The Explorative Study On The Ceo Speaks Of Chinese Listed Companies

From 80's of the last century, more and more foreign scholars began to study the CEO speaks through the way of semantics and rhetoric. At present, there is still no research in the new field of CEO speaks in domestic. The purpose of this article is intended to do some preliminary exploration to the CEO speaks through linguistic approach.The various CEO speaks include speeches, newsletters, interviews, letters to shareholders in corporate annual reports, special issues for shareholders and the professional electronic articles in company website. The main research object in this article is the CEO letters of the annual report in domestic listed companies in Hong Kong Exchanges.This study is based on Halliday's systemic theory, and this article is committed to confirm the Pollyanna Hypothesis of the CEO speaks in the annual reports. In order to allow greater comparability of the CEO speaks, the writer selected the latest annual reports of 5 consecutive years in 6 listed companies. The paper analyzed the CEO speaks carefully through transitivity, thematic structure, context and cohesion. Finally, the writer got some conclusions and gave some hints for future study.Through the analysis of the transitivity, the writer found that as the years pass and profits increase verb structures show a predictable decrease in passive constructions. Through the analysis of the thematic structure, the writer found that there is a close contact between the increase of the nonhuman agents and the performance of the company. The nonhuman agents would be used more as the operating performance turns poorer. Through the analysis of context and cohesion, the writer confirmed the Pollyanna Hypothesis. The changes of linguistic structures suggest that a objective situation caused by circumstances does not attribute to any persons who might otherwise be thought responsible.