Research On The Identity Construction Of Energy Companies In News Discourse From The Perspective Of Discourse-historical Approach

Nowadays the international energy landscape is undergoing profound changes.Studying the identity construction of Chinese energy companies is an effective measure to promote the international discourse ability of companies.Previous studies on corporate identity construction have mostly been conducted from the perspective of critical discourse analysis,appraisal theory or genre analysis,with most of their research corpus coming from CSR reports,annual reports or profiles.Few studies have examined official corporate news discourse from a discourse-historical perspective.This study combined a corpus approach with a discourse-historical approach to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the official news discourse of Chinese energy companies.The research questions were as follows:(1)What linguistic devices are used by Chinese energy companies to construct corporate identities?(2)How do Chinese energy companies construct their corporate identities through meso-level discursive strategies?(3)Which corporate identities are constructed by Chinese energy companies through different micro-linguistic means?(4)How can the macro-corporate identity construction of Chinese energy companies be connected with the micro-linguistic means through the meso-level discursive strategies?Three representative energy companies were selected from the top 100 Chinese energy companies in the Fortune 500 as the research objects.A self-built corpus of 215 news texts from 3 official websites from 2020 to 2022 was collected(81791 tokens and 6927 types).This study adopted a three-dimensional discourse-historical methodological framework to study and analyze forms of linguistic expression,discursive strategy and theme of the text from three aspects.Firstly,AntConc was used to search high-frequency content words,concordance lines and related collocations in corporate news discourse,it was found that high-frequency content words can often reflect the concerns of companies,their actions in practice and their future development directions,revealing the thematic identities created by energy companies in news discourse,such as ecological protector,people’s health guardian,low-carbon green practitioner and other positive identities.Secondly,the specific applications and expressions of four meso-level discursive strategies used in energy corporate news discourse were analyzed,namely the referential strategy,the predication strategy,the perspectivization strategy and the intensification/mitigation strategy.Thirdly,the macro-level corporate identities were constructed through four meso-level discursive strategies and their corresponding micro-linguistic means,and it was concluded that the in-group/out-group identity of the company was constructed by the referential strategy,the vision/factual identity of the company was constructed by the predication strategy,the subjective/objective identity of the company was constructed by the perspectivization strategy and the autocratic/negotiated identity of the company was constructed by the intensification/mitigation strategy.Finally,the above analysis revealed that macro corporate identity construction,meso-level discursive strategies and micro linguistic means were complementary and inseparable from each other.The macro-thematic analysis argued that the mutually constructed relationship between identity and discourse was conditioned by social,historical and cultural context.It situated the identity construction of Chinese energy companies in a macro social,historical and cultural context and explored the social,historical and cultural reasons behind the identity construction of energy companies.In view of the analysis made above,we found that the news discourse of Chinese energy companies was influenced by the social,historical and cultural context and the news discourse of corporate identities embodied obvious Chinese cultural characteristics.This study has enriched the research scope of corporate identity construction and energy corporate news discourse,explained the effectiveness of using this analytical framework to study corporate identity construction and discourse,and provided energy companies with more international discourse options for external communication.