interest of

This introductory section comprises three chapters. In Chapter 1, I set

Why is it important to analyse professional discourse? What is pro-

1.1 Why is it important to analyse

cornerstones of contacts between professionals and between profes-

Professional discourse has thus become an important area within

1.2 What is professional discourse?

1.3 What distinguishes professional

1.3.1 Expert discourse related to different domains

1.3.2 Goal-oriented, situated discourse

establishes a set of goal-oriented professional situations and these include

1.3.3 Conventionalized form of discourse

work have the goals of socializing the students or trainees in a suitable

1.3.4 Discourse in a socially ordered group

1.3.5 Discourse dependent on various societal framework systems

framework systems: a legal-societal framework, a technical-economical

1.3.6 Dynamically changing discourse

In today’s professional world we find an increasing number of glo-

1.4 What is the purpose of the book?

include discussions of both theory and methodology to provide tools

1.5 How is the book organized?

various empirical studies discussed in this book. Chapter 3 presents

was written based on this model. Reading and comprehension of laws

and the various societal ones. A model of communication is presented

In this chapter, I develop a theoretical model for contextual analysis of

2.1 The construction of professional discourse

create and recreate their respective domains. Due to the specializa-

The written and spoken sides of communication are also difficult

2.1.1 Cognitive dimension