ISSN: 2308-0876
NOTE: THIS JOURNAL IS SHIFTED TO NEW
WEBSITE (www.kwpublications.com)
Open access
Corporate annual report (CAR) is a communicative genre written by specialists in corporate companies. Over time, many linguistic studies have been conducted on this genre from various perspectives. This review paper critically examines studies on CARS, specifically on the rhetorical structure and linguistic features used in the genre. Based on the major findings of the studies reviewed in this paper, it can be argued that the writers of this professional discourse embellish the companies’ reputation with frequent usage of positive language features and minimal negative aspects. In addition, corporations claim credit and responsibility for positive events but in the case of negative events, responsibility is evaded. Finally, CARs are essentially reporting genres and structurally different from other promotional genres due to intentionally inter-discursive appropriations that are practiced in order to report and promote the companies.
Afida, M. A. (2007). Semantic fields of problem in business English: A corpus-based study on Malaysian and British journalistic business texts. Corpora: Corpus-based Language Learning, Language Processing and Linguistics, 2(2), 211-240.
Afida, M. A. (2010). “Help, change, plan – A corpus analysis of key semantic domains in business solutions. Jurnal Bahasa Jendela Alam, 6, 831-844.
Afida, M. A. (2013). Combining problem-solution categories and communicative acts: An analysis of Malaysian and British business journalistic texts. World Applied Sciences Journal 21 (Special Issue of Studies in Language Teaching and Learning), 174-185.
Aliyyah, F., N. (2016). Interdiscursive analysis of corporate environmental reports of oil and gas companies in Malaysia. Unpublished Dissertation: University of Malaya.
Alexander, R. J. (2009). Framing discourse on the environment: A critical discourse approach. New York: Routledge.
Ali, S. M., & Isa, M. A. (2018). Firms attributes and corporate social responsibility disclosure: A literature review. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(4), 310–322.
Anspach, R. R. (1988). Notes on the sociology of medical discourse: The language of case presentation. J Health Soc Behav; 29, 357-75.
Basu, K., & Palazzo, G. (2008). Corporate social responsibility: A process model of sense making. Academy of Management Review, 33 (1), 122-136.
Beattie, V., Dhanani, A., & Jones, M. (2008). Investigating presentational change in UK annual reports: A longitudinal perspective. Journal of Business Communication, 45(2), 181-222.
Bernard, T. (2015). A critical analysis of corporate reports that articulate corporate social responsibility. Dissertation: Stellenbosch University.
Billig, M. (2008). The language of critical discourse analysis: The case of nominalization. Discourse & Society, 19(6), 783-800.
Bhatia, V. K. (1993a). Analysing genre: Language use in professional settings. Essex: Longman Group Ltd.
Bhatia, V. K. (1994). Generic integrity in professional discourse. Text and talk in professional contexts. In B. L. Gunnarsson, P. Linell, & B. Nordberg, (Eds.), Skriftsrie, 6 (pp. 61-76). Uppsala, Sweden: ASLA.
Bhatia V. K. (1995). Genre-mixing in professional communication: The case of 'private intentions' vs. 'socially recognised purposes', in P. Bruthiaux, T. Boswood, & B. Bertha, (eds.), Explorations in English for Professional Communication, City University of Hong Kong: Hong Kong.
Bhatia, V. K. (1997). Genre analysis - step by step. Journal of Linguistics, (19), 207–240.
Bhatia, V. K. (2004). Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. Continuum.
Bhatia, V. K. (2008b). Towards critical genre analysis. In Bhatia, V., Flowerdue, J. & Jones, R. (Eds.), Advances in Discourse Studies, (166-177). NY: Routledge.
Bhatia, V. K. (2008c). Genre analysis, ESP and professional practice. English for Specific Purposes, 27(2), 161–174.
Bhatia, V. K. (2010). Interdiscursivity in professional communication. Discourse & Communication, 4(1), 32–50.
Bhatia, A. (2012). The corporate social responsibility report: The hybridization of a 'confused' genre. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 55(3), 221- 238.
Bhatia, A. (2013). International genre, local flavour: Analysis of PetroChina's corporate and social responsibility report. Revista Signos, Estudios de Lingüítica, 46 (83), 307-331.
Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. New York, NY Cambridge University Press.
Biber, D., Johanson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Pearson Education.
Bowers, T. (2010). From image to economic value: A genre analysis of sustainability reporting. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 15 (3), 249 - 262.
Breeze, R. (2012). Legitimation in corporate discourse: oil corporations after deep water Horizon. Discourse & Society, 23(1), 3-18.
Breeze, R. (2013). Corporate Discourse. Bloomsbury.
Camiciottoli, B. C. (2009). “Just wondering if you could comment on that”: Indirect requests for information in corporate earnings calls. Text & talk, 29 (6), 661-681.
