A Study On Commissive Utterances And Their Local Grammars In English Crisis Public Relation Statements

As an important part of crisis public relation statements(CPRS),commissive utterances play an irreplaceable role in showing organization‘s sincerity,soothing public sentiment,and maintainning positive images of organizations.Since 1960 s,a lot of researches on commissives have been conducted.However,most of these researches focus on commissive speech act in literary works and personal speeches from the perspective of pragmatics.Few researches pay attention to commissive utterances and their local grammars in public crisis public relation statements from the perspective of corpus linguistics.Therefore,a corpus named the Corpus of Crisis Public Relation Statements(CCPRS)is built for this research and commissive utterances and their local grammars in CPRS are described and analyze quantitatively and qualitatively from the perspective of corpus linguistics.This research tries to answer these four questons:(1)what is the distribution feature of commissive utterances in the CCPRS ?(2)what is the typical pattern of commissive utterances in local grammar in the CCPRS?(3)what is the feature of pattern choices among different types of CPRS?(4)what is the feature of pattern choices among different content of promise?This research finds that(1)in CPRS,more than one commissive instance often appears in the middle and concluding parts;(2)commissive pattern 10(n./ n.group WILL(REMAIN| COOPERATE| INFORM| INVESTIGATE| ADJUST| MAKE PROGRESS| BAN| STRIVE| CARRY OUT)is the most typical pattern and is used in 49.77% commissive instances;(3)elements,such as promisers,causes and forms will influence the pattern choices of CPRS;however,pattern 10 is used most frequently in all kinds of CPRS;(4)promises about redemption and promises about doing one‘s job well are the main content of promises in CPRS.The former has a fancy for pattern 10 and pattern 6(n./ n.group BE [VOLUNTARILY] DOING prep./ prep.phrase)while the latter shows interest in pattern 10,pattern 1(n./ pron.IS [FULLY] DEDICATED(to| in)v.phrase / n.group)and pattern 7(n./ pron.v.phrase to ensure(that)clause/ n.group).This research aims to explore the distribution and expression features of commissive utterances in CPRS and to provide references for CPRS writing and related teaching.