The discursive encoding of changing business values in CSR reports : a corpus-based investigation

The chapter seeks to unveil discursive signs of paradigmatic change in contemporary discourse about business and society. The theoretical underpinnings of the investigation lie in a constructivist approach to language and discourse which sees discourse and social reality as mutually interdependent and, indeed, mutually constitutive (Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999). Under this perspective the rise of CSR can be seen at the same time as a symptom and a cause of the progressive establishment of a new discourse of business which is gradually complementing – and sometimes even replacing – conventionally accepted assumptions about the role of business in society. Changing such assumptions entails a shift from a view of profit as the one and only underlying motive in a business’ actions, to a conceptualisation of businesses as social actors who firmly maintain an economic, profit-oriented role, but accept that such role may be subsumed under a higher-order social function which takes precedence over the pursuit of profit. Such shift has not occurred overnight, but rather is the result of a still ongoing discursive negotiation which takes place in multiple sites of engagement in business discourse, of which the dedicated branch which goes under the name of CSR reporting is a prime candidate for analysis. The analysis conducted in this chapter investigates selected aspects of authorial stance in respect of definitions of existing and emerging conceptualisations of the role of business in society, with a view to identifying the linguistic strategies deployed in their negotiation within CSR discourse, and determining their pragmatic effects in terms of the progressive establishment of a new interpretative paradigm.