A Corpus-based Contrastive Stylistic Analysis Of English Corporate Profiles

With the accelerating process of economic globalization, China is carrying on ever-increasing economic exchanges with various countries around the world. More and more companies have entered or are entering the global market. A well-written company profile contributes to positive corporate image of a company as well as the competitiveness of its products in the world market. Up to now, there is still very little research concerning this field. Most previous studies focus on the Chinese- English translation practice of corporate profiles from German functionalist perspective or conducting the genre analysis of English corporate profiles based on Swales'genre approach. However, Stylistic inquiry of English corporate profiles still remains a sparsely-touched area. Therefore, the comprehensive contrastive stylistic analysis of English corporate profiles is very significant and necessary.Based on the theories of modern stylistics, the study attempts to cover the shortage of qualitative analysis. Two corpora (CECP and CETST) are established based on the samples downloaded from the internet. With the aid of concordance software and programs, two other corpora are also employed (LOBA and BROWNA). Based on the quantitative data obtained from computer software, contrastive stylistic analysis is carried out to reveal the stylistic characteristics of English corporate profiles on four levels compared with general English and English for science and technology.The thesis, as a whole, is divided into five chapters. Chapter One gives a general introduction to the present study, briefly describing the objectives and practical significance proposed in the study. Chapter Two is devoted to related literature, including the definition, function and schematic structure of corporate profiles as well as the review of the development of stylistic analysis and previous research on corporate profiles both at home and abroad, it also builds up the theoretical framework of the present study. Chapter Three focuses on the design and methodology of the research and illustrates the data sampling and tagging of CECP (Corpus of English Corporate Profiles) and CETST (Corpus of English Theses of Science and Technology ) in details. Chapter Four, which is the core of the thesis, presents a contrastive analysis on four stylistic levels between the target corpus and reference corpora with the facility of the tools such as: Wordsmith Tools 5.0, Search and Replace V 6.2 and SPSS 13.0. Chapter Five is the conclusion. Limitations of the study are discussed and the implications and suggestions for the study are outlined in this part. The paper is expected to be beneficial to the teaching of composing and translation of English corporate profiles.