Meaning Negotiation and Customer Engagement in a Digital BELF Setting: a Study Of Instagram Company Interactions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i13.436Keywords:
BELF, corpus linguistics, linguisticsAbstract
The use of communication strategies in BELF has been analyzed mainly in face-to-face and video-mediated interactions, as well as in computer-mediated communication. This study focuses on customer communication in the social network Instagram. Instagram is a key company advertising and webcare channel for companies that address an international and young customer base. In these international settings, English is the main medium of interaction. The basis for this study is a collection of Instagram posts and comments by 20 European companies from 2018. The data is analyzed qualitatively with a focus on customer engagement strategies and meaning negotiation. Customer engagement through emotional and plurilingual framing in the initial posts is comparable to rapport strategies in international teams using BELF. Culture-specific images may prompt intercultural negotiations in the comments section, engaging customers further. The use of plurilingual resources is frequent. Business-specific vocabulary is foregrounded, with both company and customers partaking in domain-specific discourse. This leads to meaning negotiation and interactive clarification strategies, which have also been documented in other BELF contexts. In sum, customer interactions on Instagram show how the intercultural and plurilingual environment is used to engage customers and create rapport, and how meaning in a business context is negotiated successfully.References
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Van Noort, Guda, and Lotte M. Willemsen. “Online Damage Control: The Effects of Proactive Versus Reactive Webcare Interventions in Consumer-Generated and Brand-Generated Platforms.” Journal of Interactive Marketing 26.3 (2012): 131-140.
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Wikström, Peter. "#srynotfunny: Communicative Functions of Hashtags on Twitter." SKY Journal of Linguistics 27 (2014): 127-152.
Anderson, Monica, and Jingjing Jiang. “Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018.” Pew Research Center website, 2018, http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Bergström, Thamwika, and Lisa Bäckman. Marketing and PR in Social Media: How the Utilization of Instagram Builds and Maintains Customer Relationships. 2013, Stockholm University, Bachelor’s thesis.
Bowden, Jana Lay-Hwa. “The Process of Customer Engagement: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice 17.1 (2009): 63-74.
Brodie, Roderick J., Linda D. Hollebeek, Biljana Jurić, and Ana Ilić. “Customer Engagement: Conceptual Domain, Fundamental Propositions, and Implications for Research.” Journal of Service Research 14.3 (2011): 252-271.
Brown, Gillian, and George Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Brunner, Marie Louise, and Stefan Diemer. “Customer Communication via Social Media in 2018.” 2018, Trier University of Applied Sciences, Electronic Corpus.
Clarke, Todd. “24+ Instagram Statistics That Matter to Marketers in 2019.” Hootsuite Social Media Management website, 2019, https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Cogo, Alessia. “ELF and Super-Diversity: A Case Study of ELF Multilingual Practices from a Business Context.” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1.2 (2012): 287-313.
Dayter, Daria, and Susanne Mühleisen. “Telling Stories about Self in Digital Contexts: Same, Same, but Different?” Open Linguistics 2.1 (2016): 572-576.
De Veirman, Marijke, Veroline Cauberghe, and Liselot Hudders. "Marketing through Instagram Influencers: the Impact of Number of Followers and Product Divergence on Brand Attitude." International Journal of Advertising 36.5 (2017): 798-828.
Eurostat. Business Economy by Sector. Eurostat, 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Edwards, Alison. English in the Netherlands: Functions, Forms and Attitudes. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016.
Ehrenreich, Susanne. “English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in International Business Contexts.” Exploring ELF in Japanese Academic and business contexts: Conceptualisation, research and pedagogic implications. Ed. Kumiko Murata. London: Routledge, 2015. 135-155.
Gee, James Paul. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. 4th ed. London: Routledge, 2014.
Gerritsen, Marinel, Catherine Nickerson, Andreu van Hooft, Frank van Meurs, Hubert Korzilius, Ulrike Nederstigt, Marianne Starren, and Roger Crijns. "English in Product Advertisements in Non-English-Speaking Countries in Western Europe: Product Image and Comprehension of The Text." Journal of Global Marketing 23.4 (2010): 349-365.
