基于语料库的致股东信的形容词特征研究

CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION

1.1 Operational Definitions of Two Key Terms

In the following section, the operational definitions of two key terms are offered.These two key terms are adjective and corpus-based method.

(1)Adjective

As for the definitions of adjective, different dictionaries do offer different definitions.Definitions from some authoritative English dictionaries are demonstrated as follows.

Adjectives refer to any of a class of words used to modify a noun or other substantiveby limiting, qualifying, or specifying and distinguished in English morphologically byone of several suffixes, such as -able, -ous, -er, and -est, or syntactically by positiondirectly preceding a noun or nominal phrase, such as white in a white house.(TheAmerican Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition, 2001)

An adjective is a word that indicates a quality of the person or thing referred to by anoun, eg. old, rotten, foreign in an old house, rotten apples, foreign names.

(OxfordAdvanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, 6th Edition, 2004)

An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun.(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 2005)

Though definitions of adjective vary from dictionary to dictionary, they do sharesome similarities. That is, the definitions mentioned above indicate that an adjective isused to describe or modify nouns or pronouns.

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1.2 Research Rationale

The research rationale of the present study can be illustrated from two aspects, namely,necessity of studying letters to shareholders and necessity of studying the adjectives inletters to shareholders.

1.2.1 Necessity of Studying Letters to Shareholders

It is necessary to study letters to shareholders and the reasons are as follows.

Firstly, a letter to shareholders is a statement delivered by the chairperson of abusiness corporation and it usually appears in the beginning of an annual report. It is aparticularly important element in an annual report since it usually provides anin-depth review of performance of the previous year and it usually offers a vision fora prospective future. According to the study conducted by Bartlett and Chandler(1997), it is found that the letter to shareholders is the most widely read portion of anannual report and 48% of surveyed readers claim to have read the letters thoroughly.Additionally, based on Lee and Tweedie’s (1981) study, the letter to shareholders doesboast an undeniable impact on the investment decision of investors since it is one ofthe most critical documents that is used by existing and potential investors to carry out studies and thus to make investment decisions afterwards. As a consequence, it isnecessary to specifically study letters to shareholders.

Secondly, nowadays numerous studies have been conducted on letters toshareholders and some studies suggest that the letter to shareholders is utilized as amarketing tool to shape the corporate image in the public mind. Anderson and Imperia(1992) claimed that letters to shareholders should be studied as a promotional genrewhose main role is building and presenting the corporate image. Hyland (1998)conducted research on letters to shareholders and he found numerous rhetoricaldevices are employed to transmit the message that sound strategies are pursued by thecompany to existing and potential investors. Hence, a large sum of money has beeninvested in the composition of letters to shareholders. Based on Poe’s (1994)investigation, in the United States alone approximately $5 billion is spent on thecomposition of letters to shareholders. In consequence, it would be necessary andinteresting to carry out studies on letters to shareholders due to their promotionalattribute.

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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous Studies of Letters to Shareholders

The letter to shareholders usually appears in the beginning of an annual report and itis the most important part for investors. Owing to its undeniable impact on theinvestment decisions of existing and potential investors, it has attracted considerableattention from researchers at home and abroad. In the following part, domestic studiesand overseas studies of letters to shareholders are reviewed.

2.1.1 Review of Domestic Studies of Letters to Shareholders

Domestically, researchers mainly carry out studies on letters to shareholders fromthree aspects, that is, genre, stylistics and linguistic resources.

(1) GenreAnalysis of Letters to Shareholders

In terms of genre analysis, Liang Xinquan (2012) drew on Swale and Bhatia's genretheory and Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics to delve into the genre featuresof letters to shareholders and the findings suggested that (1) Establishing credentials,reviewing performance of the previous year, looking into the future and expressinggratitude are four major moves identified in letters to shareholders; (2) The discoursein letters to shareholders is developed by the application of various progression patterns and it is helpful in shaping a positive company image.

In addition, Gao Tian (2013) probed into the move structure of 15 letters toshareholders within the framework of Bhatia's genre theory and concluded thatestablishing credentials, business review, offering incentives, indicating prospects andending politely are requisite moves while results announcement, new changes andfinancial position are optional moves in letters to shareholders. Moreover, the letter toshareholders is certified as a promotional genre.

