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Research Projects

Research groups under the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies are currently involved in the following researh projects:
International Studies:
  • Constitutions in a context
  • TYPOlex
Culture and Area studies:
  • Multiculturalism and integration in the Americas
  • Projections of Power
Language, Cognition and Mentality:
  • FairSpeak: Spin or Fair Talk – When Foods Talk to Consumers
  • SugarTexts: Different Linguistic World Views
The list below offers a more in depth description of each research project:


FairSpeak: Spin or Fair Talk – When Foods Talk to Consumers

The FairSpeak research group at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) develops tools and methods for analysing the condensed information found on food labels and for relating it to the ability of different consumers to understand it. Researchers, specialising in language and cognition, knowledge management, consumer behavior, packaging design, marketing and marketing law, join efforts in this innovative and interdisciplinary cooperation in order to formulate guidelines to help food manufacturers improve their communication with the consumers through fair food labelling.
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SugarTexts: Different Linguistic World Views

While the cognitive mechanisms that determine our identification of space and movement are taken to be universal, the verbal means given to us by the different languages (and language types) for expressing these cognitive results are inherently different. SugarTexts is the name of a text corpus consisting of some 120 parallel, step-by-step descriptions of how to make sugar: from the point where the sugar beet reaches the factory to the point when it comes out in sugar crystals. The descriptions are available in seven different languages: Danish, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Russian (from 14 to 39 descriptions in each language).
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Constitutions in a context

The research project ‘Constitutions in a context – political, legal, historical, cultural, linguistic, social aspects’ is an interdisciplinary project that combines the views of humanistic- and social studies in the study of the European constitutions as historical and contemporary documents. This interdisciplinary approach provides an opportunity not only to look at constitutions as legal documents, but also as documents that express certain historical circumstances as well as cultural, linguistic and social realities and ideals.
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TYPOlex

The relation between language, cognition, and culture has been recognised for a long time, but it has seldom been systematically studied and rarely to a greater extent. The TYPOlex project examines the differences in ways of thinking and perceptions of reality as they are expressed through political, economical, cultural and legal contexts. Thus, the disclosed differences have far-reaching communicative- and social consequences.
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Projections of Power

Projections of Power in the Americas is an international, inter-university publication project, which has as its primary objective to investigate the ways in which power or the discourse of power is represented in or projected onto society (or segments of society) in the Americas. The current project will involve discussions of the framing of political discourses, symbolic representations of presidential power, iconography, the struggle over collective memories and the counter-strategies involved in notions of empowerment. The book will be published by Routledge and is expected to appear at the end of 2011.
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Real Estate Rethorics

This research project deals with the real estate market - in a rhetorical context. One of the basic questions this research group asks is whether it is possible to affect the financial state of the real estate market with words - and how? The project aims to asess which mechanisms that influence the general public opinion of the real estate market. Research is conducted as theory development, analysis and experiments, and it has resulted in several articles and a conference at Copenhagen Business School.
Members:
Real Estate Rethorics (conference - in Danish only).

The communication around consumer risk perceptions and expectations about foodstuff

Do consumers harbour unrealistic expectations about clean, safe food? How can companies pre-empt panic by channelling their risk/anxiety communication correctly?
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Diversity management and intercultural rhetoric

Do organisations communicate effectively with a diversified workforce, and how can the diversity be turned into an advantage for the organisation? Can a global rhetoric be suggested, or should we concentrate on understanding how communication can accommodate different cultural contexts?
Members:
  • Sine Nørholm Just

Weblogging in companies

Company blogging, both internal and external, affects the very identity and culture of the organisation. How do blogging employees present themselves and their company? What is the effect on (rhetorical) agency options? and what kind of interplay does it spark between bottom-up and top-down communication in the company?
Members

Negotiation as dialogue or simultaneous monologue

Most negotiation partners consciously resist persuasion. What communication patterns are used in handling resistance and seeking common ground? What is the role of the rhythm of the phase structure, particularly under conditions of uncertainty?
Members:

Public speaking

Oral competence is a broadly shared competence that everyone should acquire, for use as private persons, business people or citizens of the world. We are engaged in establishing a Danish milieu for the research in public speaking, focusing on the didactics of oral presentation and business rhetoric.
Members:


Last updated by Kasper Due Vendelboe 07/06/2011