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Article published In:
(Inter)Cultural Dialogues
Edited by Răzvan Săftoiu
[Language and Dialogue 13:3] 2023
► pp. 309–335

Building trust in the transport sector during the pandemic

A cross-cultural analysis

| University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
| University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

This paper looks at cross-cultural variation in corporate communication over the pandemic, focusing on the language adopted by rail companies in the UK and Italy to enhance trust in safety and highlighting how they engage in communicative action with potential passengers and other online users. The analysis shows that UK companies generally prefer personal forms of self-mention and avoid technicisms, while Italian companies adopt more formal language and more impersonal forms of self-representation. Common elements seem to be related to repeated communicative functions, and the semantic elements they involve, thus highlighting the close link between pragmatic units and lexico-grammatical patterns (with their semantics), as well as the interplay between meaning, dialogic action and context in communication.

Keywords: cross-cultural variation, dialogic action, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), trust, confidence, benevolence, integrity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Materials and methods
  • 3.Railway websites: The lexis of H&S
    • 3.1H&S webpages
      • 3.1.1Wordlists and keyword lists
      • 3.1.2Collocation analysis of H&S webpages
    • 3.2CSR webpages
      • 3.2.1Wordlists and keyword lists
      • 3.2.1Collocation analysis and phraseology in CSR webpages
    • 3.3Summing up
  • 4.Trust repair strategies in H&S communication
    • 4.1Trust repair strategies in H&S webpages
    • 4.2Trust Repair Strategies in CSR webpages
      • 4.2.1Trust repair strategies in Italian CSR webpages
      • 4.2.2Trust repair strategies in UK CSR webpages
  • 5.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 18 September 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00154.bon
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