Genre Analysis Of English Profiles Of Chinese And American Companies In The Cosmetics Industry

With the development of globalization and computer science, English Company Profile on the company's website has been considered as an effective channel for building up favorable corporate image and promoting business in overseas markets. However, most English Company Profiles of Chinese companies are the literal translation of the Chinese versions, failing to take into account the internal cognitive structure and external social and cultural effects. Thus, it results in various kinds of grammar mistakes and cultural obstacles. Some scholars have conducted research on company profiles from the perspectives of translation, pragmatics and cultural differences, etc. Yet a little research has been done from the perspective of comparative genre analysis, especially from the systemic functional way.Qualitative analysis is mainly adopted in this research. The author has collected 32 English Company Profiles from the websites of the cosmetics companies in China and America. Using a synthesis of three authoritative genre-based approaches, namely, Swales' Move-Step Model, Hasan's Contextual Configuration and Hasan's Generic Structure Potential (GSP), the author has conducted a comparative genre analysis between the Chinese ECP and American ECP, trying to work out the similarities and differences between the two parties and help the Chinese companies, which has already or will have overseas markets, compose effective English Company Profiles and establish favorable corporate images.The research has arrived at the following conclusions. First, Chinese ECP and American ECP follow the consistent genre type, with their communicative purpose of establishing a good corporate image and enhancing business dealings. Second, the field of ECP is in essence the corporate communication between the company and the potential or regular consumers or investors on the Internet. The tenor is the relationship between the sender and the receiver in the corporate communication. When it comes to the mode, the company may adopt videos, pictures as well as language to promote the company on the Internet. The language should be written in a formal and polite way. Thirdly, although the Chinese ECP and American ECP turn out to take on different generic structural potentials, they share the same obligatory elements—Company Background (CB) and Products Introduction (PI). As long as the elements of CB and PI occur, the discourse can be considered as an English Company Profile. Last but not least, both Chinese ECP and American ECP share the same communicative purpose and similar move structures, yet differences in terms of the actualization of each move are quite obvious. Chinese ECP are more accordant with each other while the American ones are of more varieties. The underlying reason may lie in the different cultural backgrounds, thinking patterns and language systems. There are some grammar mistakes and cultural obstacles in Chinese ECP, therefore, Chinese companies are recommended to study the internal cognitive structure and the external social and cultural knowledge, integrating their own distinctive cultural features so as to write effective English Company Profiles.