This article examines the previously untapped site of business development networks (BDNs), a fast-evolving promotional environment where small business owners try to gain new business through an organized word-of-mouth campaign. Drawing on a data set of 60-second business networking speeches, this study centers on the display of professional competence through promotional mini-presentations. More specifically, this study explores the use of small narrative as a means of communicating the speaker’s professional competence. Thirty stories embedded in BDN 60-second slots were transcribed so that the generic patterns navigating these narratives could be analyzed. The findings indicate that to communicate professional competence, the speakers rely on the success story as the chief master narrative and use predominantly the problem-solution generic pattern. The problem and solution phases tend to involve increased deployment of high-involvement lexis such as hyperbole and extreme case formulations and they are often framed as constructed dialogue.
BambergM.GeorgakopolouA. (2008). Small stories as a new perspective in narrative and identity analysis. Text & Talk, 28, 377-396.
3.
BanfieldS. R.RichmondV. P.McCroskeyJ. C. (2006). The effect of teacher misbehaviours on teacher credibility and affect for the teacher. Communication Education, 55, 63-72.
4.
BenwellB.StokoeE. (2006). Discourse and identity. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
5.
BrauerD.MillerE. (2008). Factors underlying the decline in manufacturing employment since 2000 (A Series of Issue Summaries from the Congressional Budget Office). Retrieved from http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/97xx/doc9749/12-23-Brief.shtml
6.
CarlW. J. (2008). The role of disclosure in organized word-of-mouth marketing programs. Journal of Marketing Communications, 14, 225-241.
7.
DyerJ.Keller-CohenD. (2000). The discursive construction of professional self through narratives of personal experience. Discourse Studies, 2, 283-304.
8.
GeorgakopolouA. (2006). Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis. Narrative Inquiry, 16, 122-130.
9.
GoffmanE. (1981). Forms of talk. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
10.
HoeyM. (1983). On the surface of discourse. London, England: Allen & Unwin.
11.
HoeyM. (1994). Signalling in discourse: A functional analysis of a common discourse pattern in written and spoken English. In CoulthardM. (Ed.), Advances in written text analysis (pp. 26-45). London, England: Routledge.
12.
HoggM. A.TerryD. J. (2000). Social identity and self-categorization processes in organizational contexts. Academy of Management Review, 25, 121-140.
13.
HolmesJ. (2006). Workplace narratives, professional identity and relational practice. In De FinaA.SchiffrinD.BambergM. (Eds.), Discourse and identity. Studies in interactional sociolinguistics 23 (pp. 166-187). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
LabovW.WaletzkyJ. (1997). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 3-39. (Original work published 1967)
16.
LitvinS. W.GoldsmithR. E.PanB. (2008). Electronic word-of-mouth in hospitality and tourism management. Tourism Management, 29, 458-468.
17.
MadlockP. E. (2008). The link between leadership style, communicator competence, and employee satisfaction. Journal of Business Communication, 45(1), 61-78.
18.
McCarthyM.CarterR. (1994). Language as discourse. London, England: Longman.
19.
McCroskeyJ. C.TevenJ. J. (1999). Goodwill: A re-examination of the construct and its measurement. Communication Monographs, 66, 90-103.
20.
MisnerI. (1993). Business development networks: An exploratory study of key variables contributing to their impact on business community (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
21.
MisnerI.AlexanderD.HilliardB. (2009). Networking like a pro: Turning contacts into connections. Irvine, CA: Jere L. Calmes.
22.
NorrickN. R. (2004). Discussion note: Hyperbole, extreme case formulation. Journal of Pragmatics, 36, 1727-1739.
23.
O’ConnorE. (2002). Storied business: Typology, intertextuality, and traffic in entrepreneurial narrative. Journal of Business Communication, 39(1), 36-54.
24.
Office for National Statistics. (2010). Statistical bulletin: Business demography 2009_Enterprise births, deaths and survival. Retrieved from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/bd1210.pdf
25.
PomerantzA. (1986). Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies, 9, 219-229.
ReynoldsN. (1993). Ethos as location: New sites for discursive authority. Rhetoric Review, 11, 325-338.
28.
RobertsC.CampbellR. (2006). Fitting stories into boxes: Rhetorical and textual constraints on candidates’ performances in British job interviews. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2, 45-73.
