Thematic Progression And Textual Cohesion In Letters To Shareholders Of Annual Reports Of Listed American Companies

A letter to shareholders (LTS) is placed at the beginning of a corporate annual report (CAR) and, therefore, the writer must be very careful about his or her wording and the textual organization so as to win the shareholders' trust and appeal to potential customers. Therefore, the LTS can be regarded as a good model for writing and is worthy of a thorough study. At the same time, owing to the fact that many readers find an English CAR and the LTS in it difficult to read and relevant studies concerning the CAR and the LTS are rare, especially in China, it is of great necessity to give a detailed analysis of the English CAR and the LTS.This study is both qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative study is concerned with the analysis of the LTS from the perspective of thematic progression (TP) in combination with some cohesive devices in order to examine how the two interact to help the writer attain his communicative purposes. After a detailed analysis with a host of examples, some TP patterns and cohesive devices with higher occurring frequencies are identified with their interactions in the process of the theme-rheme development summarized. Quantitative study is carried out about the 31 letters to shareholders to make the results of the present study more convincing, and a contrast between the calculated numbers has been made with the aid of the software SPSS 13.0.The findings of this study are considered to be applicable to both the teaching of English for Specific Purposes and international business activities. English learners will be able to organize their language in a logical and coherent manner, which can improve their communicative abilities to read, write and speak in English. International businessmen will be able to read CARs efficiently and make out precisely the intended information in order to make wise investments.