Variation of general menaing key words in press releases from British and Spanish companies: gaining deeper insights into corporate discourse

Abstract

This study compares the use of general meaning keywords in press releases from energy companies in Britain and Spain. The analysis of general meaning keywords in specialist corpora of this type allows for a more refined corpus-based comparison of corporate discourse than is the case when comparing wordlists including similar technical issues and terms. The keywords were identified with WordSmith Tools (Smith, 2005), and were then further analysed with Sketch Engine’s word sketch tool in order to determine their collocational patterns. The findings suggest that, even within the same industrial sector, corporate discourse can vary substantially, and that this is a reflection of different communicative strategies and the different social and cultural contexts in which they are employed across the world.