| Within the theoretical framework of genre analysis, the present research investigates the corporate annual reports based on the corpus-based approach, it not only tries to reveal the conventions which the writers of the corporate annual report must follow but also attempts to find out evidence to support that corporate annual report belongs to promotional genre.Genre analysis as a recently developed approach in discourse analysis is evolved from the surface-level description of language to the deep-level explanation and has concerned itself most with describing the higher-level organization and structures of written and spoken texts, aiming at revealing their communicative purposes and strategies in using the language.Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of annual report, researches based on the genre aspect have been seldom focused on. The proposed approach is adopted in a descriptive and explanatory study of 80 CARs downloaded from the SEC website. After analyzing the communicative purposes within the framework of the Swalesian School, we come up with its generic structure along with the obligatory and optional moves in corporate annual reports, adopting the qualitative analysis approach, what's more, the function of each move is analyzed and the rationale behind it is specified. The strategy analysis part adopted the quantitative analysis involving the WordSmith 4.0 software package, the analysis concentrates on the lexical strategy after investigating the information ordering and rhetorical strategies applied in the reports.Major findings of the study show that as a promotional genre, a typical CAR tends to have the following communicative purposes: to promote image, to inform its reader and to persuade investors. The communicative purposes determine the structural pattern of CARs to a large extent, which can be typically classified into eight moves, namely,"Identifying service","Establishing credentials","Giving quick view of the whole annual report","Summarizing financial performance","Reviewing operational performance","Giving authentic proof","Reporting financial details", and"Soliciting response". Move I, II, VI, VII are obligatory moves, the other four are optional moves. Each move contributes to a part of the overall purpose accomplished by the genre, while steps play the role of achieving the intention of the move. The persuasive features, which used to achieve the communicative purposes, can be found in information ordering strategy; rhetorical strategy and lexical strategy. In the aspect of information ordering, the companies with poor performance often use long-term-value stressing strategy, plan-presenting strategy and responsibility shifting strategy. Different textual patterns can be observed in the corpus, e.g., general-specific, problem-solution, etc. The lexical strategy consists with the frequent use of evaluative words; hedging and modality and first personal pronoun, the distribution of the evaluative words illustrate the different functions of each move, these features combine with the generic structure further confirm that the corporate annual report belongs to the promotional genre.This thesis, in which the genre analysis and language features contribute significantly to the understanding of corporate annual reports, combines the two hotspots in accounting and linguistics, and the findings benefit further researches in this field. The promotional genre colony provided by Bhatia can be expanded and the report learners and users can be profited by the findings. |
