Preface

Modern businesses dedicate a great deal of time and resources to financial disclosure, i.e.the periodic reporting of their financial results.It has become a crucial component of corporate communication.During the last three decades or so, corporate financial disclosure practices have been increasingly investigated from a variety of angles.From the perspective of language use, scholars in the field of linguistics and associated disciplines have explored such issues as linguistic features and communication strategies of different genres of financial disclosure.

In today's business context, financial disclosure genres are often used more than simply to communicate financial information, and thus cannot be categorized as merely informative.As a matter of fact, many western scholars have detected the underlying promotional and persuasive tendency of various corporate disclosure documents through linguistic and discourse studies.However, little attention has been paid to this research field by domestic scholars, related studies being very limited.

This book inquires into one of the most common written financial genres-corporate annual report（CAR）,which is used by listed companies to disclose their financial information during the past fiscal year.A typical CAR is a lengthy document which consists of several sections.Some are mainly technical and numerical（such as financial statements）; while other sections（such as chairman's letter, management's discussion and analysis, etc.）are more narrative and descriptive, likely to be manipulated to promote the positive results of a company so as to persuade readers of its soundness and future worth.This book focuses on chairman's letter（CL）,a typical narrative section within CAR,and looks into the persuasive dimension of this type of discourse.

Two small corpora have been built for this research, one including 54 CLs issued by 18 mainland Chinese listed companies and the other containing 54 CLs released by 18 US listed companies.The CLs are extracted from the annual reports published by these companies between the year of 2010 and 2012.Drawing on ESP School's genre analysis theory, the means of persuasion in classical rhetoric and Hyland's（2005）Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse, the book first explores the move structure of the American and Chinese texts, and then examines the linguistic devices used in the two sets of data for accomplishing the persuasive end.Besides, cross-cultural similarities and variations identified in the inquiry are discussed within the two socio-cultural contexts.

Through the move structure analysis, it can be found that the American and Chinese CLs exhibit an identical six-move structure, but variations exist in the frequencies of the six moves and their corresponding steps.Findings indicate that both American and Chinese CLs perform an underlying persuasive function though these letters appear to serve an informative intention.Despite the differences between the two corpora in the strategies that realize each move, the similarities seem to dominate, suggesting shared communication practices of American and Chinese listed companies in the context of globalization.The analysis of the metadiscourse markers used in the American and Chinese CLs reveals that these markers play an important role in the construction of persuasion.They are widely employed by both American and Chinese executives to realize the three means of persuasion in classical rhetoric-logos, ethos, and pathos, thereby enhancing the overall persuasiveness of those letters.However, the frequencies and distribution of most of these markers display quite different characteristics in the two corpora, which demonstrate notable cross-cultural variations in the way of attaining persuasion.The major cross-cultural variations identified in the above investigations are further discussed by referring to some previous socio-cognitive and cultural studies.

This book has several implications, from both the theoretical and practical perspectives.Theoretically, it has validated the effectiveness of combining genre analysis theory, classical rhetoric and metadiscourse research in the investigation of persuasion.This analytical framework can be adopted to probe into other financial disclosure genres in future studies.Practically, this book can help consumers of corporate financial documents develop a critical sense, making visible to them the often subtle persuasive undercurrent in such texts.Besides, it also provides insights into the corporate communication practices in Chinese and American socio-cultural contexts, thus contributing to the cross-cultural business communication.From the pedagogical perspective, this book may help students majoring in business, finance and other related disciplines become more aware of the rhetorical strategies employed in financial discourses, which may improve their capabilities of reading and writing these texts and hence better prepare them for their future professional practices.And it can also offer new input to update the teaching materials of such courses as business communication.

The research included in this book mainly comes from my doctoral dissertation completed in 2015.Upon its publication,I would like to express my appreciation to many people who have generously lent their support and encouragement in the writing and revision of this work.First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to my doctoral supervisor Prof.Yu Dongming.He provided me with thoughtful suggestions from the proposal stage through to the finished product.His insights and guidance have enriched my knowledge not only in this piece of work but also throughout my doctoral study.His profound knowledge and rigorous attitude towards academic research have set me a good example, encouraging me to forge ahead with my work and research.I am indebted to Prof.He Zhaoxiong,Prof.Xu Yulong,Prof.Shu Dingfang,Prof.Mei Deming, and Prof.Xu Haiming at Shanghai International Studies University.Their enlightening courses and lectures have stretched my thinking and broadened my perspective.I am also thankful to my classmates at SISU for their help and inspiration.My special thanks go to Chen Zheng and Zhou En, with whom I had a lot of academic discussions and from whose knowledge sharing I have benefited tremendously.I also want to show my gratitude to my family for their love, support and understanding during this academic journey.Last, but not the least,I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to the leadership team at the School of Languages,Shanghai University of International Business and Economics for their help and support, and the editors of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press for their careful and efficient editing job, which guarantees the quality of this book.