An Appraisal Analysis Of Letter To Shareholders In Annual Reports Of Fortune Global 500 Corporations

The annual report is one of the important sources for corporate financial information,and is a platform for the company to maintain or create a favorable image. Letter toshareholders, which is not mandated but usually fronts the document, is found to be the mostwidely-read part of the annual report. The previous researches show that the annual report isemployed by the corporation as a kind of important public relations tool, and the informationdisclosed is usually manipulated so as to project a favorable image.This thesis, based on the Appraisal Theory within functional linguistics, seeks to revealhow linguistic resources are used to negotiate emotions, judgments and valuations, and toamplify and project the sources of these evaluations by the president, chairman or CEO intheir letter to shareholders.After analyzing 15 letters to shareholders of 15 companies across five sectors listed inFortune 2004 Global 500, it is found that affect is only sparingly expressed in the letter, yetthe president, chairman or CEO does show affect, such as happiness, pride and confidence;most of the judgments and appreciations in the letter are positive;graduation resources aremainly used to amplify the utterances in the letter;most of the propositions are monoglossic,and dialogistic contraction appears much more than dialogistic expansion in the heteroglossicutterances.All these features can be accounted for by making reference to the communicativepurposes of the annual report-disclosing financial information and projecting a favorableimage.