A Study On The Interpersonal Meaning Of Corporate Social Responsibility Report From The Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

With the development of the network communication technology,investors,customers and other stakeholders of a company have the opportunity to learn more about the corporate operation.And the company's social responsibility has attracted increasing attention from all sectors of society.As an important channel to publicize the corporate social responsibility,corporate social responsibility report can help improve corporate reputation and increase corporate profitability.Therefore,it has gained much attention from companies and become an important business discourse.Besides,the development of communication technology has shifted the dominance of mono-modality in communication to the dominance of the multimodality.People now attribute considerable importance to the combination of more than one semiotic mode in information transmission and interpersonal interaction.Corporations in particular,have resorted to multimodal discourse to shape their stakeholder's impression on them and build trust with them.This thesis here aims firstly to explore the features of both the verbal and visual aspects of CSR reports.Then,based on the features explored,this thesis also intends to analyze how companies apply language and images in the discourse to construct interpersonal meanings for interactions with stakeholders in order to influence the stakeholders' perception of the company.At the end,the author tries to raise suggestions for companies in delivering high-quality CSR reports.The CSR reports sampled to be studied are from three American companies: Google,Walt Disney and Goodyear.These three companies come from different industries and rank among the top 20 of the 2018 Most Responsible Companies Worldwide,a list published by Reputation Institute.With the help of Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach,this thesis analyzes the CSR reports with the theoretical framework developed from the interpersonal function of thesystemic functional grammar,the interactive meaning of the visual grammar and the intersemiotic complementarity theory.The study reveals how interpersonal interaction has been carried out between corporations and stakeholders.Specifically,the research has three findings:(1)As for the verbal aspect,enterprises mostly use the first person to shorten the distance between the stakeholders and the company and invite involvement from them.In terms of the mood,the declarative mood is often used in CSR reports,which helps enterprises to disclose CSR information while maintaining an objective tone.In terms of modality system,expressions of probability and inclination with low and medium values are often used in CSR reports to indicate that enterprises place themselves at a lower position in reports and leave readers with room for refutation and thinking.(2)At the visual level,the "offer" image is most frequently used by enterprises to provide real and effective information to readers,while the“demand” image is used for inviting the involvement from readers.At the same time,enterprises often use private distance and social distance to shorten the relationship with readers,which is more conducive to the transmission of information.Finally,enterprises often apply frontal angle to involve the readers and the eye-level view to show that readers and companies are in an equal position of rights.(3)The four primary features of face-to-face communication:communication content,contact,involvement and equality are built through the strategies employed in the reports.A face-to-face interaction between the companies and the stakeholders is therefore imitated and the corporations seem to talk directly with the stakeholders about the CSR information.At the end,this thesis proposes suggestions to companies in writing appropriate CSR reports in order to improve their corporate reputation.