Paper presented at ELF6 Conference, Rome 3 University, on 5 September 2013.

1. Emanuela Tenca
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
ELF6 – Roma Tre University
5 September 2013
BELF AND WEB AFFORDANCESBELF AND WEB AFFORDANCES
AS STRATEGIC RESOURCES FORAS STRATEGIC RESOURCES FOR
COMPANIES' GLOBAL WEBSITESCOMPANIES' GLOBAL WEBSITES

2. ● Background 1: What is globalisation?
● Background 2: BELF and the Web as tools for
corporate communication
● Analysis
● Materials
● Methods
● Preliminary findings
● Discussion of preliminary findings
● Final remarks
Outline of the presentation

3. Globalisation according to Held & al. (1999):
● A process or set of processes
● Emergence of interregional networks of
interaction and exchange
● Involvement of all social domains (cultural,
economic, political, legal, military, environmental)
● Deterritorialization/reterritorialization of
traditional economic, social and political
boundaries into subnational, regional and
supranational complexes.
Background 1: What is globalisation?

4. Interregional interaction and exchange networks
are possible thanks to advancements in transport
and communication infrastructures.
Implications for business activities:
● trading across national borders
● fiercer competition
● higher accountability towards stakeholders
● exploitation of the rapid communication fow to
disseminate knowledge about economic, social
and environmental performances.
Background 1: What is globalisation?

5. English has become “the language of
globalisation” (Gnutzmann&Intemann 2008), and
it is used in the majority of business
communication exchanges especially by NNSs
(Louhiala Salminen&Kankaanranta 2011).
This shared language to conduct business
worldwide is often referred to as BELF, Business
English Lingua Franca (Louhiala-Salminen & al.
2005).
Background 2: BELF and the Web as
tools for corporate communication

6. During the last two decades the advent of the
Web, “the pivotal facet” of CMC (Petroni 2011,
24), has offered companies a new medium to
promote products and maintain business
relationships with stakeholders worldwide.
Web-mediated intercultural business
communication takes advantage of such
affordances as hypertextuality, multimodality,
interactivity.
Background 2: BELF and the Web as
tools for corporate communication

7. The implementation of BELF as a code and of
the Web as a medium have converged in such
a way to give rise to companies' global
websites, which can be regarded as virtual
repositories of the promotional materials
delivered by companies, made accessible to
any stakeholder in any part of the world
24/7/365.
Background 2: The Web and BELF as
tools for corporate communication

8. The aim of the analysis is to explore the discursive
and hypertextual/multimodal practices adopted by
a sample of Italian companies active in the
renewable energy sector to promote their
products, services and technologies.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
● Which are the most efficiently employed lexico-
grammatical constructions to promote products
and persuade customers?
● How does textual information coexist with and is
infuenced by web affordances?
Analysis

9. Web pages in companies' global websites
dedicated to the descriptions of products,
services and technologies.
Industry sector: renewable energy
→ high-stakes sector: the increase in human
activities has brought about a depletion of
resources, climate change, environmental
degradation, and a growing need for clean
energy production.
Materials

10. Country of origin: Italy
→ among the OECD countries, and state
member of the EU (supranational entities)
→ in Cramer's conceptualisation of the spread
and use of English in the EU (2007), Italy belongs
to the Expanding Circle: English is acquired at
school, and used in international encounters.
→ the renewable energy industry in Italy is
expanding, with investors and new companies
entering the sector (Mergermarket 2013).
Materials

11. The communicative agenda of each company is achieved
by the use of multimodal resources, hence a mixed
methodological approach is required to assess the
interconnectedness of textual information and other
semiotic features:
● Corpus Linguistics: wordlists and concordance strings
(most frequent content words, incidence of company
names, noun phrases, pronouns, acronyms).
● Multimodal Discourse Analysis: qualitative analysis of
multimodal resources (images, colours, logos, layout
design) taking into account hypertextual and interactive
strategies as well).
Methods

