Morten Pilegaard

Politeness in written business discourse: A textlinguistic perspective on requests

Abstract This article examines the principles and practices of politeness strategies in business communication. The sequential realization of selected face-redness strategies in and around requests is analyzed on the text level in business letters located in a discourse-dynamic perspective. The article demonstrates that the level, form and distribution of positive and negative politeness correlate with sender status and vary as a function of the dynamics of the course of business communication. The article advocates that monitoring politeness strategies on the text level gives valuable insight into the norms that govern British business communication.

Medical Writing, Revising and Editing

The globalization of science makes medical writing, editing, and revision a rapidly growing field of linguistic study and practice. Medical science texts are written according to uniform, general guidelines and medical genres have become highly conventionalized in terms of structure and linguistic form. Medical editing often takes the form of peer review and mainly addresses issues of contents and overall validity. Medical revision incorporates the checking of the macrostructure and microstructure of the text, its language and style, and its suitability for the target reader or client.

Dansk-engelsk medicinsk ordbog. Generering af fagsprogsordbog fra glosekartotek

A status report on the transformation of an idiosyncratic word list into a special-purpose dictionary is given. Pending the inclusion of additional lemmas and a modification of entry design that challenges the current trend in special-purpose dictionaries, the work will result in the first Danish-English medical dictionary.