PROFESSIONAL LANGUAGE IN PRESENT-DAY ROMANIAN.

LINGUISTIC PATTERNS AND DISCURSIVE STRUCTURES

Stage 1
October December 2007
In the first stage of this project, the team coordinated by Prof. Mihaela Gheorghe
PhD concentrated full attention on two objectives:
(1) enlargement of the documentary basis about the research topic and
(2) coordination of the research project.
The associated activities are essential to start fundamental research focusing on
professional language in present-day Romanian. These activities refer mainly to the
identification of relevant studies for the research topic that were published in specialized
journals so that the bibliography for this research project could be completed.
The books that we bought from prestigious publishing houses are from the field of
pragmatics, discourse analysis, contrastive grammar, all these being relevant for the
research topic aiming at identifying and describing linguistic patterns and discursive
structures of professional Romanian.
Although we did not aim at promoting the project from the very beginning, we
tried to let the scientific community know about our endeavor and took part at the
national symposium organized by the Institute for Linguistics Iorgu Iordan Al. Rosetti
within the Romanian Academy between 13-14 November 2007 and at the annual
conference of the Romanian Language Department within the University of Bucharest
between 7-8 December 2007. These are two of the most prestigious conferences focusing
on Romanian linguistics. This idea can be promoted by the international opening of the
conference of the Romanian Language Department since Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and A.
Metzeltin, member of the Austrian Academy, together with other researchers from the
University of Amsterdam were keynote speakers and guest speakers at this scientific
meeting. This is the general framework where Stanca Mda, Rzvan Sftoiu and Mihaela
Gheorghe presented the project that had just started. It was a good opportunity for us to
get in contact with the members of a project coordinated by the University of Amsterdam
for future collaboration about the research methodology. The idea of promoting the
project within the scientific community was continued by Mihaela Gheorghe, who
published an article in the Scientific Bulletin of Transilvania University of Braov.
Although it was not an objective in itself for this stage, we anticipated activities
that are connected with future objectives and sent for review the abstract of a collective
paper for the IADA Workshop to be held in May, in Milan (Italy).

Stage 2
January October 2008
In the second stage of the research project, the team coordinated by Prof. Mihaela
Gheorghe PhD concentrated full attention on the objective of putting together and
publishing a corpus of written texts in professional Romanian.
Between January and February 2008, the members of the team held weekly
meetings to refine the methodology of data gathering. This was the period when a series
of theoretical and practical coordinates were agreed on. We were mainly concerned with
practical and ethical aspects of our research. Reading about the successful solution
proposed by the participatory methodology put forward by Janet Holmes at Victoria
University in Wellington, we agreed to adopt this methodology and adapt it to written
texts. The methodology proposed by Janet Holmes and her team is based on voluntary
actions, i.e. people working in a certain department are in permanent contact with the
research team and give them useful information on the working environment. Thus, the
researcher does not interfere with the work and the language it gets is as natural as it
can be. What is more, there is an ongoing dialogue with the organizations that agreed to
be involved in such a research and the research is an active one.
After we agreed on the methodology, we started putting together the texts for the
corpus and between February and May 2008, we worked with the collected data: they
were sorted out, made secret (names, details, phone numbers were deleted) to ensure
they were fully confidential and an individual typological record was designed for each
text.
After the texts were put together and classified according to a set of variables, an
introductory study was written preceding the published corpus. The book Comunicarea la
locul de munc. Schi de tipologie a textelor redactate n mediul profesional romnesc
was edited by Mihaela Gheorghe, Stanca Mda and Rzvan Sftoiu and was published at
the Transilvania University Publishing House in 2009, ISBN 978-973-598-380-2.
Three members of the project (Mda Stanca, Gheorghe Mihaela and Sftoiu
Rzvan) presented the paper entitled Decision-Making Process in some Romanian
Workplace Meetings at the IADA Workshop Word Meaning in Argumentative Dialogue,
which was held in Milan, Italy. The paper was later submitted for publication and it was
blindly reviewed. The paper was selected for publication in the international journal
(http://journalseek.net/cgi-bin/journalseek/journalsearch.cgi?field=issn&query=11221917) Lanalisi linguistica e letteraria. A cura della Facolt di Lingue e Letterature
straniere dellUniversit Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, XVI, no. 2, 2008, Milan, Italy, ISSN
1122-1917.

