A Comparative Study Of Emotional Appeals Of The Annual Report Discourse Between Chinese And American Enterprises During The COVID-19

The epidemic is undoubtedly a sudden public safety incident for the world,which has had a certain impact on all aspects of the world,especially the impact on the economy,causing a certain recession.Corporates’ annual reports are an important vehicle for listed companies to convey information to investors and stakeholders,and the emotional tendencies in them will also affect the judgment and behavior of investors and stakeholders.How enterprises in various countries respond to the economic downturn caused by sudden public safety incidents through annual reports also reflects the country’s culture,its own economic situation and institutional policies to a certain extent.Therefore,studying the corporates’ behavior during this period has certain reference significance for enterprises to cope with emergencies.In view of this,this study collects the 2021 English annual reports of the top 25 Chinese and American companies selected by Fortune magazine,constructs the text emotional word categories,and uses the Wmatrix corpus analysis tool to qualitatively analyze the discourse of corporate annual reports on the basis of quantitative analysis,compares and studies the similarities and differences of emotional appeals of Chinese and American annual report discourse during the epidemic,and also tries to explore the potential reasons behind these similarities and differences.This study takes the rhetorical persuasion theory of Western rhetoric as the theoretical framework and analyzes the discourse of Chinese and American enterprises’ annual reports based on the categories and collocations of emotional vocabulary.The results of the study found:(1)In the quantitative analysis stage,firstly,emotional appeal is an essential persuasion tool in the discourse of annual reports of Chinese and American enterprises,and the use of emotional words in the annual reports of American enterprises is higher than that of Chinese enterprises.It shows that both Chinese and American companies try to influence investors with emotional appeal in their annual reports;this purpose of American companies is higher than that of Chinese companies.Secondly,the annual reports of Chinese and American companies show a positive emotional tendency and the positive emotional tendency of American corporate annual reports are higher than those of Chinese enterprises.It shows that both Chinese and American companies are trying to win the goodwill of investors through the emotional words of annual reports;American companies are more active in summarizing their successes over the past year and future prospects.Thirdly,the most frequently used emotional category in the annual reports of Chinese enterprises is the negative emotional category E3-: Violent / Angry,and the most frequently used emotional category in the annual reports of American companies is the positive emotional category E4.2+: Content;the emotional categories unique to Chinese corporate annual reports are E5+: Bravery and E4.2-: Discontent,and the emotional categories unique to American corporate annual reports are E4.1-: Content and E1:Emotional Actions,States,and Processes General.The emotional word classifications commonly used in the discourse of Chinese and American corporate annual reports belong to the positive emotional classifications.It shows that due to the influence of cultural background,economic background,institutional background and the characteristics of the enterprises themselves,there are potential reasons for the emergence and non-emergence of certain emotional appeal categories.(2)In the qualitative analysis phase,the study found that there are mainly the following four reasons behind these similarities and differences.Firstly,the difference in the institutional background has led to different basic starting points of Chinese and American enterprises,which has led to the emergence of this kind of emotional category: E4.2-in the discourse of Chinese enterprises’ annual reports and less emergence of E4.2+ in the discourse of Chinese enterprises’ annual reports.Secondly,the difference in the cultural background leads to the different entrepreneurial spirits of Chinese and American enterprises,which leads to the emergence of emotions such as E3-and E5+ in the discourse of Chinese enterprises’ annual reports,and the emergence of emotion E1 in the discourse of American enterprises’ annual reports.Thirdly,the same economic background of the epidemic has led to negative emotion in the annual reports of Chinese and American companies: E3 in the annual reports of Chinese enterprises,E4.1-in the annual reports of American enterprises;but at the same time,the difference in economic strength has also led to different responding attitudes of Chinese and American companies,resulting in a large number of emotions: E4.2+ in the annual reports of American companies.Fourthly,the for-profit nature of enterprises themselves also makes Chinese and American companies invariably use positive emotional categories in their annual reports discourse.In the end,it can affect the emotional tendency of investors to a certain extent,resulting in investment behavior.This research combines quantitative and qualitative research from the perspective of rhetoric,educationally,this study combines a corpus-based approach with Western rhetoric research,providing a new paradigm for rhetoric research,and making the research results more supportive and reliable.At the same time,practically,the research results of this study can help Chinese and American companies pay more attention to the role of emotional appeal in their annual reports,taking into account the use of all emotional categories,and using different emotional categories when facing audiences from different backgrounds,enabling enterprises to achieve better development in the context of crisis events.