Genre Analysis Of Chinese And English Company Introductions

After China's entry into the WTO, Chinese textile companies have been exporting more and more textile products into the European and American markets. Many Chinese companies are targeting at the international market. This research sets out to compare the company introductions composed by Chinese companies in their native language - Chinese and those written by western organizations in their native language - English at both the macro and micro level.The data for this research consists of two corpora collected from Internet: one is of the Chinese company introductions targeted at Chinese customers and the other is of English company introductions targeted at western customers. Each corpus contains sixteen authentic company introductions.The major method for this analysis is Swales' genre approach. At the macro level, the moves each corpus takes are presented based on the approach. What' more, the functions of each move are analyzed and the rationale behind it is specified. At the micro level, the analysis concentrates on the grammatical and lexical features, such as formulaic expressions, tenses, comparing the similarities and differences between Chinese company introductions and English introductions. In addition, the use of lexical boost and politeness strategies are explored in some depth.This research concludes that company introduction does form an independent genre, displaying a consistent discourse structure with five moves. They are Establishing Backgrounds, Introducing Products, Capability Illustrations, Company Principles/ Self-evaluation, and Inviting Further Communication. Both Chinese introductions and English introductions follow similar move structure with slight variance, which can be attributed to different business practices and cultural differences. Also, the preferred content (e.g.: lexical choice, the favored facts to achieve the more) in enhancing the force of each move and the use of politeness strategy vary in the two sets of data. There are more politeness markers in the Chinese introductions. The dissertation also discusses the pedagogical application and further research.