A Genre Analysis Of The Summary In Prospectuses Of Listed Companies

Genre analysis has been carried out in many academic and ESP settings, yet little research has been devoted to the systematic analysis of such professional business genres as prospectus. When a company seeks financial support by making an offer of shares to the public, "prospectuses" must be submitted to the authority for approval and then disclosed to the public. The summary is a compulsory and significant part of a prospectus. The present study aims to discover the move structure and the GSP of the summary in prospectuses of listed companies and explore the underlying reasons of its textual features. The author adopts Swales' move-step model to uncover the move-structure according to its communicative purposes and then employs Hasan's Generic Structural Potential theory to exploit the obligatory and optional moves. After a careful statistical verification of the corpus randomly selected for the GEM of Hong Kong Exchange, it is found that the summary is composed of 10 moves, among which image building, blueprint presentation, financial review, allocating proceeds, subscription requirement, placing statistics, restriction on disposal of shares, risks reporting are obligatory moves, while reinforcing credentials and making announcements are optional moves. Explanation of the moves and strategies are presented afterwards from the promotional and legal perspectives to unravel its complexity- a combination of the promotional and legal elements. The findings reveal its striking differences from the general English textual features and will shed light on the genre-based approach to English language teaching.