Caimotto, M.C. & Molino, A. (2011). Greenwashing: A case study. CADAAD, 5 (1), 1-16.
Camiciottoli, B. C. (2011). Ethics and ethos in financial reporting: Analyzing persuasive language in earnings calls. Business Communication Quarterly, 74 (3), 298-312.
Cen, Z., & Cai, R. (2014). Preference in presentation or impression management: A comparison study between chairmen’s statements of the most and least profitable Australian companies. Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal, 8(3), 3-22.
Clatworthy, M., & Jones, M. (2003). Financial reporting of good and bad news: evidence from accounting narratives. Accounting and Business Research, 33(3), 171-185.
Clatworthy, M., & Jones, M. (2006). Differential patterns of textual characteristics and company performance in the chairmen’s statement. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 19 (4), 493-511.
Conaway, R. N., & Wardrope, W. J. (2010). Do their words really matter? Thematic analysis of U.S. and Latin American CEO Letters. Journal of Business Communication, 47(2), 141–168.
Dafouz-Milne, E. (2008). The pragmatic role of textual and interpersonal metadiscourse markers in the construction and attainment of persuasion: A cross-linguistic study of newspaper discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(1), 95–113.
Dang, T. T. H., Nguyen, T. T. L., Le, K. N., Nguyen, T. H. T., & Pham, T. B. C. (2020). The information gap in corporate annual reports: Evidence from Veitnam. Accounting, 6, 899-912.
De Groot, E., Korzilius, H., Ickerson, C., & Gerritsen, M. (2006). A corpus analysis of text themes and photographic themes in managerial forewords of Dutch-English and British annual general reports. Professional Communication, 49(3), 217-235.
Ditlevsen, M. G. (2012). Revealing corporate identities in annual reports. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 17(3), 379–403.
Dragsted, B. (2014). A case study of letters to shareholders in annual reports before, during and after the financial crisis. LSP Journal, 5(2), 84–104.
Flowerdew, J., & Wan, A. (2006). Genre analysis of tax computation letters: How and why tax accountants write the way they do. English for Specific Purposes, 25(2), 133-153.
Flowerdew, J., & Wan, A. (2010). The linguistic and the contextual in applied genre analysis: The case of the company audit report. English for Specific purposes, 29(2), 78-93.
Fuertes-Olivera, P. A., Velasco-Sacristán, M., Arribas-Baño, A., & Samaniego- Fernández, E. (2001). Persuasion and advertising English: Metadiscourse in slogans and headlines. Journal of Pragmatics, 33 (8), 1291-1307.
Fuoli, M. (2012). Assessing social responsibility: A quantitative analysis of appraisal in BP’s and IKEA’s social reports. Discourse & Communication, 6(1), 55–81.
Fuoli, M. (2018). Building a trustworthy corporate identity: A corpus-based analysis of stance in annual and corporate social responsibility reports. Applied Linguistics, 39(6), pp. 846-885.
Fuoli, M., & Hart, C. (2018). Trust building strategies in corporate discourse: an experimental study. Discourse & Society, 29(5), pp. 514-552.
Frownfelter-Lohrke, C., & Fulkerson, C. L. (2001). The incidence and quality of graphics in annual reports: An international comparison. International Journal of Business Communication, 38(3), pp. 337-357.
Frownfelter-Lohrke, C., & Fulkerson, C. L. (2001). The incidence and quality of graphics in annual reports: An international comparison. Journal of Business Communication, 38(3), 337-358.
Garzone, G. (2004). Annual company reports and CEO’s letters: Discoursal features and cultural markedness in C. Candlin and M. Gotti (Eds): Intercultural Aspects of Specialized
Communication (pp. 311-343). Peter Lang.
Garzone, G. E. (2005). Letters to shareholders and chairman’s statements: Textual variability and generic integrity. Institutional Research Informational System, 3, 179-204
Goel, A., Chakrabarti, A. (2010). Prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of substance use in a rural community in Sikkim, North East India: Results from a pilot population survey. J Subst Use, 15, 13–23.
Grabe, W., & Kaplan, R. B. (1997). Theory and practice of writing. Longman: London.
De Groot, E. (2008). English annual reports in Europe. Dissertation: University of LOT Netherland.
Halliday, M. (2001). New ways of meaning. In A. Fill, & P. Mühlhäusler (Eds.),The ecolinguistics reader (pp. 175-202). London: Continuum.
Halliday, M., & Matthiessen, C. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th Eds.). London, England: Routledge.
Haslinda, Y., & Lehman, G. (2009). Corporate environmental reporting through the lens of semiotics. Asian Review of Accounting, 17 (3), 226 - 246.
Heiniluoma, M. (2008). Boosting future prospects or softening promises of success?? The use of emphatics and hedging in the letter to shareholders sections of annual reports. English for Specific Purposes, 38 (2), 135-148.
