Referential and affective force in oral business presentations: the role of narration

Oral business genres is the subject of this investigation, in particular new or developing computer-mediated ones. A series of transcribed internal oral company presentations provides the data for this study, which traces the interaction between referential, ideational communicative functions and interpersonal, persuasive ones. The linguistic and pragmatic analysis of the functioning of questions in a narrative framework reveals how interlocutor strategies convert objective information into subjectively-coloured accounts, imbued with affective force. The study demonstrates the proximity and embedding of expository and narrative modes in discourse.