A Comparative Analysis Of Corporate Social Responsibility Reports Of Chinese And American Banks From Narrative Perspective

As a window of enterprises to publicize their social responsibility,Corporate Social Responsibility report(hereinafter to be referred as CSR report)is of great significance for a company to build its image and communicate with its stakeholders.For decades,there have been numerous researches on the CSR reports,but they mainly focus on the fields of economy and management.Researches on the CSR reports from the linguistic perspective are rare,and even fewer are published on the authoritative journals.While doing the present research,the author has found that studies on the CSR reports have shown a narrative turn in recent years,but they are still in their beginning.Therefore,this thesis aims to make a comparative analysis on CSR reports of the American and Chinese banks from the narrative perspective.Based on the narrative theory of Gérard Genette,this thesis conducts comparative analysis of CSR reports of Chinese and American banks by applying the qualitative and quantitative approaches.It covers 30 CSR reports of Chinese and American banks,approximately 898857 words,and elaborates some examples of these selected reports and presents narrative characteristics of these reports as well.The reports were analyzed from the perspectives of narrative time and narrative mood to reveal their similarities and differences.Besides,the thesis uses SPSS to make the independent test of some data to ascertain if these differences of narratives can be verified in the field of statistics.The research results show that the two report groups have similarities and differences indeed in narrative.The common features are as follows: CSR reports of Chinese and American banks tend to use anachronies;the consecutive-year narratives of less than five years and mimetic speeches are used frequently;summaries are widely adopted in two report groups;the focalizations of companies and executives appear in almost all reports.The differences are: CSR reports of Chinese banks use more consecutive-year narratives of more than 10 years,and summaries,pauses,and mimetic speeches are applied more frequently as well;in the contrast,American reports adopt more consecutive-year narratives of 6-9 years and these reports use anachronies and other focalizations with higher frequency.In addition,this study also explains the possible causes of similarities and differences of narrative between two report groups.Based on the research results,the thesis intends to make a tentative contribution to the further research of CSR reports,and provides some guidance for the CSR report writing and teaching as well.