A Contrastive Study Of Metadiscourse And Rhetorical Appeals In English Letters To Shareholders From American And Chinese Retailing Companies

The annual report is deemed as the most vital business document unveiling the operating performance and achievements for the past year within the company.As a paramount part of the report,the letter to shareholders,with a promotional and persuasive nature,is the essence of the annual report and stands out as the prevalently-read portion of the report.This study is conducted for the reason that metadiscoursal terms are of critical importance for probing into the rhetorical functions of the letters and disclosing their essential nature.Additionally,business genres are not paid much attention to when analyzing from the angle of the combination between metadiscourse and rhetoric.Thus,it is of benefits to probe into the letters to shareholders in particular,in an attempt to reveal the differences of English letters to shareholders between China-and US-based companies from aspects of metadiscourse and rhetorical appeals.Based on the purpose of this study,this study proposed three research questions:（1）What are the similarities and differences regarding the types and frequencies of metadiscoursal markers in the LTS of American and Chinese companies?（2）How distinctively do American and Chinese CEOs in question employ metadiscourse to contribute to the three rhetorical appeals?（3）What factors might be responsible for the observed similarities and differences?In order to answer these questions,the author resorts to the corpus tool-Antconc to get the statistic results of metadiscoursal devices and then uses SPSS to check if there are significant differences in the adoption of these markers between the letters drafted by Americans and Chinese.Afterwards,the qualitative procedure is applied to see how the textual components contribute to the realization of the three rhetorical appeals.At last,some factors which might be in play for causing the similarities and differences are presented.Overall,interactive and interactional metadiscourse markers demonstrate salient differences across the corpora.And markers for attitude and engagement,as well as code glosses present marked disparities between the LTS in the two countries.Next,the authors of different nationalities still vary in their choice of metadiscoursal items.Finally,the three rhetorical appeals are underplayed by Chinese executives.The causes may include authors’ nationality,cultural differences,and authors’ or translators’ influences,etc.That being said,this study broadens the research domain of business writing,and reveals the persuasive function of the letters by the use of metadiscourse and rhetorical appeals.Therefore,it results in the enriched rhetorical awareness of both business practitioners and students in this field.