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Part of
Engagement in Professional Genres
Edited by Carmen Sancho Guinda
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 301] 2019
► pp. 197–216

Chapter 11
Recruitment websites and the socialization of new employees

Dialogicity and graduation

| University of Navarra, Spain
The complex culture of the large corporation today is mainly shaped by persuasive rather than coercive means. In its messages, the company moulds its own identity and proposes roles for the different players through discourse, providing the information that is considered appropriate to each addressee, and suggesting what behaviours are desirable or acceptable. This trend is most intense at the beginning of a person’s life with the firm. How a corporate body engages with would-be and recent recruits is of considerable interest to analysts who focus on the workings of discourse in society. This chapter explores the system of engagement operating multimodally in the recruitment and careers websites of twenty high-profile companies.
Keywords: corporate discourse, structuration, recruitment, management theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Texts and theoretical framework
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Engagement through dialogue
    • 3.2Closing down the dialogue
    • 3.3Staging a dialogue with the reader
    • 3.4Dialogue through monoglossic utterances
    • 3.5Dialogue through testimonies, narratives and multimodal resources
    • 3.6Engagement through graduation
  • 4.Discussion
  • References
  • Company websites
Published online: 24 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.301.11bre
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Company websites
Allen & Overy: [URL]
Clifford Chance: [URL]
BP: [URL]
Shell: [URL]
Tesco: [URL]
Sainsbury: [URL]
Boots: [URL]
Superdrug: [URL]
HSBC: [URL]
Lloyds Banking Group: [URL]
GSK: [URL]
Astrazeneca: [URL]
Unilever: [URL]
Proctor and Gamble: [URL]
Orange: [URL]
Nokia: [URL]
Price Waterhouse: [URL]
Deloitte: [URL]
Jaguar Land Rover: [URL]
Airbus: [URL]