This paper discusses the relevance of the discourse-based interview (DBI) for holistic research and access to more layers of meaning in the study of complex phenomena. We draw on our own work in workplace discourse and relevant research from different linguistic traditions, particularly sociolinguistic inquiry. We reflect on the potential of DBI for enhancing reflexivity and enabling the researcher and participant to co-create the research problem. We reposition ‘the interview’ from a tool for collecting self-reported data to a process of negotiation which allows for multiple and alternative readings of the researcher’s findings. We close the paper with a model and set of principles that expend the current framing of DBI and we provide directions for future research.

The ability to copy in relevant stakeholders has rendered the business email a useful tool for managing interpersonal relations and operational matters. However, CCing in business email has remained vastly underresearched in workplace discourse literature, a gap this article seeks to address. We explore the functions of CCing in workplace emails and the way formality is negotiated by writers in one organization. We draw on the analysis of email chains and discourse-based interviews and show that employees strategically project professional achievements and assume and deny responsibility for company decisions as they shift between the sender/receiver positions in the chain.

This article reports a case study of three multinational companies that work together in a consortium, focusing on intercompany and intracompany variation in writing products and processes. The authors discuss variation in two genres: meeting minutes and internal memos. Adopting a social constructionist, communities of practice (CofP) approach, they argue that the companies form overarching constellations of CofP. Although the participants broadly work with the same genres of written documents, the form of these documents varies according to the local context, audience, and purpose. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, with particular reference to the difficulty writers face when they make the transition from writing for one community of practice to writing for another.