A Comparative Study Of CEO’s Letters Of Goldman Sachs And CITIC Securities From The Perspective Of Rhetorical Structure Theory

China’s financial market has been blooming since the initiation of the policy of reform and opening up.As an intermediary of the capital market,securities companies play a decisive role in the development of the capital market.With the continuous expansion of its overseas market regions and client base,the importance of external communication of securities companies has become increasingly prominent.As one of the important documents for external communication,the annual report of securities companies is not only the main information exchange tool,but also an important means to establish and maintain the corporate image.The CEO’s letters,as one of the most important parts of the company’s annual report,mainly disclose the company’s operation information in the previous financial year and forecast its business activities in the next financial year.It is an effective medium to maintain existing shareholders,attract potential investors and demonstrate the social responsibilities taken by the corporation.Therefore,the annual report has become the focus in the field of management,finance and linguistics.However,discourse structure,as an important part of linguistic research,hardly applied in the contrastive study of English annual reports.The thesis aims to:(1)explore the characteristics of rhetorical relation in the CEO’s letters of corporate English annual reports;(2)make a detailed comparison of the rhetoric relations among CEO’s letters of Chinese and American enterprises’ English annual reports to find out the similarities and differences;(3)find out the potential reasons for the differences in the distribution of rhetorical relations so as to provide practical suggestions for business English teaching,research and enterprise communication.The sample CEO’s letters are from one American corporation and one Chinese corporation: Goldman Sachs and CITIC Securities.And the research material are the CEO’s letters cited from these two companies’ English annual reports from 2015 to 2019.Through a comparative study of the rhetorical relations between CEO’s letters in English annual reports of Chinese and American enterprises,it analyzes the differences in information exchange between American enterprise and Chinese enterprise through English annual reports.The findings of the research show that:(1)In terms of the number and types of rhetorical relations,the rhetoric structure of Goldman Sachs discourses is more complex than that of CITIC Securities’ discourses.(2)The frequency of mono-nucleus rhetorical relations is much higher than the multi-nucleus rhetorical relations in the discourses of these two companies.Moreover,the proportion of mono-nucleus rhetorical relations in Goldman Sachs discourses is higher than that in CITIC Securities’ discourses.And statistics show that: mono-nucleus rhetorical relations(enablement relation and motivation relation)in CITIC Securities’ discourses do not appear in Goldman Sachs’ discourses;similarly,two kinds of mono-nucleus rhetorical relations "justify" and "restatement" only appear in Goldman Sachs’ discourses.(3)Through the analysis of the ideational relations,interpersonal relations and textual relations of CEO’s letters discourses in these two companies,it can be concluded that the proportion of interpersonal relations used in Goldman Sachs’ discourses is higher than that of CITIC Securities’ discourses.It further shows that CITIC Securities’ discourses pay more attention to the elaboration of objective facts and accurate disclosure of information with less personal emotions.Goldman Sachs’ discourses focus on the interaction with readers with more personal attitude and judgment.The proportion of textual relations in the discourses of both companies’ is relatively small.(4)Through the analysis of the top ten rhetorical relations appeared in the two companies’ discourses,it can be concluded that among the top ten rhetorical relations the two companies shared seven relations and the other three rhetorical relations are different from each other.(5)It is found that the writings of English annual reports of Chinese and American enterprises are different in some aspects due to different cultures,modes of thinking,ways of expression and different social values.Finally,the study provides some suggestions on how to write CEO’s letters and English annual reports from the perspective of rhetorical relations.