Not so ‘innocent’ after all? Exploring corporate identity construction online

While a lot of attention has been paid to online branding and the construction and communication of a company’s identity via its website, there is only very little research that looks at the processes involved in these activities from a discourse analytical perspective. This article aims to address this gap by conducting a case study of innocent, a UK producer of fruit juices. Combining corpus analytical tools with discourse analytical techniques and considering both text and multimodal features, we explore some of the strategies through which innocent creates a set of inter-related and closely intertwined identities on its website, thereby constructing the company’s brand image. However, our findings also reveal that some of the company’s identity claims (especially in relation to being an inclusive and welcoming ‘family’) are relativised and to some extent contradicted by the discursive processes through which these claims are articulated.

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