A Study On Corporate Identity Construction In Corporate Social Responsibility Reports From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

With the development of global economy,the competition among enterprises has become more and more furious.In order to stand out from the competition,enterprises will adopt various ways to improve their competitiveness.The study of identity is a hot topic in the field of humanities and social sciences.The discursive construction of corporate identity focuses on the relationship between corporate discourse and corporate identity,regarding corporate identity as a social phenomenon that can be shaped by discourse.Corporate social responsibility report is to disclose corporate social responsibility information and policies to stakeholders,which plays an important role in enhancing corporate reputation and building corporate identity.In this research,the CSR reports of Chinese companies on the Fortune Global 500 list in 2020 are used as research object.From the perspective of critical discourse analysis,under the theoretical framework of discourse-historical analysis,with the help of corpus software Antconc4.1.4,this study analyzes characteristics of language use and explores the types of corporate identities in the CSR reports.The research aims to answer the following questions: 1.What main themes are presented in the CSR reports ? 2.What corporate identities are constructed through discursive strategies in the CSR reports ? 3.What are the factors of influencing the corporate identities construction in the CSR reports ?The research findings: Firstly,in the self-built corpus,through the statistics,classification and contextual exploration of high-frequency words in the CSR reports,the main themes are summarized in the CSR reports: including the company development,social services,employee rights and environmental protection.Secondly,this study analyzes the discursive strategies and their linguistic means to conclude the corporate identities constructed in the CSR reports as follows.In the strategy of nomination,the enterprises nominate themselves through exclusive self-reference and inclusive self-reference.In the exclusive self-reference,“the official name” “the company” and “the group” are used to demonstrate enterprises independent from the readers and construct the authoritative and objective out-group identity.In the inclusive self-reference,the first personal pronoun “we” is used to regard the enterprises and stakeholders as a whole and construct the equal and friendly in-group corporate identity.In the strategy of predication,the enterprises use positive predicates,adjectives and comparison to construct progressive,competitive,leading and comprehensive corporate identities.In the strategy of argumentation,the enterprises use topos of responsibility,topos of number,topos of danger or threat,topos of usefulness or advantage and topos of culture to express the reporters’ attitude,which constructs responsible,practical,stable,influential and inclusive corporate identities.In the strategy of perspectivation,the enterprises use direct quotation of speeches of national leaders,chairmen of companies,employees and beneficiaries,making the content more plausible,which constructs the reliable corporate identity.In the strategy of intensification or mitigation,the enterprises use medium-value modal verbs and the low-value modal verbs to make the tone moderate and polite,which constructs the affable corporate identity.Finally,this study explores the factors of the social background in the discourse construction of corporate identity,analyzes the historical context of the discourse from the political,economic and cultural aspects,and further interprets the construction of corporate identity in the CSR reports.The research significance: on the one hand,the study broadens the research field of critical discourse analysis and enriches the relevant research of corporate identity construction,which has certain theoretical significance;on the other hand,it provides enlightenment for the compilation of CSR reports and reference for how to present corporate identity in CSR reports,so as to promote Chinese enterprises to expand overseas markets,which has certain practical significance.