A stylometric approach to the interdiscursivity of professional practice

Abstract

Abstract Interdiscursivity of professional practice has gained increasing attention in nascent literature on professional discourse, yet its measurement is under-investigated. The present article, with a highlight on the writer identities in professional discourse, proposed a stylometric approach to the interdiscursivity of professional practice. The stylometric method successfully demystified three professional identities in the MD&A discourse: Specialists in the public relations practice, auditors in the regulatory practice, and analysts in the financial practice. The method also succeeded in quantifying the interdiscursive relations between the three identities. This is the first study that investigates interdiscursivity from a stylometric perspective, which may advance quantitative research into both text-internal and text-external resources engaged in discourse realization.