12. Methods
COMPANY NAMECOMPANY NAME ENERGYENERGY
SOURCESOURCE SECTIONSSECTIONS TOKENSTOKENS
WORDWORD
TYPESTYPES
Bonfiglioli SpA Wind
Applications &
Solutions
Or Business
Area>Wind>
Products
3,909 1,127
IREM SpA Hydropower Products 1,438 419
Micron – Cappello
Alluminio srl Photovoltaics Products (Why
Micron, FAQs) 1,836 670
Palazzetti SpA Biomass The products 40,926 3,886
Turboden srl* Geothermal
Products
(Applications,
Services)
1,321 539
*a company of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. group.

13. Bonfiglioli SpA
● 'Application&Solution', 'Business Area': noun phrases.
● 10 most frequent content words: control, motors,
energy, Bonfiglioli, drive, (motor), wind, inverters, output,
power, shaft.
● Use of noun phrases to package specialised knowledge:
Selectable Vector control function, AEC regenerating
inverters, wind turbine blades and systems.
● Company is referred to by its name 23 times:
indirectness. Exclusive we used only 5 times:
- Bonfiglioli places a team of specialist and highly
competent engineers at its customers’ [sic] disposal [...].
- Discover more on how we can serve you.

14. Bonfiglioli SpA
● Interactivity: two paths lead to the product section.
- Applications&Solutions: search tools
- Business Area>Wind>Products
● Hyperlinks realised by the use of directives: discover
more, read more, find your local partner.
● Corporate colours grey, white, blue, logo in the top left-
hand corner of the screen.
● Wind energy symbolised graphically by wind turbines.
● Product image in the middle of the page, textual
description on the right; technical data, charts, at the
bottom of the page.

16. IREM SpA
● 'Products': noun.
● 10 most frequent content words: generator, electric, power,
control, grid, turbines, operation, (turbine), energy, pdf,
boards.
● Usage of 'energy' and 'power': disseminating specialised
knowledge.
- Ecowatt hydroelectric turbines […] transform the kinetic
energy of the water into precious electricity.
- The turbine-generator group constantly transforms
hydraulic energy into electric power [...].
● Passive voice: focus on the products and their features.
- [...] the wheel is mounted directly on the generator shaft.
- These models are fitted with some dc electric driving gears.

17. IREM SpA
● Interactivity: a drop-down menu caters for different
navigating paths (Power Supply, Hydro, Professional
lightning, Lightning).
● Corporate colours black, white, orange, red, logo in the
top left-hand corner of the screen.
● Hydroelettric energy symbolised in a banner image in
the top section of the page representing water falls.
● Clickable product images and active links to
downloadable pdfs in the bottom section of the page. Use
of directives: 'read more'.

19. The noun phrase 'Attached Files' contrasts with the use of
directives used on the same page to realize hyperlinks
('find out more'), and it implies a degree of staticity that
clashes with the dynamic nature of the Web .

20. Micron – Cappello Alluminio srl
● 'Products': noun, 'Why Micron': indirect question, 'FAQs':
acronym.
● 10 most frequent content words: Micron, photovoltaic, plant,
modules, power, panels, cell (cells), energy, conditions,
electrical.
● 'Micron' used as modifier: Micron Technology, Micron
Photovoltaic cells, Micron Photovoltaic Module.
● Theme-rheme structure to foreground the products and
describe their features and performances.
- A photovoltaic plant is a system composed of several
complementary elements [...].
- [T]he thermal solar panels utilize the thermal energy of the
sun [...].

