A Comparative Study Of Metadiscourse In Letters To Shareholders From Cross-border E-commerce Companies In China And The US Through The Lens Of Intercultural Rhetoric

Letters to shareholders,sent by the CEO/president/chairman in the form of a personal letter to potential shareholders,belong to the promotional genre and can function as a persuasive marketing technique.Metadiscourse in letters to shareholders can enhance the persuasive effect.Metadiscourse consists of resources that facilitate persuasion by employing three rhetorical appeals.This study attempts to examine how metadiscourse is employed in letters to shareholders from cross-border e-commerce companies in China and the US,aiming to provide some insights for Chinese practitioners to enhance their rhetorical awareness of this genre,and to enable them to learn from their American counterparts to communicate more effectively with the international audience.Metadiscourse depicts the interaction between the authors and readers,which includes the author’s intervention and remarks.It can be used not only to enable authors to express their opinions,but also to allow them to communicate with readers,which is vital in displaying the author’s intention for collaboration,anticipating potential objections,and answering concerns readers may have.Hyland’s(2005a)interpersonal model of metadiscourse includes interactional metadiscourse and interactive metadiscourse.Previous empirical studies on metadiscourse have primarily focused on academic papers,with few studies on other genres,business in particular.This study builds on Hyland’s(2005a)interpersonal model of metadiscourse and uses letters to shareholders of cross-border e-commerce firms in China and the US as its research genre,constructs two corpora,and carries out a comparative analysis of the usage of metadiscourse resources to identify the specific differences in frequency and distribution.Then,a qualitative investigation is conducted to determine how metadiscourse helps to persuade via Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals.This study shows that there are both similarities and differences through quantitative approach.On the one hand,interactional metadiscourse outnumbers interactive metadiscourse in both corpora,and the most frequently used subcategories are nearly identical.On the other hand,significant discrepancies in the frequency of metadiscourse subcategories are discovered throughout the corpora,revealing their distinct preferences and tendencies.The qualitative findings demonstrate how various kinds of metadiscoursal resources contribute to the realization of different rhetorical appeals.Chinese writers,for example,rely less on pathos than their American counterparts.From the perspective of intercultural rhetoric,the observed differences may be due to the interaction of country culture,corporate culture,and personal culture,which all work together to influence the metadiscourse resources used in letters to shareholders.This research expands our knowledge of how metadiscourse is deployed in letters to shareholders from Chinese and American companies and offers guidance to Chinese authors on how to use metadiscourse more skillfully to address an international readership and increase the persuasiveness of their writing.