Functional Analysis Of Chairman's Statements To Stockholders In Annual Reports

In recent decades, systemic-functional grammar has made such rapidprogress in the field of linguistics and it has been employed to analyze a widerange of texts, including literary and non-literary ones. This thesis is apractical application of the theory in the understanding of annual reports. Thecorporate annual report is a legally required document submitted to thestockholders by the management. It discloses information on corporateperformance during the previous year and forecasts the operations of thecoming year. Interest in annual reports has been on the rise. Many scholarshave been exploring this field for years. And their studies shed valuableinsights into the annual report. But much work remains to be done,particularly with linguistic research on this important corporate document.Based on Halliday's Systemic-Functional Grammar, the thesis makes ananalysis of the chairman's statements to stockholders ―one of the two majorverbal blocks in annual reports —to find out their specific lexico-grammaticalfeatures and how the lexico-grammtical features realize its context of situation.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 is an introduction. It gives a general description of the scope,aim and significance of the study.Chapter 2 deals with the theoretical framework that comprises the reasonsfor choosing systemic-functional grammar and a brief introduction of thistheory. This analytical framework provides a systemic method forinvestigating the linguistic features of this specific type of language.Chapter 3 introduces the data of the paper i.e. fifteen texts of chairman'sstatement to stockholders from some famous U.S. companies are chosen asthe data of the study;and based on the basic theory and the analyticalframework, it then gives an in-depth introduction of analytical tools, withwhich sample analysis of the data is also presented.Chapter 4 presents us a quantitive analysis of the fifteen chairman'sstatements in annual reports in the Transitivity system, the Mood andModality system, the Theme system and cohesive devices, based on theanalytical tools given in the Chapter 3;and a discussion on how thelexico-grammatical features relate to the three variables of register, i.e. tenor,field and mode is also presented.Chapter 5 is the conclusion, in which a summary of the findings of thisresearch, implications of the research are given, also limitations of presentstudy and suggestions for further research are also discussed in this chapter.The findings of this research show that in chairman's statement tostockholders, the relationship between the lexico-grammatical choices and thesituational context is so close that certain lexico-grammatical patterns arefound to realize its specific contextual variables. This research indicates that asystemic-functional approach to the study of discourse is so powerful that therelationship between situational context and linguistic realizations can beexploited thoroughly and expressed clearly and it can be used to analyze othertypes of business texts. This research also would be helpful to those Chinesecompanies that are listed in the foreign stock markets to prepare their annualreports in English. It is hoped that the present study will contribute to a betterunderstanding of business language and the design and practice of businessEnglish courses.