Descriptive processes in business audio-conferencing: telling the corporate story.

Using both the quantitative instruments of corpus analysis and the theoretical, explanatory frameworks of cognitive linguistics, a corpus of specialized business communications in computer-mediated audio-conferencing format provides the data for this analysis. It is possible to identify two kinds of descriptive discourse, object and subject-centred , both distinct in communicative function, text organization and pragma-grammatical choices. The study corroborates cognitive linguistic theory about the pragmatics of nominalization and tense usage.