Stage 3
November 2008 September 2009
In the third stage of the research project, the team coordinated by Prof. Mihaela
Gheorghe PhD concentrated full attention on three objectives:
(1) putting up and publishing a corpus of workplace verbal interactions,
(2) analysis of some linguistic patterns in professional Romanian and
(3) analysis of some discursive structures that are specific to workplace
communication on the basis of the collected data.
During January and June 2009, together with part of the 2nd year students in the
Masters program Language sciences and communication and with part of the 1st year
students in the Masters program Studies in Romanian language and literature, a series
of transcriptions were made using a preliminary set of transcription methods. At the
same time, new recordings were made in various companies and organizations. We
signed a collaboration protocol with old and new organizations in various fields of
activity: trade, research, education, journalism, training professionals.
The book Comunicarea la locul de munc. Corpus de interaciune verbal n
mediul profesional is in press at the Transilvania University Publishing House (Editorial
contract no. 1560/ 04.09.2009). The volume includes transcriptions of excerpts from the
recordings that were made before and during the research program. We believe that the
excerpts of professional Romanian are very useful for future research for the members of
this research team and for specialists in the filed of linguistics or human resources.
As far as dissemination activity is concerned, we focused our attention on the
following aspects:
(a)

sending

in

for

blind

review

paper

to

be

published

in

an

internationally recognized journal;

(b)

taking part in specialty conferences that have common topics with our
research project;

(c)

initiating and attracting Masters students in our research program.

This activity is possible by the courses that some members of the
team teach at Masters level at Transilvania University of Braov:
Mihaela Gheorghe (Behavioral Rhetoric, Masters program Linguistic
studies for intercultural communication), Liliana Coposescu (Research
methods in Linguistics, Masters program Linguistic studies for
intercultural communication) and Stanca Mda (Language use in
professional

contexts,

Masters

program

Studies

in

Romanian

language and literature, the distance learning course Communication

in professional contexts, 127 pages).

Between September 14-19, 2009, three members of the research team - Stanca
Mda, Rzvan Sftoiu and Liliana Coposescu took part in the 12 th IADA Conference in
Barcelona, Spain.
The paper entitled Workplace meetings a site for polyphonic discourses. Aspects
from present-day Romanian institutional communication aims at emphasizing the idea
that workplace meetings are a venue where different discourses meet: from social talk to
transactional communication and back to social talk. The authors adopted the proposal
made by Holmes (2000), and discussed small talk initial, final (Laver 1975) or
transitional (Sftoiu 2006) as part of the larger conversational continuum. Rzvan
Sftoiu argues that transitional small talk amplifies the feeling of equality among
employees and leads to the melting of social distances between superiors and
subordinates.
An important role in establishing, maintaining and reaffirming relationships both
work and social is played by humor. Stanca Mda further discusses humor in two of its
instances, either conversational, spontaneous puns without a fixed structure, or canned,
prearranged jokes that are inserted during the discourse that is performed in order to
amuse the audience or to detention the atmosphere.
In the third part of the present paper, Mihaela Gheorghe and Liliana Coposescu
focus on polyphony and discuss it as iteration, the quality of words and phrases of being
saturated by traits of previous dialogues. Thus, we address the issue of linguistic clich
(lexical and syntactic) in professional communication. during meetings various discourses
meet, from informal communication to transactional talk and back to informal talk.
The paper Recent Linguistic Changes in Romanian Workplace Communication was
sent for review in February 2009 to the scientific committee of the international
conference Partnerships in Action. Research, Practice and Training, organized by
Professional Communication Association, in Hong Kong, in December 2008. The paper
was accepted for publication in September 2009 and is going to appear in Bhatia V.K.,
Cheng W., Du-Babcock B., and Lung J. (eds.) Language for Professional Communication:
Research,

Practice

and

Training,

Hong

Kong:

Asia-Pacific

LSP

and

Professional

Communication Association, City University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, ISBN 978-962-367-652-6.
The paper Communicative Patterns in Romanian Workplace Written Texts was
accepted with modifications on July 24, 2009 to be published in the ISI journal Revista
Signos (ISSN 0035-0451). We made all the modifications that were indicated in the
acceptance letter and we resent the paper on September 4, 2009.