A Genre-based Analysis Of Chinese And English E-commerce Company Profiles

With the rapid development of global economy and information technology, E-commerce has emerged and developed with its distinctive advantage. Because its special means of conducting business, E-commerce companies introduce and promote their companies, and further establish their corporate image and extend customer equity via the Internet. Therefore, the website, especially the E-commerce company profile, is of paramount importance.In recent years, E-commerce companies have become a more and more popular research topic. However, most of them concentrate on their business operation mode and on their management model. This research will focus on the study of the language of E-commerce company profiles based on genre analysis. In 1981, John Swales formally introduced the concept of “Genre” and “genre analysis” into linguistic research, and since then, it has become a hot topic among researchers.To conduct this research, 50 E-commerce company profiles(25 Chinese, 25 English) will be collected. Based on Swales’ and Bhatia’s genre analysis model, the author will first identify the generic structure of both Chinese and English E-commerce company profiles and then analyze their similarities and differences. Then, Hofstede’s and Hall’s cultural dimensions will be applied to explore the underlying cultural factors that contribute to such similarities and differences. It turns out that Chinese and English E-commerce company profiles are to some extent similar to each other since they are both promotional genres, therefore, they possess the same communicative purposes so that the macro generic structures are similar. Meanwhile, they have some similarities, for instance, some moves like company positioning, product and service description and capability illustration are obligatory moves in both Chinese and English samples. While there still exist distinct differences in aspects such as the constituent of moves of the two sets of data is different and even in the same move, the lower levels of steps are different in their content and emphasis. Moreover, the frequency of the moves and steps in the two sets of data varies a lot.In summary, starting from genre analysis and cross-cultural dimensions, this research conducts a comparative study of Chinese and English E-commerce company profiles to figure out their linguistic features and the underlying cultural factors. This thesis is part of genre analysis, and it can, on the one hand, enlarge the research scope of genre analysis, and on the other hand, provide some instructions for E-commerce companies in writing standard and idiomatic company profiles and business English teaching practices.