Professional identities are not only constructed through discourse, but can also be studied and analysed through discourse and communication behaviour, which is probably the most powerful resource available for the understanding of their nature and function. The present volume investigates the ways in which the discourses produced in a variety of professional contexts, especially in business, legal and institutional spheres of action, shape and manifest professional identities.

The focus of the studies in this collection is on whether, and to what extent, the in-group identity of a given professional community and the norms elaborated by it affect the communicative behaviour of the individual participant or whether, and to what extent, the professional communication is also affected by the participant's specific objectives in the performance of that professional practice.

Most of the studies reported here employ discourse and genre analytical and corpus linguistics tools to highlight the ways and means by which discourses contribute to the analysis of typical identity traits of various professional communities to provide some account of the way members of these professional communities strategically manipulate linguistic resources to achieve their professional objectives.

Contents: Paola Evangelisti Allori: Discourse and Identity in the Professions. Corporate, Legal and Institutional Citizenships - Vijay K. Bhatia: Contested Identities in Corporate Disclosure Documents - Tarja Salmi-Tolonen: Clean Corporate Citizenship Identity - Sandra Campagna: Re-branding Corporate Citizenship: a Rite of Passage? - Paola Catenaccio/Chiara Degano: Corporate Social Responsibility as a Key to the Representation of Corporate Identity. The Case of Novartis - Miguel F. Ruiz-Garrido/Ma Noelia Ruiz-Madrid: Corporate Identity in the Blogosphere: The Case of Executive Weblogs - Paula Mary Hickey: You are What you Ride. The Emergence and Evolution of Social Identity through Motorcycle Brand Names - Paola Evangelisti Allori: The Legal Identities of Sport Arbitrators and Judges in International Pronouncements: A Case for Genre Variation? - Giuliana Ladomery: Generic Identity in the Advisory Opinions of Sport Arbitration Case Law - Maurizio Gotti/Patrizia Anesa: Professional Identities in Italian Arbitral Awards: the Spread of Lawyers' Language - Stefania M.Maci: Arbitration in Italy. Litigation Procedures in Arbitral Practice - Michele Sala: Legal Expertise as a Cultural Identity Trait - Paola Vignati: Discourse and Identity in Migration Legislation - Giulia Riccio: Portrait of a Press Secretary: a CADS Investigation into the Professional Identity of the White House Top Media Strategist - Paolo Donadio/Antonella Napolitano: Denying Identity to the Unified Europe. A Neo- Conservative View from the United States - Susan Kermas: Levelling: a Diachronic Survey of Metaphor in Socio-political Discourse.