A Study Of Discursive Construction Strategies Of Chinese And American Corporate Identity From The Perspective Of Discourse-Historical Analysis

Negative impacts of corporate activities such as industrial accidents,energy consumption,and environmental problems have received public attention.To improve companies’ reputation and economic performance,corporate social responsibility reports become a bridge to promote communication between companies and their stakeholders.Corporate social responsibility reports are not only informative but also enhance corporate identity.Corporate identity becomes a social phenomenon that can be manipulated by discourse.Therefore,it is crucial to explore the discursive construction relationship between corporate identity and reports.The discourse-historical analysis emphasizes the counter force of discourse on society and aims to reveal the ideological significance behind the language structure.Adopting the discourse-historical approach and corpus tool Ant Conc 3.5.9,this research selects corporate social responsibility reports of BYD and Tesla from 2018 to2021 as research data and explores the use of discursive strategies and linguistic realizations in corporate social responsibility reports,reveals differences and similarities in their corporate identities,and finally explains sociocultural factors that contribute to corporate identity construction.The research shows that both companies use five discursive strategies to establish positive identities in their reports,and differences lie in linguistic realizations they use and corporate identities they construct.The first is the nomination strategy.The use of the official name and personal pronoun accounts for66.7% and 16.7% respectively in BYD Corpus,compared with 45.6% and 49.3% in Tesla Corpus.BYD builds an out-group identity;Tesla constructs an in-group identity.Second,the first four high-frequency predicates in BYD Corpus convey past achievements and social contributor identity.Tesla’s first four high-frequency predicates are used to convey a consistent sustainable identity.The use of positive adjectives suggests that both companies focus on innovation and environmental issues,while BYD also illustrates the fulfillment of social responsibility and active responses to national policies.Third,the use of definition topos and number topos conveys BYD’s identity as an industry leader,social contributor,and national enterprise and the sustainable identity of Tesla.Fourth,the strategy of perspectivization.BYD indirectly cites national laws and internal regulations in reports to establish the identity of operating by laws and regulations.Tesla indirectly quotes the source of the data in reports to construct an objective identity.Finally,the intensification/mitigation strategy.Both companies use epistemic modality to build the negotiator identity.The study also finds that characteristics and development background of corporate social responsibility reports,power distance,individualism,and collectivism may be factors that affect identity construction in corporate social responsibility reports in China and America.Adopting the discourse-historical approach to explore corporate identity construction,this research enriches the research content of corporate identity construction and expands the application field of the discourse-historical approach.Practically,it is helpful to improve the critical awareness of report producers and readers.Research findings also add to the understanding of corporate social responsibility reports in different cultures.