The Discursive Construction Of Organizational Identities Of Chinese Companies

This thesis studies the discursive construction of organizational identities of Chinesecompanies. In recent years, the study of organizational identity has received more and moreattention within sociology, management, psychology and linguistics.The analytical framework of the present study derives from the discourse-historicalapproach proposed by Wodak et al.(1999) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001) and Halliday’s(2004) transitivity system. The data used in the present study include chairman’s statementsand company’s prospectuses selected from official websites of30Chinese companies.The analysis on referential strategies and predicational strategies indicates thatcompanies are constructed as organizations with self-confidence, humanistic spirit, the spiritof cooperation and unity, the capability of training outstanding employees, financial supportfrom the state. The analysis on the transitivity system demonstrates that companies areconstructed as creators who not only have achieved a lot of progress and developments forthemselves, but make a great contribution to the society. In addition, companies are alsoconstructed as organizations with authorities and confidence to make significant decisions.This thesis combines the discourse-historical approach and transitivity system to studyon the discursive construction of organizational identities of Chinese company discourse. Itoffers a new perspective of observing organizational identity. Another contribution of thepresent study is that it presents suggestions to organizations on how to construct theirprospectuses and chairman’s statements more efficiently so as to deliver a positive andcompetitive image.