Interdisciplinarity and Contamination in the Analysis of the Financial Report as a Hybrid Genre

Focussing on the definition of the Annual Report genre, this paper explores how much ´interdisciplinarity´ and ´contamination´ are needed in order to achieve the communicative purposes the Annual Reports are written for, through their rhetorical structuring and linguistic realisations. This is a research project, still ‘under construction’, as it is founded on a joint effort with accountancy experts with whom we are gradually forming a common method for analysing a text as complex as an Annual Report. The aim is to join efforts and specific expertise in order to improve: a) tools for analysing such texts; b) classifying the quantity of information they provide; c) interpreting and evaluating the quality of such information. The paper presents a synthesis of the main study areas so far associated with Annual Reports. A fundamental preliminary remark is that: 1.This genre has been subject to various research efforts in disciplines that are very different (accounting, finance, marketing, linguistics, and semiotics are among the most significant). 2.The Annual Report is to be considered a highly specialised text, created by and for insiders, even though often created also for popularization, addressing an audience of non-experts. 3.In the area of linguistics, the Annual Report genre has also been a tool for studying Business English (Bargiela Chiappini/Nickerson 1999; Del Lungo Camiciotti et al. 2006) and, less frequently, for legal English (Gotti 2009; Gunnarson 2009; Olsen et al. 2009; Veneziani et al. 2010) even though its significant regulatory content has often not been taken sufficiently into account : a reason for which this text is of great significance socially, culturally and ethnographically. These considerations have led us to reconsider the concepts of ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘contamination’ for applied linguistics as a new methodological basis for an area that is certainly not new to recent research into specialised English (Bargiela Chiappini/Nickerson 1999; Garzone 2004, 2005; Gotti 2005; Gotti/Giannoni 2006) but that has, in our opinion, lacked, up until now, an “integral and integrated” analysis (that is to say in all of its numerous elements, or based on an interaction between linguists and experts in the sector).