基于语料库的企业道歉文本体裁分析

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

The research topic is chosen based on the following considerations：

First, with the development of media and the rise of consumer awareness, thenumber of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade. It ismore and more common to see companies apologizing to their customers and thepublic through TV, newspaper, email or other medias. Corporate apologies, especiallythose delivered by big corporations, often draw much attention from the public as wellas researchers in various fields. It is obvious that a successful corporate apology caneffectively defuse the crisis and protect a company’s reputation from being damagedby the alleged wrongdoing. But a poorly-made corporate apology can often causegreater damage to the apologizing company’s image and even bring about lawsuits.Therefore, companies are always very cautious about the content and wording of theirapologies. It is then predictable that there might exist certain conventionalizedlinguistic patterns that are regularly employed in this business discourse with highpractical value. Inspired by this consideration, the author decided to make anempirical research on corporate apologies to find out the distinctive discourse patternsof corporate apologies and explore the apologizing companies’ intentions in usingthese patterns.

Second, as an effective tool for analyzing and teaching spoken and writtenlanguage, genre analysis in English for Specific Purposes(ESP) was initiated by JohnSwales in 1981. Since then it has been applied by many scholars to explore variousacademic and professional discourses. However, the existing literatures show that ithas yet seldom been applied to investigate corporate apologies, a distinctive genrewith the communicative functions of fixing the broken links in the customer-companyrelationship and rebuilding the company's tattered reputation as well as minimizingthe company’s responsibility for the alleged wrongdoing. These purposes arerecognized by expert members of the discourse community and can shape theschematic structure of the discourse as well as influence the choice of content andstyle(Swales, 1990). Therefore, the author thought that it should be fruitful to applygenre analysis to corporate apologies to explore the generic features of such genre andhow the communicative purposes are realized through the discourse structure andlanguage choices.

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1.2 Significance of the research

The significance of the research can be assumed from the following aspects:

First, it may draw attention to research on corporate apologies from a linguisticperspective. Previous interest in corporate apologies mostly comes from the researchareas of public relations and crisis management with a focus on the strategies, effectsor ethics of such public relations act. But as a carefully crafted business discourse, itseems to have received less notice than it deserves in applied linguistics. Hopefully,this research can lead to more linguistic interest in the language use of this discourse.

Second, this research attempts to integrate genre analysis with corpus linguisticsmethodology, which is a relatively new research approach. As Upton and Cohen(2009)argue, few studies have tried to combine the two research perspectives of discourseanalysis and corpus analysis and as a result, “we know little at present about thegeneral patterns of discourse organization across a large representative sample of textsfrom a genre”(Upton, Cohen, 2009). This study makes use of corpus-based methodsto assist the genre analysis of corporate apologies which is also a seldom toucheddiscourse in genre analysis. Therefore, it not only broadens the scope of the researcharea of genre analysis but also contributes to the exploration of a new researchapproach to genre.

Finally, this research also has great practical significance. In today’s businesscontexts, it is a basic corporate ethic for a company to deliver a formal public apologywhen it is believed to have committed some kind of wrongdoings. With Chinesecompanies going global with big stride, it is unavoidable for them to encounterunfavorable situations where they are supposed to comply with international businessethics and make public apologies when an offence occurs. The results of this studycan provide some insight into the discourse pattern and linguistic features of Englishcorporate apologies and thus can help Chinese companies to construct corporateapologies with the structure, contents and style conforming to the mainstreamconvention in an international business setting. In addition, by a systemic study ofcorporate apologies, the understanding and appreciation of this particular genre can be improved and readers’ awareness to the language use and communicative purposescan also be raised while reading a corporate apology.

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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Genre and genre analysis

Genre is a term which was originated from Latin word 'genus' for 'kind' or 'class'. Itis a rather ambiguous concept which has ever been popular in the folklore studies,literary studies, rhetoric and linguistics (Swales, 1990). In the 1990s, genre became asignificant concept in applied linguistics. Swales(1990) introduced genre analysis intothe study of English for Specific Purposes(ESP) in his pioneering work GenreAnalysis: English in Academic and Research Settings in which he gives a workingdefinition of genre.

“A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of whichshare some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized byexpert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute therationalefor the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of thediscourse and influences and constrains choice of content and style.” (1990:58)】

This definition emphasizes the importance of communicative purposes whichserve as the crucial criterion that shapes the genre of a discourse and determines itsinternal structure and content. Following Swales’ definition, Bhatia(1993:77) furtherdefines genre as a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set ofcommunicative purposes, which could be understood by members of the professionalor academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often, it was highly structured and conventionalized with constrains on allowable contributions in terms oftheir intent, positioning, form and functional value. These constrains, however, wereoften exploited by the expert members of the discourse community to achieve privateintentions within the framework of socially recognized purposes. Bhatia’s definitiondiffers with that of Swales’ in that he takes psychological factors into considerationand takes genre as a dynamic social process.

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2.2 Corpus-based genre analysis

2.2.1 Corpus, corpus linguistics and corpus-based approach

A corpus is a principled collection of authentic texts stored electronically that can beused to discover information about language that may not have been noticed throughintuition alone(Bennett, 2010). The major electronic corpora at present are BrownCorpus(BC), Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen(LOB) Corpus, London-Lund Corpus(LLC) andthe British National Corpus(BNC). These corpora belong to generalized corpora,since they are often very large, with more than 10 million words, and contain a varietyof languages so that findings from it may be somewhat generalized(Bennett, 2010). Acorpus can also be a specialized one which contains texts of a certain type and aims tobe representative of the language of this type. Specialized corpora can be large orsmall and are often created to answer very specific questions and are often used inESP settings.

Corpus linguistics is an empirical methodology that employs a large,systematically organized body of natural texts(the corpus) to analyze actual patternsof language use(Biber, Conrad, Reppen, 1998:4-5). The goal of corpus linguistics is toinvestigate the way people use language by analyzing large databases of real languageexamples(Biber, Conrad, Reppen, 1998). In short, corpus linguistics serves to answertwo fundamental research questions:

(1) What particular patterns are associated with lexical or grammatical features?

(2) How do these patterns differ within varieties and registers?(Bennett, 2010)

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CHAPTER THREE....................21

THEORETICA FRAMEWORK..........21

3.1 Move analysis...........21

3.1.1 Definition of move and strategy.................... 21

CHAPTER FOUR................................. 31

RESEARCH PROCEDURES........................31

4.1 Methods and data collection......................... 31

4.2 Corpus analysis tool............................ 32

CHAPTER FIVE......................35

CORPUS-BASED GENRE ANALYSIS OF CORPORATE APOLOGIES........... 35

5.1 Communicative purposes of corporate apologies.................35

CHAPTER FIVECORPUS-BASED GENRE ANALYSIS OF CORPORATEAPOLOGIES

5.1 Communicative purposes of corporate apologies

Communicative purpose is the crucial criterion that defines a genre and constitutes therationale for the genre. It shapes the schematic structure of the discourse andinfluences and constrains choice of content and style(Swales, 1990). Therefore,communicative purpose should serve as a starting point of a genre approach todiscourse, as Biber, Connor and Upton(2007: 33) notes that “it is important to get a‘big-picture’ understanding of the overall rhetorical purpose of the texts in the genre”before identifying the move categories for a genre. Once the overall communicativepurpose is understood, it is then possible to look at the function of each text segmentand evaluate what its local purpose is. Thus, following the seven major analyticalsteps for achieving generalizable corpus-based description of discourse structure(BCUApproach) outlined by Biber, Connor and Upton (2007), this study starts with the firststep -- determining the communicative purposes of corporate apologies.

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CHAPTER SIXCONCLUSION

6.1 Major findings of the research

The present study makes a tentative analysis of the generic patterns of corporateapologies. The research is carried out from two perspectives. At the macro level, amove analysis of corporate apologies is conducted. By close examination and analysisof the 71 corporate apologies in the corpus, eight move types are identified and atagging protocol with clear definition of moves and strategies is worked out. Aftertagging all the corporate apologies in the corpus with moves and strategies, thefrequency and relative positions of moves are examined and the move structuralpatterns are discussed. Based on the analysis of the move structures, the author thenattempts to work out the GSP formula of corporate apologies. At the micro level, thelexical-grammatical patterns of corporate apologies are examined with the assistanceof corpus analysis tool. Lexical features are discussed through the wordlist, keywordlist and the concordance of the verb “apologize”. Grammatical patterns are exploredby examining the grammatical stance structures used in each move. The reasons forthe generic patterns, both macro and micro, of corporate apologies are also discussedwith reference to the communicative context and communicative purposes of thegenre.

reference(omitted)