Helan, R. (2012). Analysis of published medical case reports: Genre-based studies. Unpublished Dissertation, Masaryk University.
Henry, A., & Roseberry, R. (2001). A narrow-angled corpus analysis of moves and strategies of the genre: Letter of application. English for Specific Purposes, 20(2), 153–167.
Hildebrandt, H. H., & Snyder, R. (1981). The Pollyanna hypothesis in business writing: Initial results, suggestions for research. Journal of Business Communication, 18 (1), 5-15.
Hyland, K. (1998). Exploring corporate rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO's letter. Journal of Business Communication, 35(2), 224-244.
Jameson, S. M. (2000). Recruitment and training in small firms. Journal of European Industrial Training, 24(1), pp. 43-49.
Kohut, G. F., & Segars, A. H. (1992). The president's letter to stockholders: An examination of corporate communication strategy. Journal of Business Communication, 29(1), 7-21.
Krishnan, G., & Parsons, L. (2008). Getting to the bottom line: An exploration of gender and earnings quality. Journal of Business Ethics, 78(1), 65-76.
Li, F. (2008). Annual report readability, current earnings, and persistence. J. Account. Econ, 45(1), 221–247.
Maat, H. P. (2007). How promotional language in press releases is dealt with by journalists: Genre mixing or genre conflict? Journal of Business Communication, 44(1), 59–95.
Malavasi, D. (2005). Banks' annual reports: An analysis of the linguistic means used to express evaluation. Proceedings of the Association for Business Communication 7th European Convention.
Malavasi, D. (2010). The multifaceted nature of banks’ annual reports as informative, promotional and corporate communication practices. In: Evangelisti-Allori, P. and Garzone, G. (eds) Discourse, Identities and Genres in Corporate Communication: Sponsorship, Advertising and Organizational Communication. Bern: Peter Lang, 211-234.
Mason, M., & Mason, R. D. (2012). Communicating a green corporate perspective: ideological persuasion in the corporate environmental report. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 26(4), 479–506.
Merkl-Davvies, D. M., & Koller, V. (2012). ‘Metaphoring’ people out of this world. A critical discourse analysis of a chairnan’s statement of a UK defence firm. Acounting Forum, 36 (3), 178-193.
Miller, C., Rasco, M., Tripp, E. (2010). Corpus-based investigation of discourse organization and lexico-grammar: Comparison of Hong Kong and United States corporate governance reports. Dissertation: City University of Hong Kong.
Mobasher, A., Afida, M. A., Faiz, S. A., & Chan, M. Y. (2013). Review of studies on corporate annual reports during 1990-2012. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature, 2(2), 133-141.
Mobasher, A., & Afida, M. A. (2015). Exploring the macrostructure of management forewords of corporate annual reports. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 4(1), 1-12.
Moffitt, K., & Burns, M. B. (2009). What does that mean? Investigating obfuscation and readability cues as indicators of deception in fraudulent financial reports. Fifteenth Americas conference on information systems, San Francisco, CA.
Myskova, R., & Hajek, P. (2019). Relationship between corporate social responsibility in corporate annual reports and financial performance of the US companies. Journal of International Studies, 12(1), 269-282.
Nickerson, C., & De Groot, E. (2005). Dear shareholder, dear stockholder, dear stakeholder:The business letter genre in the annual general report. In P. G. M. Gotti, (Ed.), Genre variation in business letters (pp. 325-346). Bern: peter Lang.
Ngai, C. S. B., & Singh, R. G. (2014). Communication with stakeholders through corporate web sites: An exploratory study on the CEO messages of major corporations in greater China. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 28(3), 352–394.
Ngai, C. S. B., & Sing, R. G. (2017). Move structure and communicative style of leaders’ messages in corporate discourse: A cross-cultural perspective. Discourse & Communication, 11(3), 276-295.
Palmer-Silveira, Juan, C., Miguel, F., & Ruiz- Garrido, (2007). Annual reports in the English for business communication classroom: Methodological perspectives. English for Specific Purposes: Studies for classroom development and implementation, 149-171.
Parshakov, P., & Shakina, E. (2020). Do companies disclose intellectual capital in their annual reports? New evidence from explorative content analysis. Journal of Intellectual Capital.
Parsons, R. (2008). We are all stakeholders now: the influence of western discourses of “community engagement” in an Australian Aboriginal community. Critical Perspectives on International Buisness, 4 (3), 99-126.
Pelikanova, R. M. (2019). Corporate social responsibility information in annual reports in the EU- A Czech case study. Sustainability, 11, 1-21.
Pollach, I. A. (2005). A typology of communicative strategies in online privacy policies: Ethics, power, and informed consent. Journal of Business Ethics, 62, 221-235.
