Analysis Of Rhetorical Appeals In Chairman’s Statement In American Corporate Annual Report From The Perspective Of Metadiscourse

As a means of helping readers understand the discourse,metadiscourse is widely used in communication.The chairman’s statement in corporate annual report plays an important role in promoting communication between the company and the potential investors,so it is of strong interactivity.This study analyzes the use of interactive and interactional metadiscourse and how they help to realize rhetorical appeals in chairman’s statement of American corporate annual report.Thirty chairman’s statements in annual reports of American listed companies are randomly selected as the analytical data of this study,and all of the companies are listed on the world top500 companies ranked by the Fortune magazine in 2015.The study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods.The quantitative method shows the frequency of each subcategory of metadiscourse to provide statistical support for the study,while the qualitative study makes further analysis of the language preferences of metadiscourse used in the statements and how they help to realize rhetorical appeals.The quantitative results show that interactional metadiscourse has a much higher frequency than that of interactive metadiscourse.Of all the metadiscourse markers,self mention which belongs to interactional metadiscourse is the most frequently used one,accounting for 72.2% of the total items.The second most widely used metadiscourse is transitions,making up 11.3% of all metadiscourse items,followed by hedges(4.0%),attitude markers(3.8%),boosters(2.6%)and code glosses(1.9%).Frame markers,engagement markers,evidentials and endophoric markers are less frequently used in the statements to shareholders,among which endophoric markers are the least-used metadiscourse,accounting for only 0.2% of the total items.The detailed analysis of linguistic preference of interactive and interactional metadiscourse shows that each subcategory has certain preferences of linguistic forms in chairman’s statement.The additive and contrastive transitions are used more frequently than other transitions.Frame makers are mainly used to show sequence or label stages in the data.Endophoric marker is the least-used metadiscourse,such as“as I mentioned earlier”.The phrases of “for example” and “such as ” are the most widely-used code glosses.Hedges such as “about” and “approximately” are usually used before figures to show uncertainty.Boosters are often collocated with self mentions.The qualitative analysis also shows how metadiscourse helps to realize rhetorical appeals.Transitions,frame markers,code glosses and endophoric markers are used to create rational appeals by making the chairman’s statement more coherent and logical.By using evidentials,hedges and boosters,the authoritative and honest company image is basically established,which contributes to credibility appeals.Finally,affective appeals are realized through the use of attitude markers,self mentions as well as engagement markers by engaging the readers into the text and enhancing the connection between the chairmen and readers.By analyzing the uses of metadiscourse and how they help to achieve rhetorical appeals,this study enriches the research on metadiscourse on business discourse.It’s hoped that writers of chairman’s statements in corporate annual reports can use metadiscourse effectively to achieve the purpose of establishing good company image and encouraging public investment.