1.5 Organization of the Book

The book consists of seven chapters.This introductory chapter offers an overview of the research background, rationale and objectives.It also elaborates three key notions which are essential for understanding the textual data investigated in the present study.The other chapters are organized in the following way.

Chapter Two presents the literature review which is closely related to the research perspective and analytical framework.It includes the three major schools of genre research, persuasion in classical rhetoric, metadiscourse research and previous studies on corporate annual report.

Chapter Three first elaborates the framework adopted for analyzing the structural patterns and linguistic features of chairman's letters.Then it explicates the research methodology, including a description of the two corpora built for the present study, methods of annotation and methods of analysis.

Chapter Four explores the structural characteristics of American and Chinese chairman's letters through move structure analysis.It focuses on how the persuasive purpose is realized through structural moves.

Chapter Five examines the metadiscourse markers used in the American and Chinese chairman's letters to identify their roles in the attainment of persuasion.These markers are investigated according to the three means of persuasion（logos, ethos and pathos）they contribute to.

Chapter Six discusses the major similarities and differences between the two corpora that show up in the investigation of move structure and metadiscourse markers.Previous socio-cognitive and culture studies are also drawn on to tentatively explain some cross-culture variations.

Chapter Seven is a conclusion of the book, which presents a summary of the research findings, discusses its implications and limitations, and makes some suggestions for future studies.