Exploring The Interaction Between Corporations And Visitors On Corporation Homepages

This thesis falls into the category of genre analysis. Taking the functional grammar and philosophy of rhetoric as the theoretical foundation, this thesis extends the research area and adjusts the research elements to explore the writer - reader interaction, and this study proves to be necessary and practicable.The Corporation Homepages(CHP) of the World Top 50 among the World Top 500 have been collected to carry out the research work. Linguistic ways and non -linguistic ways that are employed to achieve the interaction on CHP have been studied respectively. It is found that the manipulation of different devices enables the interaction. Metadiscourse - on the lexical line helps establish an information background and create a close atmosphere, which promotes the interaction. Question and Command - on the syntactic line accommodate readers' voice. Thus they make CHP interactive. The modal auxiliaries consider the emotional needs of the readers and enable the negotiation between the writer and readers, which makes the CHP more interactive. Graphics and hyperlinks - in the nonlinguistic part - are the most direct ways to interact with readers.