环境责任报告中的 3I 绿色品牌营销—— 基于体裁的分析

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Introduction

The  present  study  intends  to  investigate  how  the  language  in  Corporate  Environmental Reports helps to market a green brand image by studying the generic structure and transitivity features. CERs (Corporate Environmental Reports) are part of a company’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Reports in which company addresses last year’s performance in social, environmental  and  economic  areas.  By  reporting  such  initiatives  and  performances  to in-group  stakeholders (stoke  holders,  employees)  and  outside  members  (customers, governments  and  citizens)  at  large,  companies  are following  the  new  trend  of  responsible corporation  standard.  People  nowadays  ask  more  from  companies  than supplying  qualified products  and  service;  instead,  they  prefer  “companies  that  embrace  social  responsibility” (Dawkins & Ngunjiri，2008). However, scholars are finding that CSR Reports are more than channels  of  declaring  their responsible  activities,  as  at  root  the  business  of  companies  is business.  Corporations  that  reduce  CSR  reports  to philanthropy  and  merely  approach  the concept  as  a  way  to  gain  public  appreciation  fall  short  of  noticing  the broader  potential (Verboven，2011). Socially responsible corporate conduct and policies can further marketing and business goals if they are managed from a strategic marketing perspective (Van de Ven，2008). 

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1.2 Definitions of CERs and 3I Marketing Strategy

Till  now,  there  is  no  universal  compulsory  standard  for  compiling  CSR  reports  but  three popular socially recognized modes for CSR reporting: G3 of GRI (Global Reporting Index), SA8000  of  Global  Accountability  International and  AA1000  of  Institute  for  Social  and Ethical  Accountability  (Shen,  2008).  Most  companies,  according  to  the corpus  in  this research,  employ  G3  mode.  In  this  mode,  3  basic  components:   economic  responsibility, social responsibility and environmental responsibility are defined as obligatory. Each part of the CSR Reports is a relatively independent chapter; hence, the completeness of the extract is not influenced and could be treated as an independent genre while in the meantime reflects some features of the whole report. In this research, the environmental responsibility part that announces  environmental  performances  is  extracted  for  analysis  and  defined  as  CERs (Corporate Environmental Reports). 

In CERs, companies introduce their contribution to environment protection in different areas covering water conservation, emission cutting, recycling and so on. In the first place, like  other  forms  of  company  reports,  CERs  are  designated to  inform  stakeholders  of  the performance of last fiscal year, especially in environment protection. They inform readers of the  companies’  projects,  product  designs,  transportation  and  package  of  products,  green office and so on to indicate that they tried to protect the environment in every step of their business.  On  the  other  hand,  corporate environment  reports  share  many  features  with  other types of company-controlled communications, such as mission statements and annual reports. Companies use reporting genre to stress organizational values, such as their commitments to investors, clients and the community at large (Bart, 1997; Bartkus, Glassman & Mafee，2000; Morphew & Hartley，2006; Rarick & Vitton，1995; Stallworth Williams，，2008; Van Riel，1995).  Corporate  Environmental  Reports also  serve  to  address  public  skepticism  of  a company’s green image, such as charges of corporate green washing (Balmer & Gary，1999; Gary  &  Balmer，  1998;  Vanhamme  &  Grobben，  2009).  

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CHAPTER TWO   LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous Studies on Genre Analysis

In  light  of  the  development  of  genre  and  genre  analysis,  different  scholars  offer  various definitions  of  genre. Generally  speaking,  it  is  the  use  of  language  in  conventionalized communicative settings or “discourse community”, to address it more directly (Bhatia, 1993). A genre comprises a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community and thereby constitute the rationale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse and constrains choice of content and style (Swales, 1990).  In  the  1990s,  the  concept  of  genre  has developed  into  a  serious  issue  in  applied linguistics  and  there  has  been  a  growing  interest  in  using  genre  as  a powerful  tool  for studying language use in context and cross-disciplinary areas (Paltridge, 1997). And usually the study of genre primarily focuses on three aspects: the textualization of lexico-grammar, the organization of discourse and the contextualization of discourse (Bhatia 1993 & Bhatia, 2004; Swales, 1990). Bhatia (1993) even proposed seven analyzing steps for studying a new genre:  placing  the  given  genre-text  in  a  situational  context,  surveying  exiting  literature, refining the situational/contextual analysis, selecting corpus, studying the institutional context, linguistic analysis, specific information in genre analysis. In this thesis, the author will follow these analyzing steps and may neglect some of it to adapt to the research. 