21. ● Interactivity: a drop-down menu caters for different
navigating paths (The Micron Module, Polycrystalline,
Monocrystalline, etc.).
● Corporate colours: white and light blue for the
company, light green for the group.
● Company logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen,
group logo in the top middle section of the screen (small
font).
● Slide show in the top section of the page showing
phases of the panels production inside the factory.
Micron – Cappello Alluminio srl

23. Palazzetti SpA
● 'The products': noun phrase.
● 10 most frequent content words: power, thermal, total
(cfr. 'Total thermal power' used to describe the products),
dimensions, pellet, firebox, you, system, efficiency, made.
● Usage of 'you', questions, directives to reach out to the
web user.
- Would you like to check this personally? Click here to
download the list of all our certified products [...].
● Exclusive we to refer to the company.
- We offer a vast range of fireboxes capable of satisfying
any requirement.
- We were the first to offer stoves having this technology
at the end of the 90s.

24. ● Interactivity: drop-down menus, hyperlinks listed on the
left, search tool to browse products.
● Corporate colours white and red, company logo in the
top middle section of the screen.
● Banner images: one on top of the screen (the same for
the whole website), one in the middle (different from
section to section).
● Product descriptions: images in the middle of the screen,
technical features on the right, textual information in the
bottom section of the page.
Palazzetti SpA

27. Turboden srl
● 'Products', 'Applications', 'Services': nouns.
● 10 most frequent content words: Turboden, power,
geothermal, electric, units, heat, CHP, HR, net, active.
● 'Turboden' used to refer to the company (indirectness), or as
a modifier.
- […] Turboden intends to promote its versatile ORC
technology and know-how.
- […] in the early Nineties, Turboden completed a 1,000 kWel
plant in Austria.
- Turboden turbogenerators electric power output, Turboden
ORC technology, Turboden Online Service
● Use of acronyms for the names of the products: CHP
(Combined Heat and Power Units), HR (Heat Recovery Units),
HRS (High Electrical Efficiency Units).

28. Turboden srl
● Moderate degree of interactivity: no drop-down menus,
heavy reliance on downloadable brochures and data
sheets in pdf format.
● Corporate colours, red and grey, company logo in the
top middle section of the screen.
● Banner images in the top section of the screen.
● Hyperlinks to social networks: disseminating knowledge
and promoting the brand outside the company's website.
● 'Applications' sections: hyperlinks are realized by four
clickable boxes (one for each energy source with which
the company deals) combining images and text.

30. The use of colours, images, bullet points and different
font sizes caters for multimodality. The heading 'Is it
suitable for you?' reaches out to the web user.

31. Discussion of preliminary findings
Effective corporate communication via global website can
be obtained thanks to the strategic implementation of
BELF and Web affordances.
● Disseminating specialised knowledge: high incidence of
content words regarding the different energy sources, use
of noun phrases to package information, passive voice to
foreground the products and their features.
● Promoting the products and the company:
- thematization, directives, 'we'/'you', and questions to
involve the reader.
- multimodal resources (colours, images, layout) to
attract the web user's attention.
- interactivity (hyperlinks, drop-down menus) provide for
a personalised navigation within the website.

32. Discussion of preliminary findings
Yet, interactivity seems to be occasionally
constrained by the companies' preference for
downloadable pdf files.
Heavy reliance on pdf files may entail running the
risk to simply 'push' information to the web user.
This choice is refected in the use of language (i.e.
'attached' files) .

33. Concluding remarks
Globalisation impacts on the way companies promote
their products and disseminate knowledge about their
performances. According to Louhiala
Salminen&Kankaanranta 2011
● BELF: a consequence and a prerequisite of globalisation
● Communication technologies: “the ultimate enablers of
global communication”.
Efficient web-mediated intercultural business
communication relies on the convergence of language
and the affordances offered by the medium.

34. Concluding remarks
Each company makes a personalised use of BELF and
the Web: the more strategical the implementation of
language and medium is, the more efficient
communication will be.
● Language is adapted by the companies to fulfil their
organisational aims.
● Meaning is created adopting all the semiotic resources
available, and the visual aspect gains prominence.
● When interactivity is not exploited to the full, the web-
mediated communication may lose some of its
efficacy.

35. Thank you!emanuela.tenca@unimore.it

36. Question
Time