Argument :
In corporate settings, transparency refers to the degree of openness in communicating with key stakeholders as well as the public at large. It is seen as a way for companies to convey an image of trustworthiness (Ball 2009) and distinguish themselves from competitors (Koskela, 2018). Transparency is typically associated with financial disclosure but, in recent years, non-financial disclosure relating to environmental and social issues has become increasingly important (Jackson et al. 2020), as reflected in the rise of non-financial reporting genres, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or sustainability reports in which companies seek to portray themselves as caring and trustworthy (Bondi, 2016).This paper focuses on the linguistic expression of transparency in sustainability reports of companies within the fashion sector. In particular, it aims to shed light on how companies use language to communicate transparency and to determine to what extent these companies may share the language of transparency as a strategy to enhance social cohesion within the global fashion community and to build public trust (Rahm, Sandell & Svensson 2020). The fashion industry operates on a global level, contributes significantly to world exports, and has millions of employees, and thus has a wide-reaching impact on people's lives. For this reason, transparency becomes an important message in an industry where social issues, such as the environment (i.e. ecofashion, Cucchi & Piotti 2016), working conditions, diversity, and animal welfare remain at the forefront (Fashion Revolution CIC, 2020). A corpus consisting of the sustainability reports of the top ten ranking companies in the Fashion Transparency Index 2020 was compiled and then queried with text analysis software to extract linguistic items encoding transparency and identify patterns of usage across the companies. Preliminary results indicate that all the companies share a clear concern to highlight transparency, but also communicate this message through other various conceptually related items (e.g., engagement, assurance, disclosure, dialogue, conversation). The findings can be applied in instructional settings in the area of fashion communication to help learners acquire linguistic and rhetorical skills useful for producing texts that promote a corporate image of transparency. ReferencesBall, C. (2009). What is transparency? Public Integrity, 11(4), 293-308.Bondi, M. (2016). CSR Reports in English and Italian: Focus on generic structure and importance markers. In: G. E. Garzone, D. Heaney, & G. Riboni (Eds), Language for specific purposes. research and translation across cultures and media (pp. 168-199). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.Cucchi, C. A., & Piotti, S. R. (2016). Eco-fashion lexicon: A never-ending story? L'analisi Linguistica e Letteraria, 2, 171-182.Fashion Revolution CIC (2020). Fashion Transparency Index 2020. https://issuu.com/fashionrevolution/docs/fr_fashiontransparencyindex2020?fr=sNmI5NzYxMDk0OAJackson, G.., Bartosch, J., Avetisyan, E., Kinderman, D., Steen Knudsen, J. (2020). Mandatory non-financial disclosure and its influence on CSR: An international comparison. Journal of Business Ethics, 162(2), 323-342.Koskela, M. (2018). Disclosing principles of IR communication: Rhetorical moves for constructing transparency. International Journal of Business Communication, 55(2), 164-193.Rahm, H., N. Sandell & P. Svensson. (2020). Corporate dreams – Appropriate aspirations and the building of trust in annual reports. Studies in Communication Sciences 20(1), 77–91.
