Functions of Expressivity in Corporate Media

Abstract

To fill the research gap and expand the body of knowledge on the category of expressivity in modern language, the current study investigates the effect of expressive linguistic and paralinguistic means on target audiences of corporate press of different types: clients, business partners and employees. Drawing on insights from approach to expressive means in texts in different functional styles, this article demonstrates how expressive linguistic and paralinguistic means are employed in order to establish a contact with a target audience and facilitate the positive corporate image of the enterprise and its products and services. Corporate magazines which outnumber in total nonrecurrent circulations non-corporate ones and embrace huge audience, are shown as mass media that perform such functions as informing and public opinion formation, typical of non-corporate media. Expressivity in magazines for clients is viewed as a means of goods promotion and clients' loyalty sustainment; in magazines for staff, expressivity is involved in the process of forming a model of employee behavior, thus contributing to company values actualization and staff involvement into their implementation; which enables them to represent the company in the society; whereas in magazines for partners it is used for keeping the readers' attention and influencing their opinion, enhancing the rational assessment of the common professional issues.