An Analysis Of Generic Structural Potential Of Chinese And American Company Profiles

Under the new era of global economy, companies of each country want to reinforce theirexchange and cooperation. As an important part of the publicity of the company, Company profile is helpful to construct a good and creditable image in the competitive market. A good company profile can be a great promotion which aims to attract potential consumers and cooperators. Company profile can be seen as a type of particular genre, which bears important communicative goal. Researches on this kind of genre are mostly conducted from the perspective of translation and pragmatics. However, there is room for the comparative analysis of company profiles from the the perspective of genre analysis.This thesis makes a comparative analysis of the data, which consists of thirty Chinese company profiles and thirty American company profiles, based on Hasan’s Generic Structural Potential(GSP). This study combines the qualitative and quantitative analysis to do the comparative genre analysis of Chinese and American company profiles. This research is launched with the following questions: What are the elements of Chinese company profiles and American company profiles respectively? What are the Generic Structural Potential of Chinese company profiles and American company profiles respectively? What are the similarities and differences between Chinese company profiles and American company profiles? What are the social and cultural factors that might account for their similarities and differences?This thesis has arrived to the following conclusions through study and analysis. Firstly,there are seven elements in Chinese company profiles and eleven elements in American company profiles. At the same time, it concludes the distribution and frequency of each element from the quantitative method. The results show that the company background,production and service, ability description are the obligatory elements both in Chinese company profiles and American company profiles. The rest elements in Chinese company profiles and American company profiles are optional. Secondly, this thesis generalizes the GSP of Chinese and American company profiles based on the sequences and frequencies ofidentified obligatory and optional elements. The Generic Structural Potential of Chinese company profiles is:CB^PS(^AD(^[(AR)(·(CC)·(SR)]^(VG);The Generic Structural Potential of American company profiles is:CB^{PS( ^AD( ^[(MT)·(CC)·(CS)·(VG)·(AR)·(E)·(SR)]}^(IFC).Thirdly, there exist some similarities and differences between Chinese and American company profiles through comparative studies. On one side, they both share the same communication purpose, similar contextual configuration and generic elements. On the other side, the obligatory elements, optional elements and the actual realizations of each elements of Chinese and American company profiles are different. The generic structure of Chinese company profiles is different from that of American company profiles. Last finding is that the differences may caused by the different cultural and social backgrounds. The main causes may lie in individualism versus collectivism, high or low power distance, high or low context of the two different nations.This thesis aims to enhance the comprehension of genre analysis and Hasan’s GSP, to enlarge the scope of the research. This thesis can also be helpful to the understanding of Chinese and American company profiles and to the construction of the Chinese and American company profiles.