Discursive practices in disciplinary and professional contexts

Analysis of professional discourse, which often forms the basis of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) theory and practice, has often been constrained by its focus on textual characteristics, paying little attention to professional practices in specific disciplinary, institutional, or organisational contexts within which these discourses are embedded. This has led to a divide between discourse and genre analysts, on the one hand, and organisational analysts and professional communication theorists, on the other, even though all of them seem to pursue similar objectives. One of the consequences of such mutually exclusive perspectives is that they often take only a partial view of discursive, professional, institutional, and organisational practices. Just as professional communication scholars pay less attention to language use, similarly ESP practitioners do not view professional practices critically. Organisational theorists, in a similar fashion, tend to ignore discursive practices to focus entirely on text-external factors for the study of organisational behaviour. This paper argues that discursive practices within specific professional cultures have multiple perspectives and hence their analysis requires integration of discursive practices with disciplinary, professional, organisational and institutional practices, which are often realized through specialized discourses. The main purpose of the paper therefore is to review recent work in some of these diverse to propose an integration of text- internal as well as text-external perspectives on the analysis of professional discourses, so that we can have a more informed and comprehensive view of the discursive realities of disciplinary and professional practices.