VERBALIZING INCLUSIVITY IN VIRTUAL CORPORATE DISCOURSE OF PROCTER & GAMBLE

Abstract

The article aims at exploring the ways of verbalizing the concept of inclusivity in virtual corporate discourse. The novelty of the research stems from the fact that though inclusivity is one of the cornerstones of progressiveorganizations in the 21st century, it has not yet been considered from a linguistic perspective in corporate discourse. The research is based on a sample of texts collected with the help of continuous sampling from the official website of Procter & Gamble (P&G) corporation. The sample undergoes content analysis that enabled to single out thelanguage units expressing the inclusivity concept. The final stage of the research draws on discourse analysis that helps to correlate the findings with ongoing social trends and to incorporate P&G’s online discourse in a broader social context. The analysis has uncovered several ways of verbalizing the inclusivity concept in the sample. First of all, inclusivitypresupposes unity and cohesion within the company as well as humanity on the whole. The sample abounds in the inclusive first-person pronouns we and our that imply the personnel’s cohesion and solidarity. The frequency of the inclusive pronouns is incomparably (over 20 times) higher than the usage of the second person pronouns or direct nominations such as P&G. The pronominal way of expressing inclusivity is complemented with the extensive use of lexical means thatdeliver the idea of unity and solidarity. Besides the lexemes inclusivity and inclusive, here belong such morphologically diverse items as community, together, all, mutual and to share. Remarkably, inclusivity may embrace not only P&G’s staff but also every human being, which is expressed in the sample with the noun humanity or the phrase all people. P&G’s website claims that the corporation non-discriminatively includes the social groups (women, the disabled, people of color, LGBT+ people) whose recognition is considered to be a marker of inclusivity in the 21st century. In addition, the concept of inclusivity acquires a spatial dimension: the sample contains passages that emphasize the worldwide scope of P&G’s activity. This omnipresence is verbalized with prepositional phrases, in particular, those with the noun world (e.g., around the world) and the adjective global. Thus, the concept of inclusivity is consistently verbalized in P&G’s online corporate discourse. Further study may examine the multimodal aspect of expressing inclusivity in corporate texts.