中美企业社会责任报告董事长致辞的多维分析

A multi-dimensional analysis of Chairman’s speeches in Chinese and American corporate social responsibility reports

企业社会责任报告(以下简称CSR报告)中的董事长致辞,是企业与利益相关者进行沟通的重要渠道。本研究基于自建语料库,对中美企业董事长致辞的语域特征进行多维分析。研究发现:1)与通用语篇相比,董事长致辞主要呈现较强的指称明晰性特征,而其在叙述性和显性劝说性上较弱;2)与美企相比,中企董事长致辞主要属于偏叙述及指称明晰类语篇,而其在交互性、即席信息组织精细度上相对较弱;3)中美企业董事长致辞的维度特征差异,具体表现在55项语言特征共现频率上。董事长致辞提升企业合法性的交际目的,形成了其特有的语域特征;中美两国社会文化语境(权力距离高低、长期与短期导向)与中美作者在英语语言熟练度等方面的差异,导致了中美企业董事长致辞的语域特征差异。本研究对提升我国企业对外传播质量及CSR报告语类的教学具有一定启示作用。

Chairman’s speeches in Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) reports are one of the most important ways for enterprises to communicate with stakeholders. Based on the self-built corpus, this paper presents a multidimensional analysis of the register features of Chairman’s speeches by Chinese and American enterprises. The results show that: 1)compared with general texts, Chairman’s speeches mark explicit and elaborated reference, yet weak in narration and overt persuasion;2) compared with American Chairman’s speeches, Chinese speeches are more narrative with elaborated reference, but less interactive with a lower online informational elaboration;and 3) the differences of the multi-dimensional functional features between Chinese and American Chairman’s speeches are attributed to differences in the co-occurrence frequency of 55 linguistic features. The observed similarities and differences can be interpreted with respect to communicative functions of Chairman’s speeches aiming to legitimate corporate communicative purposes, differences in context of culture(power distance and long-term versus short-term orientation) as well as the language proficiency of the authors. This study has inspiring effects on improving the quality of external communication of Chinese enterprises and the language teaching of CSR report.