Research On Textual Organization Of The Statements Of Sustainability Reports Of The Well-known Automobile Enterprises From The Perspective Of Genre Theory

With the rapid development of the global economy and the constant advancement of science and technology,people pay more and more attention to such issues as ecological balance,product safety,respect for human rights and protection of labor.Many enterprises,especially multinational corporations,disclose the implementation of their own social responsibilities in economic sectors,environmental protection areas and many aspects of social life through the release of sustainability reports.However,the development of sustainability report in China is still in its infancy.Therefore,this article takes the statements of sustainability report issued by the world's leading automobile enterprises as the research focus,and aims to provide ideas for textual organization when the home writers write statements in English of the sustainability report for domestic automobile enterprises.This thesis is inspired by the research on social genre and cognitive genre by a scholar named Ian Bruce.It is guided by theories of Bhatia's move analysis,Lakeoff's image schemata(gestalt structure),Hoey's discourse pattern,and Crombie's interpropositional relation.The author of the thesis has collected 30 sustainability reports from the official websites of the enterprises from 2014 to 2016,and conducted detailed and comprehensive genre analyses covering move structure,gestalt structure,discourse pattern and interpropositional relation.The main findings and recommendations of this thesis are listed as follows:(1)For the move structure,the text is basically composed of three Moves,which are the introduction,elaboration on events,achievements and strategies,as well as the summary and several steps;(2)the texts usually employ the WHOLE-PART gestalt structure,by providing specific information in part to supplement and respond to the briefing mentioned in the whole;(3)referring to the discourse patterns,the texts,on the whole,use General-Particular patterns which echo the WHOLE-PART gestalt structures and,meanwhile,contain Matching patterns in paragraphs and sentences(including Matching Compatibility Relation and Matching Contrast Relation)and(4)the author finds out eleven kinds of interpropositional relations from the sample texts,with higher frequencies of occurrence in Bonding,Amplification,Means-Purpose and Statements-Exemplification.Their role is to provide readers with richer information and examples and to demonstrate the results of the business.Domestic enterprises may presumably draw on the features of textual organization of the statements based on their own specific circumstances,to make their statements more well-organized,concise and detailed.