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Mending Government-to-Business Communication Disruptions in Russia: Language Perspective

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Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia (EGOSE 2018)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 947))

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Abstract

Relations between government and various social entities often present serious challenges in many respects, among which communication is one of the most widespread and frequently neglected, especially when it comes to the sphere of government-to-business (G2B) communication. This paper addresses the issues in G2B interaction that pertain to the sphere of language and appear to be most vulnerable and fraught with possible communication failures. Though business and government discourse domains are regarded as separate, often unparalleled manifestations of language registers with their own established and long-standing traditions of specific usage of syntax, vocabulary, style etc, we argue that it is governmental communicators who are responsible for alleviating communication problems and taking additional language effort to adjust their messages to the rules of clear, concise and coherent business communication. Building on responses of surveyed employees from several firms, we devise a technique which shows in which cases governmental agents should abandon rigidity of communication behavior and succumb to changes in various language aspects. In particular, we propose to identify the so-called perception consistency which works as a benchmark in detecting which genre or/and which language aspect (style, grammar, vocabulary etc.) of governmental messages needs reformulation and readjustment. The paper contributes to a better understanding of multifaceted governmental transformations, an integral part of which is represented by a necessity of change in communication styles in the process of adaptation to constantly changing needs of society.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saint Petersburg State University, 199034, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Ekaterina Baeva & Vladimir Bondar

Authors
  1. Ekaterina Baeva
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  2. Vladimir Bondar
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ekaterina Baeva .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. eGovernance Center, ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Andrei Chugunov

  2. Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Yuri Misnikov

  3. North-West Institute of Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Evgeny Roshchin

  4. eGovernance Center, ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Dmitrii Trutnev

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Baeva, E., Bondar, V. (2019). Mending Government-to-Business Communication Disruptions in Russia: Language Perspective. In: Chugunov, A., Misnikov, Y., Roshchin, E., Trutnev, D. (eds) Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia. EGOSE 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 947. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13283-5_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13283-5_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13282-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13283-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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