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2.2 Previous Studies on Transitivity Analysis

Transitivity  analysis  belongs  to  the  Systematic  Functional  Grammar  of  Halliday,  which expresses the ideational meaning of texts. In Systematic Functional Grammar, there are said to  be  three  metafunctions  of  language (Halliday, 1970):  textual  function,  which  provides links  between  language  and  the  features  of  the  situation  in  which  it  is used;  ideational function, which serves for the expression of “content” or the speaker’s experience of the real world, including  the  inner  world  of  his  own  consciousness  (in  this  study,  it  is  the  inner consciousness  of  green  brand image);  and  interpersonal  function,  which  establishes  and maintains social relations. Textual function concerns using different language tools to form a comprehensible and coherent discourse; interpersonal function allocates the role of different participants  in  communication  and  their  judgments  about  the  content  of  the  discourse; ideational function expresses participants’ idea about the world and explains their opinions or experiences  (Fang,  2005).  Ideational meaning  involves  two  components:  experiential meaning  and  logical  meaning  (Halliday,  1994).  Part  of  the ideational  function,  which concerns  with  the  transmission  of  ideas,  is  transitivity.  Its  function  is  that  of representing processes or experiences like actions, events, processes of consciousness, and relations that covers “all phenomena and anything that can be expressed by a verb: event, whether physical or  not,  state,  or  relations” (Halliday,  1985;  Halliday,  1976).  Transitivity  encodes  the producer’s  idea  about  experiences  in  this  world  and their  mental  picture  of  it.  They  use different  process  types  (material  process,  mental  process,  existential process,  relational process,  verbal  process,  behavioral  process)  to  construct  their  idea,  their  experience  and relationship between different entities. 

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEOWRK ............ 19

3.1 Generic Structure Analysis ................. 19

3.2 Transitivity Analysis .................... 21

CHAPTER FOUR METHODOLOGY ......... 29

4.1 Data Collection ....................... 29

4.2 Specific Procedures .................. 30

CHAPTER FIVE GENRE ANALYSIS OF CERS ............ 33

5.1 Generic Structure Analysis of CERs ........... 33

5.1.1 Communicative Purposes of CERS ............ 33

CHAPTER FIVE    GENRE ANALYSIS OF CERS

5.1 Generic Structure Analysis of CERs

The  generic  structure  offers  a  clear  map  on  how  the  author  expresses  its  communicative purpose through moves and steps. With moves and steps, the purpose will be resolved one by one, including the hidden intention of marketing. 

5.1.1 Communicative Purposes of CERS

Though in the definition part, we have discussed the purpose of CERs briefly, to offer a more detailed  view  on  the multiple  purposes,  the  author  would  like  to  ascribe  the  following purposes to CERs after surveying the corpus’ central idea and reflecting on the former study of Bhatia (1993) on advertisements:

1. To inform audience of the environmental value of the company. By introducing the commitment, philosophy and performance of the company in regards to environmental issues like climate change, water shortage and so on, the company is expressing that environment protection lies at the root of the operation and justifies that the company policy is consistent with the citizens’ understanding of corporates’ role in society.

2. To demonstrate the environmental performance of the company. Usually, companies offer data concerning environmental products and environmental policies like e-cars, carbon free  office  to  show  that  these  practices contribute  to  the  economic  benefits  increase,  which stresses  that  environmental  policies  enforces  competitiveness and  companies  need  not sacrifice benefits for environment stewardship. 

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CHAPER SIX     CONCLUSIONS

6.1 Findings

In  this  research,  the  author  analyzed  20  CERs  from  different  industries ， including automobiles, personal care, beverages, energy and so on. All the companies for analysis are selected from the top 50 green brand of Interband 2014. To study the marketing intention in these CERs, the move structure and transitivity are worked out to present a clear view of the genre. However, to verify that the CERs do bear marketing intention of green brand image, the author resorts to 3I marketing theory to look for the traits of marketing strategies in move structures and transitivity features. By mapping onto the 3I marketing theory, it is discovered that the genre features of CERs indeed help to promote a green brand image. 

At  the  macro  level,  it  is  found  that  the  generic  structure  of  CERs  is  a  three-move structure,  which  contains Establishing  Credentials,  Introducing  Sustainable  Initiatives and  Enhancing  Reliability.  The  Establishing  Credentials move  contains  steps  like Introducing  philosophy,  Stating  commitment,  Significance  of  environment  policy  and Key projects performance so as to certify itself as a green responsible operator. The second move Introducing  Sustainable Initiatives  mainly  introduce  the  environment  programs  and operations  in  details.  The  introduction  is  presented on the  basis  of  environment  issues concerned.  So  the  steps  in  this  move  are  defined  as  Environmental  products, Energy use/greenhouse  gas  emissions,  Water  conservation,  Waste  management/  recycling, Sustainable  packaging, Green  buildings,  Biodiversity  presentation,  Environmental stewardship,  Alliances.  These  steps  give  information  of what  the  company  has  achieved  in different fields thus making the green image concrete. The last move, Enhancing Reliability, consists  of  Performance  data  illustration,  Environmental  Communication,  Remediation  & Compliances. These  steps  resort  to  numbers  and  third  party  recognitions  to  enhance  the reliability of the reports. 

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