Keep Your Head in the Clouds and Your Feet on the Ground
129management practices with those associated with the world of finance. At
the same time, its terminology is related to the language of business,
economics, banking and the general language, along with its diverse
subject areas.
Such understanding of the specialist language of financial management
seems to be fully compatible with Kong’s (2014) definition of professional
discourse as the language produced by professionals with specialist
training to get something done in the workplace. Notice that this definition
categorizes all elements within a specialist language into four major
classes PROFESSIONALS/PEOPLE, PRODUCTION/ACTIVITY,
PRODUCT/THING and SURROUNDING/PLACE. These classes seem to
correspond to basic roles and functions in any kind of human interaction
transferred to the workplace environment.
The functional duality and metaphorical correspondence has been
emphasized by double labeling introduced by me in the names of the
classes. This might also suggest that specialist languages can be
considered as metaphorical transfers in relation to the common language
from which they derive. Analogically, Kong (2014: 3) views professional
discourse as “any semiotic form – spoken, written or visual – constituted
by and constitutive of social and domain-specific contexts, and used by
professionals with special training in order to achieve transactional and
interactional, as well as socialization and normative functions.” In
historical and lexical semantics, the conceptual process by means of which
specialist languages are developed can be compared to a form of semantic
change known as specialization or narrowing of meaning.
Financial management means planning, organizing, directing and
controlling the financial activities such as procurement and utilization of
funds of the enterprise (Boer et al. 2011). Thus, it can be regarded not as
an independent area, but an integral part of the overall management. As a
subject too, Financial Management had been a branch of Economics till
- Later, it has evolved into a separate discipline. It involves applying
general management principles to financial resources of the enterprise. In
other words, financial management refers to the efficient and effective
management of money in such a manner as to accomplish the objectives of
the organization. It is a specialized function directly associated with the
top management. However, basic skills in financial management start in
the critical areas of cash management and bookkeeping, which should be
carried out according to certain financial controls to ensure integrity in the
bookkeeping process. Consequently, managers learn how to generate
financial statements and analyze those statements to be able to really
understand the financial condition of the business.