A Study On Manipulation In Chinese And American Corporate Profile From The Perspective Of Impression Management Theory

Under the background of global economy,companies from different countries want to reinforce their exchange and cooperation.As a crucial part of the publicity of the company,corporate profile is of much importance to construct a good and creditable image in the competitive market.A good corporate profile can be a great promotion with the purpose of attracting potential consumers and cooperators.As technology on Internet develops rapidly,the Internet has been regarded as the first choice for businessman to collect corporate information.Therefore,the website is rather important for promoting corporate image.Especially,the corporate profile,always gaining people's attention firstly,is certainly significant,because the corporate profile acts as a channel through which people can have a general knowledge of the company.In order to better play the role of the corporate profile of listed companies,this thesis starts with the following three questions and analyzes the 60 corporate profile texts from the perspective of impression management.Firstly,what is the impression motivation of discourse manipulation in Chinese and American corporate profiles? Secondly,what are the impression management strategies for achieving the desired corporate images? Third,whether there are any similarities and differences in the impression management strategies adopted by Chinese and American corporate profiles? If so,what they are? Based on the two-component impression management model proposed by Leary and Kowalski(1990),the research selected 30 profiles of each of Fortune Global 500 Chinese and American corporations in 2016 as research objects,and conducted a comprehensive study on the impression motivation and impression construction of the two types of texts.The research results show that Fortune Global 500 corporations pay more attention to their image in the corporate profile.They usually use impression management strategies to describe themselves in the company profile to obtain a good image.The manipulative discourse in the corporate profile is governed by the following impression management motives,such as the social outcomes,being respected,approval and trustworthy,and also the material outcomes gaining investment,cooperation and profits.Thematic manipulation,visual manipulation,and numbers of choice are adopted as impression management strategies to create corporate desired images.In addition,this study also found that American listed companies are better at using thematic manipulation and visual manipulation strategies to manage impressions.Most Chinese and American listed companies tend to choose key numbers to help manage corporate images.To sum up,from the perspective of impression management,this thesis studied the impression motivation and impression construction of the manipulated discourse in Chinese and American corporate profiles,and conducted a comparative analysis of impression management strategies of Chinese and American corporate profiles.The present research aims at summarizing the writing features of the Chinese and American corporate profile texts,and gives Chinese listed corporations some suggestions for the effective use of the company profile in the international market.