A Comparative Analysis Of Attitudinal Resources In China And U.S.Corporate Letters To Shareholders

Corporate letters to shareholders are the correspondence written by presidents with individual name to readers,with the aim of obtaining credibility,attracting investors and building corporate image.Attitude system is concerned with people’s emotions,including affect,attitude and value judgement to people or objects.In letters to shareholders,affect,judgement and appreciation resources reflect the attitude of corporations.The research aims to summarize the differences and similarities of attitudinal expressions by comparing the use of attitudinal resources in China and U.S.corporate letters to shareholders and provides reference for domestic writers of such letters,enhancing the awareness and understanding of attitudinal expressions in order to effectively achieve the ultimate business goal.The study makes a comparison between the overall frequency and distribution of attitudinal resources and rhetorical appeals achieved by attitudinal resources in China and U.S.corporate letters to shareholders using qualitative and quantitative methods.The corpora used in this thesis are composed of China and U.S.corporate letters to shareholders by Fortune 500 Global companies in 2017.The research concludes that there is a significant difference between the overall frequency of attitudinal resources in China and U.S.corporate letters to shareholders.In the two corpora,judgement and appreciation resources are more frequently employed and have similar occurrences.However,the frequency of affect resource in China corporate letters to shareholders is about half that in U.S.corporate letters to shareholders.Besides,there is obvious distinction between the distribution and usage of attitudinal resources in the three sub-types.China corporate letters to shareholders use more of normality and balance resources and fewer affect resources.The analysis of rhetorical appeals indicates that Chinese presidents utilize more credible appeals and fewer affective appeals than U.S.presidents do.The research enriches the exploration into the application of attitudinal resources in corporate letters to shareholders,offering practical and reliable reference for writing and research of domestic corporate letters to shareholders.