The following table is a brief summary of domestic studies with regard to genreanalysis of letters to shareholders.

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2.2 Previous Studies of theAdjectives in Business English

In contrast with the considerable studies on the adjectives in general English, studieson the adjectives in business English are deficient. By searching papers ranging from1990 to present in specialized literature databases such as Sage Journals or CNKI,only a limited number of them are related to adjectives in business texts and they arepresented as follows.

Xie Wenyi (1996) examined adjectives in advertisements and it was revealed thatadjectives in advertisements do boast the following characteristics: (1) There are twokinds of adjectives in ads, that is, descriptive adjectives and illustrative adjectives.Descriptive adjectives are usually subjective and they express manufacturers' attitudeof recommendation towards products while illustrative adjectives are usuallyobjective in demonstrating features of products. (2) In ads the employment ofadjectives should be easy to read and promotional.

Wu Peng (2007) made a comparison regarding the employment of adjectivesbetween Chinese tourism ads and English tourism ads and he noted that (1) Relativelyspeaking, the occurrence frequency of adjectives in Chinese tourism ads is higher than that in English tourism ads; (2) The adjectives in English tourism ads are morecolloquial and their functions are to narrow down the distance between consumers andproducts so as to get consumers touched.

Feng Rui (2010) conducted a quantitative analysis on the use of adjectives in 90Chinese real estate ads and 90 English real estate ads and it was found that (1)Chinese and English real estate ads do have similarities, that is frequent use ofpositive evaluative adjectives and employment of real estate property relatedadjectives; (2) In terms of their differences, the occurrence frequency of adjectives inChinese ads is higher than that in English ads and adjectives with high occurrencefrequency are different between Chinese and English real estate ads.

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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK......................16

3.1 Sinclair’s Lexical Model.........................16

3.2Appraisal System..................... 17

CHAPTER FOUR RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.....................23

4.1 The Corpus-Based Method................... 23

4.2 Corpora Used in the Present Study......................24

CHAPTER FIVE DATAANALYSISAND DISCUSSION.....................27

5.1 Occurrence Frequency of Adjectives in Letters to Shareholders.....................27

5.2 Semantic Prosody ofAdjectives in Letters to Shareholders...............29

CHAPTER FIVEDATAANALYSISAND DISCUSSION

5.1 Occurrence Frequency ofAdjectives in Letters to Shareholders

In this study, altogether 20 letters to shareholders in annual reports of Global 500companies are selected to study the occurrence frequency of adjectives. Those Global500 companies include household companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Volvo,Wal-Mart, General Electric, J. P. Morgan, etc.

With the help of the software AntConc and by manual calculation, details aboutthe overall frequencies of adjectives in these two corpora are displayed in Table 5.1.

According to Table 5.1, totally there are 63,085 tokens in the self-constructedcorpus LTSC and the number of adjectives is 5,867. By calculation, the number ofadjectives accounts for 9.3% of the overall tokens in those letters to shareholders.

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CHAPTER SIXCONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION

6.1 Summary of the Findings

The findings of the present study indicate that the features of the adjectives in lettersto shareholders are as follows.

(1) The occurrence frequency of adjectives in letters to shareholders is almosttwice the occurrence frequency of adjectives in Brown Corpus. Moreover, adjectivesare frequently used in letters to shareholders.

(2) Neutral semantic prosody dominates when it comes to the semantic prosodyof adjectives in letters to shareholders. Even though the number of adjectives withpositive semantic prosody is not so high as the number of adjectives with neutralsemantic prosody, the number of adjectives with positive semantic prosody isoverwhelmingly higher than the number of adjectives with negative semantic prosody.That means adjectives with positive semantic prosody are frequently employedwhereas adjectives with negative semantic prosody are frequently avoided in letters toshareholders.

(3) Broadly speaking, the basic functions of the adjectives with positive semanticprosody in letters to shareholders are expressing affect of the chairpersons, makingjudgements on the characteristics of the boards, employees or management teammembers in the companies and appreciating the positive characteristics of thecompanies. And the basic functions of the adjectives with negative semantic prosodyare stating objective facts and appreciating the complexity of external environment.On the other hand, those adjectives are attitudinal and interpersonal as for their underlying function.

reference(omitted)