Rajandran, K., & Taib, F. (2014a). The representation of CSR in Malaysian CEO statements: a critical discourse analysis. Corporate Communications, 19(3), 303.
Rajandran, K., & Fauziah T. (2014b). Disclosing compliant and responsible corporations: CSR performance in Malaysian CEO Statements. Gema Online Journal of Language Studies, 14(3), 143-157.
Rajandran, A. K. (2015). A critical discourse analysis of Malaysian corporate social responsibility reports. Dissertation: University of Malaya, Malaysia.
Rajandran, K. (2019). Multimodal CSR disclosure in Malaysian corporate websites. Pertanika J. Soc. Sci. & Hum, 27 (2), 787 - 801.
Rutherford, B. A. (2005a). Genre analysis of corporate annual report narratives: A corpus linguistics-based approach. Journal of Business Communication, 42(4), 349–378.
Schultz, B. (2001). Language and the natural environment. In A. Fill & P. Mühlhäusler (Eds.), The ecolinguistics reader. (pp. 109-115). London: Continuum.
Skulstad, A. (2008). ‘Creating a green image in the public sphere: Corporate environmental reports in a genre perspective’. In Wodak, R. and Koller, V. (Eds.) Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, (pp. 181-201). De Gruyter Mouton.
Skulstad, A. (2010). Creating a “green” image in the public sphere: Corporate environmental reports in a genre perspective. In Wodak, R. & V. Koller, (eds.). Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere. Berlin: (pp. 181-202) Walter de Gruyter.
Stallworth, W. L. (2008). The mission statement: A corporate reporting tool with a past, present, and future. Journal of Business Communication, 45(2), 94–119.
Subramanian, R., Insley, R. G., & Blackwell, R. D. (1993). Performance and readability: A comparison of annual reports of profitable and unprofitable corporations. International Journal of Business Communication, 30(1), 49-61.
Surdu, F. B., Caliskan, A. O., & Esen, E. (2020). Human resource disclosures in corporate annual reports of insurance companies: A case of developing countries. Sustainability, 12, 1-20.
Swales, J. M., & Rogers, P. S. (1995). Discourse and the projection of corporate culture: the mission statement. Discourse & Society, 6, 223–242.
Tardy, C. M. (2003). A genre system view of the funding of academic research. Written Communication, 20 (1), 7-36.
Tom, B. (2010). From image to economic value: A genre analysis of sustainability reporting. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 15(3), 249-262.
Thomas, J. (1997). Discourse in the marketplace: The making of meaning in annual reports. Journal of Business Communication, 34(1), 47-66.
Thompson, P., & Zarina, Z. (2004). CSR reporting in Malaysia. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 13, 125-136.
Thompson, P., & Zakaria, Z. (2004). Corporate social responsibility reporting in
Malaysia: progress and prospects. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 13,
125-136.
Tonetti, I. (2019). Linguistic trust building strategies in Swiss banks’ public discourse: A diachronic study of annual reports and corporate responsibility reports from UBS and credit Suisse. Dissertation: Dalarna University.
Vithana, K., Soobaroyen, T., & Ntim, C. G. (2019). Human resource disclosures in UK corporate annual reports: To what extent do these reflect organizational priorities towards labour. Journal of Business Ethics.
Von Berg, M. (2013). CEO letters in CSR reports: Oil companies in focus. Unpublished Dissertation: Aalto University School of Buisness.
Wang, H., Li, L., & Cao, J. (2012b). Lexical features in corporate annual reports: a corpus-based study. European Journal of Business and Social Sciences, 1(9), 55–71.
Wang, J. L. (2016). Literature review on the impression management in corporate information. Disclosure Modern Economy, 7, 725- 731.
Wu, J. G. (2012b). Review of the studies on interdiscursivity. Foreign Languages and their Teaching, 2, 17–22.
Xiaoqin, L. (2017). Exploring the rhetorical use of interactional metadiscourse: A comparison of letters to shareholders of American and Chinese financial companies. English Language Teaching, 10(7), 232-241.
Yeung, L. (2007). In search of commonalities: Some linguistic and rhetorical features of business reports as a genre. English for Specific Purposes, 26(2), 156–179.
Zanola, A. (2009). The annual report: An interdisciplinary approach to a 'contaminated' new genre. Presented at the International Conference on "Genre on the Move. Hybridization and Discourse Change in Specialized Communication", at Universitá Federico II, Napoli, Italy.
In-Text Citation: (Hussain, Ali, Kasim, Jalaluddin, 2020).
To Cite this Article: Hussain, S. S., Ali, A. M., Kasim, Z. M., Jalaluddin, I. (2020). A Review on the Rhetorical Structure and Linguistic Features of Corporate Annual Reports. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. 10(9), 236-256.
Copyright: © 2020 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode