企业危机公关声明中模糊限制词的人际意义研究

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

With the economic globalization and the expansion of corporate businessoperations pressing ahead, it becomes impossible for any company to avoidcrisis. Crises which companies encounter may come in the form of a productrecall which will lead to customers’ doubt about the product quality; or of ascandal concerning allegedly illegal business operations; or of a negative newsreport covering bad influence caused by misbehaviour or inappropriateremarks in public. The crises that come in those forms are bound to bringabout negative effects on the image of a company and lower the credibility ofit, leading to undermining customer loyalty. That’s where crisis publicrelations (hereinafter referred to as CPR) come to work—to clarify the facts,make apologies and reconstruct the faith, thus reducing the damage caused bythe crisis and restoring a good corporate image to the public. The mostcommon and effective way for companies to do in the face of crisis is to issueofficial statements. Corporate statements in CPR play a significant role incrisis management. Facing the same background information, corporate CPR statements writers’ linguistic choice has a great impact on the effect of publicrelations communication. A well-written statement can be conducive toreducing the damage to a minimum and realizing a maximization of corporateinterest. In order to attract more attention to CPR researches and to shed somelight on corporate statement writing in CPR, a linguistic perspective is neededand necessary.

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1.2 Rationale and Research Questions

One of the main purposes of communicating is to interact with otherpeople: to establish and maintain appropriate social links with them toinfluence their behaviors or attitudes. Those are the main concerns ofHalliday’s interpersonal meta-function. In Halliday’s model, interpersonalmeanings are realized grammatically by Mood structure concerning the choiceof clause types and Modality concerning the validity of the proposition. Withinthe general framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar, Martin (2005)develops a more lexically-based perspective and proposes the AppraisalTheory considering the viewpoint and stance from the perspective of writerand reader on the discourse semantic level. There are three categories ofevaluative resources: Attitude, Engagement and Graduation. This thesisfocuses on the interpersonal function for it complies with the goal that thecorporate statements in CPR are meant for reaching. The corporate statementsin CPR not only state facts to the public, but also perform the function ofinteracting with the readers. Effective and proficient corporate statements writers make efforts to influence readers and instill their own opinions andideas in the readers’ minds by highlighting the legitimateness, accuratenessand certainness ofthe claims, the sincerity of their apologies or regrets andtheir strong confidence in overcoming the current crises.

The hedges as a linguistic resource are widely used by the writers ofcorporate statements in CPR. The use of hedges complies with the linguisticfeatures of corporate statements in CPR which demand objectivity andpoliteness, etc. In this thesis, within the framework of classification of hedges,frequency of different hedges in the 30 samples collected as data is calculated.Then the model of interpersonal function under Systemic-Functional Grammaris applied to analyze the use of hedges in corporate statements in CPR. 

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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous Studies on CPR
Before we study CPR, the definition of PR should be made clear. Public relations (hereinafter referred to as PR) was once defined as the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or an organization such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization and the public. (Grunig & Hunt, 1984) In other words, PR is the way organizations, companies and individuals communicate with the public and media. By employing various kinds of communicative skills when communicating with the target audience directly or indirectly through media, PR practitioners aim to create and maintain a positive image and create a strong relationship with the audience.

PR practices are now regarded as an essential part of organizations’operations, not only an occasionally relevant part, for today’s news cycle ismeasured in seconds and the court of public opinion doesn’t wait to passjudgment. CPR is a sub-specialty of the PR that is designed to protect anddefend an individual, company, or organization facing crises. It’s a type of PR that any PR practitioner can come across. A crisis is a sudden and unexpected  event that can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes. (Coombs, 2014) Ho and Hallahan (2004) defined crisis in
PR context as the state of uncertainty resulting from a triggering event that disrupts an organization’s routine activities. Apart from crisis’ connection with negative influence, the Chinese have long embraced the concept that there is a
positive side to every crisis. The symbol for the word crisis, “weiji” is a combination of two words, “danger” and “opportunity”. Thus crisis can be controlled and managed to realize positive effect. That’s what CPR aims to achieve.

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2.2 Previous Studies on Corporate Statements in Crisis Public Relations

In a broad sense, press statement or press release is a written or recordedcommunication directed at members of the news media for the purpose ofannouncing something claimed. When viewing statement in PR field, FraserSeitel (2004) referred to press releases as being, “the granddaddy of publicrelations writing vehicles”. Needless to say, the use of a press statement iscommon in the field of public relations.

In this thesis, CPR statements are referred to as the statements publishedby the commercial organizations to deal with PR affairs such as bankruptcy,layoffs, recalls, etc. Corporate statement in CPR reflects the attitude of thecompany. Generally speaking, the company should show that they willcooperate with the media to the extent they can and that they will meet withthe media on a regular basis, and announce that they will conduct a thorough,honest and quick internal investigation (preferably by an outsider), that theywill make the results public as soon as possible. Through the statement, thecompany can state the immediate action they have taken, or will take toprotect the public who may be affected from the crisis in order to buildconfidence and maintain a good image. Although a great amount of effortshave been made on CPR practices, linguistic researches on corporate CPRstatements only become a popular subject for Chinese scholars who study English as a second language.

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK................18

3.1 Introduction of Hedges.............18

3.1.1 Definition of Hedges.................. 18

3.1.2 Classification of Hedges......................21

CHAPTER FOUR RESEARCH PROCEDUREAND DATAANALYSIS.....33

4.1 Data Collection..........33

4.2 Method of DataAnalysis...........34

CHAPTER FIVE INTERPERSONAL MEANINGS REALIZED BYHEDGES IN CORPORATE STATEMENTS IN CPR............40

5.1 The Use of Hedges as Graduation Resources..........42

5.1.1The Use ofAdaptors...............43

CHAPTER FIVEINTERPERSONAL MEANINGS REALIZED BY HEDGESIN CORPORATE STATEMENTS IN CPR

5.1 The Use of Hedges as Graduation Resources

In this part, we put adaptors and rounders together into discussion,because they are used primarily as Graduation resources to realizeinterpersonal meanings under the theoretical framework of the present study.

Graduation places emphasis on gradability and deals with grading andscaling of evaluation. The adjusting function of gradability acts in twodimensions: Force is gradable according to intensity/amount and Focus adjuststhe strength of boundaries between categories. Graduation as force acts toincrease or decrease the volume of the attitude and brings differentinterpersonal influence on the readers. Upscaling is used to imply that thespeakers are highly committed to what they have said and hence greatlyenabling the listeners to accept their view and to align with them. Downscalingindicates that the speaker holds a partial or attenuated attitude towards hisutterance, which can avoid being criticized by the listeners and relievethemselves from the responsibility they shoulder. Adaptors and rounders bothcan be used as Graduation resources. Interpersonal meanings of adaptors androunders will be elaborated on respectively in the next part.

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CHAPTER SIXCONCLUSION

6.1 Major Findings

The aim of the present study is to explore the interpersonal meanings ofhedges in the corporate statements in CPR. After reviewing some famousresearches on hedges, the present study proposes a definition of hedges and aclassification of hedges. Then under the guidance of interpersonal meaning inthe model of SFG and appraisal theory, the hedges in 30 pieces of thecorporate statements in CPR are analyzed.

The major findings are:

Firstly, as regards the first research question on the features of hedgesused in the corporate statements in CPR, it’s found that the use of hedgesaccounts for more than 6% of the total words in the corpus, which proves thathedges are a linguistic strategy widely used in writing the corporate statementsin CPR. And the use of adaptors accounts for the largest part; the use ofplausibility shields nearly takes up one-third of the total occurrences of hedges in the corpus; rounders are not so frequently used as adaptors and onlyaccount for 16%; attribute shields are rarely used in the corpus.

As for the pragmatic uses of these hedges, it’s noted that hedges of eachcategory, whether they be approximators, shields or sub-categories under them,are mainly used to realize writer-oriented effects. That means that in writingthe corporate statements in CPR, the priority of the professionals is to take thecompany’s interest into consideration. Besides used for writer-oriented effects,the use for accuracy-oriented effects also accounts for a relatively large part.However, reader-oriented hedges are not adopted so frequently as the twoothers. It’s highly recommended that in the future CPR practices, thepractitioners should pay more attention to this part.

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