Hassan, Areej. “Do Brands Targeting Women Use Instamarketing Differently: A Content Analysis.” Proceedings of the Marketing Management Association (2014): 62.
Herring, Susan C., and Jannis Androutsopoulos. “Computer-Mediated Discourse 2.0.” The Handbook of Discourse Analysis 2. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2015. 127-151.
“Instagram – Our Story.” Instagram website, 2019, https://instagram-press.com/our-story/. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
“Instagram: Age Distribution of Global Audiences 2018.” Statista website, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Kalamas, Maria, Tyra Mitchell, and Deborah Lester. "Modeling Social Media Use: Bridging the Communication Gap in Higher Education." Journal of Advertising Education 13.1 (2009): 44-57.
Kankaanranta, Anne. “‘Hej Seppo, Could You Pls Comment on This!’: Internal Email Communication in Lingua
Franca English in a Multinational Company.” Business Communication Quarterly, 69.2 (2005): 216-225.
Kankaanranta, Anne, and Brigitte Planken. “BELF Competence as Business Knowledge of Internationally Operating Business Professionals.” The Journal of Business Communication 47.4 (2010): 380-407.
Kankaanranta, Anne, Leena Louhiala-Salminen, and Päivi Karhunen. "English in Multinational Companies: Implications for Teaching “English” at an International Business School." Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4.1 (2015): 125-148.
Komori-Glatz, Miya. “(B)ELF in Multicultural Student Teamwork.” Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 6.1 (2017): 83-109.
---. “Conceptualising English as a Business Lingua Franca.” European Journal of International Management 12.1-2 (2018): 46-61.
Lee, Carmen, and Dennis Chau. “Language as Pride, Love, and Hate: Archiving Emotions Through Multilingual Instagram Hashtags.” Discourse, Context & Media 22 (2018): 21-29.
Liu, Rendan, and Ayoung Suh. “Self-Branding on Social Media: An Analysis of Style Bloggers on Instagram.” Procedia Computer Science 124 (2017): 12-20.
Louhiala-Salminen, Leena, Mirjaliisa Charles, and Anne Kankaanranta. “English as a Lingua Franca in Nordic Corporate Mergers: Two Case Companies.” English For Specific Purposes 24.4 (2005): 401-421.
Mapes, Gwynne. “(De) Constructing Distinction: Class Inequality and Elite Authenticity in Mediatized Food Discourse.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 22.3 (2018): 265-287.
Nickerson, Catherine, and Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli. “Business English as a Lingua Franca in Advertising Texts in The Arabian Gulf: Analyzing the Attitudes of the Emirati Community.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 27.3 (2013): 329-352.
“Number of Companies Using Instagram to Nearly Double Next Year.” eMarketer, 20 Oct. 2015, https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Number-of-Companies-Using-Instagram-Nearly-Double-Next-Year/1013122. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
O'Halloran, Kay, ed. Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Systemic Functional Perspectives. London: Continuum 2004.
Salleh, Salmalina, Noor Hazarina Hashima, and Jamie Murphy. “Instagram Marketing: A Content Analysis of Top Malaysian Restaurant Brands.” E-Review of Tourism Research 6 (2015): 1-5.
Schwartz, Michael. “Review of James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis.” The Linguist List, 2014, https://www.linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=33314424. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Grønning, and Anne Kankaanranta. “The Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-).” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19.4 (2014): 780-797.
Van Noort, Guda, and Lotte M. Willemsen. “Online Damage Control: The Effects of Proactive Versus Reactive Webcare Interventions in Consumer-Generated and Brand-Generated Platforms.” Journal of Interactive Marketing 26.3 (2012): 131-140.
Wagner, Kurt. “WhatsApp is Rolling Out its Own Version of Snapchat (and Instagram) Stories.” Recode, 20 Feb. 2017, www.recode.net/2017/2/20/14663674/whatsapp-rolling-out-version-snapchatinstagram-stories. Last Visited April 30, 2019.
Wikström, Peter. "#srynotfunny: Communicative Functions of Hashtags on Twitter." SKY Journal of Linguistics 27 (2014): 127-152.
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