A Comparative Study On Attitude Resources In English Letters To Shareholders From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

With the high degree integration of the global economy,industries all present a piece of prosperous scene.The banking industry,as one of the financial institutions,is closely related to economic development and has a great impact on people‘ lives.Therefore,it is particularly important for banking industry to build a good corporate image among the public.As the beginning part of annual reports,the letter to shareholders(LS for short)can communicate ideas and build the corporate image quickly and effectively.This thesis collects 60 English letters to shareholders(ELS for short),including thirty from banks of America and thirty from China.To ensure the credibility of the study,these banks are Fortune 500 companies.By marking and counting attitude resources appeared in letters,the study found that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China(ICBC)and Wells Fargo are representative because the two banks use attitude resources more frequently and pay more attention to the construction of corporate image.Hence,the research is on ICBC and Wells Fargo and takes ELS of the two banks in the past decade(2009-2018)as research subjects.(Since ICBC did not publish its ELS of 2009 online,the letter in 2008 is collected as sample).With the help of UAM Corpus Tool,the attitude resources in ELS are marked and counted.Then,this thesis conducts a comparative analysis between the two banks concerning the usage of three subsystems of Attitude System.And the SPSS tool is used for statistical significance verification.The results show that the two banks use a large number of attitude resources in ELS,while there are differences in the employment of subtype and frequency.Among them,ICBC uses Appreciation resources more frequently,especially the subtype Valuation,while the Wells Fargo uses far more Affect resources.Although Chinese culture emphasizes modesty and humility,ICBC repeatedly highlights its strong ability and enterprising spirit in ELS.In terms of corporate image,Wells Fargo constructs confident,trustworthy,and caring image,while ICBC constructs capable,persistent,hard-working and brave corporate image.Also,ICBC thinks highly of teamwork.Furthermore,the study reveals that the two banks both profile themselves as responsible and positive,and both hold that they have made great progress in a promising way.The present thesis,in some way,expands the application of the Appraisal Theory in the business letter,provides a new perspective for analyzing ELS and verifies the importance of Attitude system in ELS.The thesis has reference value for similar firms,policymakers and scholars.