Discursive Strategies In Trust Repair:Taking The Chairman Statements In Annual Reports Of Fortune Global 500 In 2008 As Examples

As an essential element of interpersonal and intimate relationships,trust is universal in social life.The variability of social relations determines the dynamic construction of trust,and discourse plays an important role in this dynamic negotiation process.Recently,there has been a trend of combining trust studies with discourse analysis.However,discourse analysis on trust repair is relatively infrequent.More discursive strategies for trust repair are worthy of being further explored.In order to find the special strategies employed for repairing trust,this thesis investigates thirty chairman statements in annual reports of fortune global 500 companies whose ranking decreased in 2008(during financial crisis).Based on the trust repair model of Fuoli&Paradis(2014),we further explore the discourse strategy of trust repair while taking into account the particularity of context.With demonstrating the feasibility of Fuoli&Paradis's trust-repair discourse model,the study reveals the different focus of trustee's trust-repair strategy:compared with integrity and benevolence dimensions of the trustworthiness(including ability,integrity and benevolence),fortune 500 companies focus more on repairing ability.In terms of discursive strategies,unlike the independent relationship between the two strategies of emphasizing the positive and neutralizing the negative in the Fuoli&Paradis's(2014)metamodel,this study finds that the two strategies are intertwined and mutually integrated.At the same time,the fortune 500 companies have adopted a more detailed discursive strategy,such as highlighting the status of the company,making predictions and alignment with the third parties in the emphasizing positive aspects,and construing the crisis as an opportunity or emphasizing severity of the crisis in the neutralizing negative aspects.The differences discussed above lie in the role of context in trust repair.Based on the three elements(focus,controllability,stability)in the Tomlinson&Mayer's(2009)causal attribution model,this paper compares and analyzes the economic crisis context and meta-model context,emphasizing the impact of context on strategy choice:the uncontrollable nature of the crisis is reflected by exaggerating the loss of the industry;the controllability affects the distribution of the repair strategies on the three dimensions of ability,integrity and benevolence;alliances with third parties,emphasizing the status of the industry or making predictions reduce the stability of the crisis,which presents the non-constantness of the crisis.The universality and openness of the economic crisis have determined that in the repair process,the fortune 500 companies are more focused on the repair of ability than integrity and benevolence.This study refines the trust repair strategies and reveals the influence of context factors on the trust repair strategy.On the basis of supplementing and enriching the Fuoli&Paradis's(2014)model,the trustor's significance is included in the sight of trust repair discourse,correcting transitional trend only focusing on trustee.This effort can be used for the dynamic construction and restoration of interpersonal trust relationships.