A Study On The Construction Of Corporate Citizenship Image In CSR Reports From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

Corporate social responsibility(CSR) report is a non-financial document to disclosure corporate social responsibility. As a communicative bridge between corporation and stakeholders, its publication has become a burgeoning business practice in the world. Chinese enterprises, seeking for multinational operation and global development, need to issue English CSR report to gain international reputation as a responsible citizen.Analyzing language features in Chinese and foreign CSR reports, and measuring their relation with corporate citizenship image, the study hopes to provide language suggestion for Chinese enterprises to edit their English CSR reports of high quality.In the study, the author builds two corpora that are comprised by 24 English CSR reports from China and foreign countries. Based on Appraisal Theory, she analyzes the contained appraisal words from Attitude and Engagement, and contrasts their similarities and dissimilarities between the two sources. Though building linear regression mode, the author measures appraisal words’ effect on corporate citizenship image. After the study, it is found that appraisal words in CSR reports share same characteristics, whereas they also differ from Chinese CSR reports to foreign reports. Both have Attitudes over Engagements, positive over negative, attitudinal degree up over degree down. And compared with foreign reports, Chinese ones have more Attitudes with a stronger degree. With the multiple linear mode, the result approves a correlation between appraisal words and corporate citizenship image.