CSR Communication from a Rhetorical and Semiotic Perspective - draft version March 2022 (original) (raw)
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CSR Communication from a Rhetorical and Semiotic Perspective
Routledge eBooks, 2022
This chapter presents the rhetorical and semiotic approach to CSR. The first part of the chapter asks what this “thing” called rhetoric and semiotic is. We introduce some references and notions that are useful to understand relevant aspects of the theoretical foundations and toolbox of these theoretical approaches. The second section asks how this toolbox has been applied to analysis of CSR communication. We present some contributions and results, with a specific focus on the environmental aspects of CSR as a specific sub-field. The third and last section asks where we would like this research field to go, pointing to potential paths for future developments. The main goal is not to conduct a complete review of the literature, but to contextualize and highlight some interesting contributions, and to pinpoint some needs for the future.
CSR Communication Research: A Theoretical-cum-Methodological Perspective From Semiotics
Business & Society, 2019
Despite the proliferation of studies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus and a cardinal methodological base for research on the quality of CSR communication. Over the decades, studies in this space have remained conflicting, unintegrated, and sometimes overlapping. Drawing on semiotics—a linguistic-based theoretical and analytical tool, our article explores an alternative perspective to evaluating the quality and reliability of sustainability reports. Our article advances CSR communication research by introducing a theoretical-cum-methodological perspective which provides unique insights into how to evaluate the quality of CSR communication. Particularly, we illustrate the application of our proposed methodology on selected U.K. FTSE 100 companies. Our two-phased analysis employed the Greimas Canonical Narrative Schema and the Semiotic Square of Veridiction in drawing meanings from selected sustainability/CSR reports. In addition, we present a dist...
Handbook of communication and corporate social responsibility
The concept of rhetoric helps us to understand the specific textual strategies that corporations employ when they communicate about corporate social responsibility (CSR). This chapter briefly defines what rhetoric is, reviews the literature on CSR rhetoric, and then demonstrates the relevance of two crucial rhetorical concepts-the rhetorical situation and ethos. The former alerts us to how rhetorical utterances are influenced by their context. For instance, corporations have to admit that they have responsibilities beyond profit-making, but do not necessarily have to go overboard in terms of CSR engagement. The significance of rhetorical theory is also highlighted by the concept of ethos, which is helpful in analyzing precisely how corporations attempt to enhance their credibility when they communicate about CSR.
Insights Regarding the Applicability of Semiotics to CSR Communication Research
The chapter argues for a linguistic based theory and analytical tool – Semiotics in evaluating the quality and authenticity of Corporate Social Responsibility Reports (CSRR). Despite the proliferation of studies on CSR communication, there is lack of consensus and cardinal methodological base for evaluating the quality of CSRR. Over the decades, the findings from the enormous studies on the subject have remained conflicting, unintegrated and often pedestrian or overlapping. Drawing on Semiotics – a linguistic-based theoretical and analytical tool, this chapter explores an alternative perspective to evaluating the quality and veracity of CSR reports. The author proposed a two-phased model that employed the Greimas semiotics narrative schema and the semiotic square of veridiction in drawing meanings from CSRR. The chapter advances CSR communication research by introducing a fundamental theoretical methodology.
A Semiotic approach to evaluating the quality and veracity of CSR reporting
This paper demonstrate the need for a 'linguistic turn' in drawing meanings from corporate disclosures and accountability statements in order to reveal the genuineness and raison d'être of the disclosures. The study explores the use of a linguistic based theory and analytical tool -Semioticsin investigating the quality and veracity of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosures in annual reports. To do this, the texts of Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) narratives in the annual reports of sampled companies were analysed in order to reveal the reality of the disclosures. The authors argue that most CCI disclosure could be perceived as just another management process which enables companies to signal CSR compliance as the study revealed that signification of reality is either doubtful or unreal for most sampled companies. As well as the novelty of introducing semiotics into the CSR disclosure literature, this paper presents a unique CSR Semiotic Reality Model capable of guiding corporations in their CSR activities and reporting.
A Brief Presentation: the Rhetoric of Risk in CSR Reports
This is a brief presentation of the methodology of a study in progress for identifying rhetorical strategies used in CSR reports having to deal with risk issues. It presents the conceptual approach of a study meant to analyze excerpts of CSR reports for 2012 of several US large companies. The analysis is rooted in discourse analysis and rhetorical theory. The focus of the study is the way in which the company addresses the stakeholders so as to argue implicitly in favor of the company's preoccupation for risk prevention, elimination of various hazards, counter balancing negative consequences and effects of the company's activity. The study discusses anticipates on possible findings to be later valued in the field of Business Ethics.
Business & Society
Within the burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication literature, the question of the relationship between CSR practices and CSR communication (or between “walk” and “talk”) has been a central concern. Recently, we observe a growing interest in formative views on the relation between CSR communication and practices, that is, works which ascribe to communication a constitutive role in creating, maintaining, and transforming CSR practices. This article provides an overview of the heterogeneous landscape of formative views on CSR communication scholarship. More specifically, we distinguish between three variants of such formative views: walking-to-talk, talking-to-walk, and t(w)alking. These three orientations differ primarily regarding the temporal dynamics that they ascribe to the relation between CSR communication and practices and regarding the object that is formed through communication. This new typology helps systematize the emerging field of research on CSR ...