Analysis Of Letters To Shareholders Of Fortune 500 Companies

Letters to Shareholders,usually written by CEO,President or Chairman of a corporation,are an important part of Corporate Annual Report.The Letter to Shareholders is widely employed as a means by which companies communicate with the public,and it has received increasing attention.Many researches have been done on Letters to Shareholders,most of which adopt theories in management,while some adopt linguistics theories for analysis.The present research is an analysis of Letters to Shareholders,which is theoretically based on Halliday's transitivity system.It serves as an attempt to explore the textual characteristics of Letters to Shareholders,and the relations between these characteristics and the subjective judgments of the writers of Letters to Shareholders. The result shows that in Letters to Shareholders material and relational processes occur more frequently than others,and the verbs realizing material processes often encode positive meanings;personal references are frequently employed as Participants,and they serve to establish a closer relationship between those listed companies and their shareholders;through the choice of voice constructions,the writers of Letters to Shareholders foregrounds some Participants to deliver positive messages,thus serving specific communicative purposes;moreover,the way they utilize Circumstance to provide complementary information also demonstrates that they have specific purposes to serve.It is therefore concluded that these writers often encode subjective judgments when describing the financial performance of their company,so as to improve their corporate image;while Halliday's Transitivity system may conduct a comprehensive and profound analysis on these subjective judgments.The study may,to some extent,enrich the practical applications of Transitivity system,and improve readers' understanding of Letters to Shareholders.Moreover,this study may shed light on the writing of Letters to Shareholders,especially for those Chinese companies that are going global.