A Genre Analysis Of Annual Reports:a Corpus-based Study

Annual reports (ARs) are one of the most important ways for companies to communicate with external parties. Recently, many researchers focused on the study of ARs but few studied the genre of ARs. Based on the corpus methodology, this thesis conducted genre analysis of ARs and concluded generic structure of ARs for the purpose of helping AR producers and users to better prepare and use ARs effectively and efficiently.The self-built corpus consisted of120ARs in2011from Fortune Global500companies. Based on Bhatia’s genre analysis approach and the writing purpose of ARs, generic structures of ARs were divided and nine sub-corpora were built. Furthermore, through the statistical move frequency analysis, obligatory moves and optional moves were identified and step sequences were determined. Lastly, WordSmith4.0was used to conduct genre studies of ARs in the lexical level and indentify lexical features in different moves of ARs.Major findings were that:(1) ARs genre was consisted of nine moves with Move1introducing the business (IB), Move2attracting attention (AA), Move3giving quick business overview (BO), Move4giving detailed business review (BR), Move5summarizing corporate social responsibility (CSR), Move6summarizing corporate governance (CG), Move7giving the third party documents (TPD), Move8reporting of financial statements (FS) and Move9supplementing information of the corporate and stock (SI). Move6, Move8and Move9are obligatory moves and the other six moves are optional moves.(2) The international trend of ARs is that more and more companies voluntarily disclose Move5CSR to improve enterprise image and public relations. Furthermore, AR structure is more standardized especially Move6CG.(3). Financial terms and management terms were used frequently in ARs. The most frequently used vocabulary for time periods were "December","Annually" and "Year". Besides, most of money and quantity units in ARs were measured in "Million","Millions" and "Billion".(4) Vocabulary of Move2was the richest and vocabulary of Move5was the second richest. Comparatively, vocabulary of Move1and Move3were diverse and vocabulary of Move7lacked in diversity.(5) In average word length, Move7was the most complex move in ARs with the longest average word length. Furthermore, words in Move2and Move8were much easier than other moves.(6) The first personal pronouns "Our" was particularly higher than other first personal pronouns in ARs and mostly from Move2.(7). Hedges were mostly used in Move2and Move4and are barely used in Move5and Move8.(8). Positive words were used significantly more than negative words in evaluation especially in Move2, Move3Move4and Move8. However, most of negative words appeared in Move4.The research have three contributions. Firstly, compared with the previous studies, the conclusions are general and can be applied to any AR in English without restricting to contain country’s accounting standards because the corpus consists of120ARs from companies in Fortune Global500in28industries.Secondly, since the research chooses2011ARs,the results not only reflect new generic structures and lexical strategies of ARs but also develop the results of Bhatia’s promotional genre colony. Lastly, the research is helpful in organizing and understanding ARs by accountants and AR users.