MAPPING OUT RESEARCH PATHS TO SPECIALISED DOMAINS AND DISCOURSE: THE EXAMPLE OF BUSINESS CYCLES AND FINANCIAL CRISES

Abstract

Although ESP now includes a wider range of approaches than it used to, it is still often associated with ESP practitioners’ traditional focus on a learner-centred, needs-based approach. Yet, prior to teaching ESP students, it is essential for the linguist to become more familiar with the specialised domain s/he is going to deal with in her/his teaching. This paper aims at providing an overview of the various angles from which linguists can use language as an entry point to dig deeper into specialised domains and discourse that they may not be familiar with. It uses economic cycles and financial crises as an example, and is based on a corpus of economics textbooks, research articles, central bank discourse, as well as newspapers and magazines. Starting from the logical focus on terms, the researcher in SVE is invited to proceed further by paying attention to phrases, and to gradually consider ever larger units. A diachronic approach opens new perspectives at each stage, and discourse analysis, borrowing from pragmatics, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, and storytelling, is explored to show how important it is to seek a holistic approach to specialised discourse and domains.