中外跨国公司英文社会责任报告情感分析对比

A comparative sentiment analysis of CSR reports between multinational enterprises home and abroad

本文建立了华为公司与英国电信(BT)公司英文企业社会责任报告语料库(CSR报告语料库),借助LIWC-22情感词典对两家公司的社会责任报告进行情感分析对比考察,并从批评话语分析视角阐释差异背后的动因。研究发现,差异主要体现在以下几个方面。(1)华为公司报告倾向于阐述具体事件实例来支撑观点以缩短与读者的情感距离,并注重与合作伙伴长期关系的连结与维护。BT公司报告则更多展现其负责任的情感立场以及与外部社会战略共赢的情感态度。(2)BT公司报告中的情感倾向较为中立,华为公司报告则呈现出由正面情感信息偏多到正、负情感均衡的发展趋势。(3)BT公司报告中阐述了较多独具特色且丰富多元的活动,与外部构建了多维全面的情感关系。华为公司报告则更多体现出了疫情时代下的情感关怀。本文对商务英语写作教学有一定启示,也可为我国跨国公司企业形象的塑造与海外传播提供参考。

The study establishes a corpus of English corporate social responsibility reports(CSR Reports Corpus)of Huawei and BT Corporation by making a comparative sentiment analysis between the texts of two companies using LIWC-22 dictionaries.Critical discourse analysis will be used to explain the motivations behind the differences.The results of the study show that differences of emotional construction between the two companies are mainly reflected in the following aspects:1)Huawei’s CSR reports tend to shorten the emotional distance between the readers and the company by describing specific examples of events and to focus on the maintenance of long-term relationships with partners.BT’s CSR reports show an obvious win-win attitude toward the external communities.2)The sentiment tendency in BT’s CSR reports is more neutral while Huawei’s reports indicate a trend from more positive to a balance of positive and negative sentiment over the years.3)BT’s CSR reports describe events with the company’s own unique characteristics and build a more multi-dimensional and comprehensive emotional relationship with the society.Huawei’s reports reflect extensive emotional care to employees and clients during COVID-19 pandemic era.The paper attempts to provide some implications for the teaching of business English writing and provide suggestions to Chinese multinational companies regarding the construction of their corporate image overseas.