A Corpus-based Genre Analysis Of Corporate Apologies

With the development of media and the rise of consumer awareness, the number of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade. It has almost become a conventionalized practice for companies to deliver an apology when they are accused of wrongdoing. A successful corporate apology can effectively defuse the crisis, protect the reputation of the involved company, and even help to rebuild a responsible and trustworthy corporate image. Therefore, companies always pay lots of attention to the crafting of their apologies when they face crisis situations. This study attempts to find out how most companies tailor their corporate apologies when a crisis strikes.In order to acquire a comprehensive understanding of corporate apologies, the author adopts an integrated theoretical framework based on Swales(1990) and Bhatia(1993)’s move analysis, Hasan(1989)’s Generic Structure Potential modal(GSP),BCU Approach(Biber, Connor and Upton, 2007) and grammatical markers of stance developed by Biber et al.(1999), to explore the macro structural patterns as well as the micro linguistic patterns of corporate apologies based on a self-built corpus consisting of 71 English corporate apologies.At the macro level, a move analysis of corporate apologies is conducted. By a close examination of the 71 corporate apologies in the corpus, eight move types are identified and a tagging protocol with clear definition of moves and strategies is worked out. After tagging all the corporate apologies in the corpus with moves and strategies, the frequency and relative positions of moves are examined and the move structural patterns are discussed. Based on the analysis of the move structures, the GSP formula of corporate apologies is then worked out. At the micro level, the lexical-grammatical patterns of corporate apologies are examined with the assistance of corpus analysis tool. Lexical features are discussed through the analysis of the wordlist, keyword list and the concordance of the verb “apologize”. Grammatical patterns are explored by examining the grammatical stance structures used in the each move. The reasons for the generic patterns, both macro and micro, of corporate apologies are also discussed with reference to the communicative context and communicative purposes of the genre.It can be concluded from the findings that as a distinctive genre with the primarycommunicative purposes of image reparation, trust restoration and relationship rebuilding, corporate apologies display distinctive generic patterns, both in their macro structures and micro linguistic features, and these generic patterns are subject to the communicative context and communicative purposes of this genre.It is hoped that this study can enrich the studies on genre analysis. It is further hoped that the findings of this research can help sharpen readers’ critical awareness in reading corporate apologies and provide some guidance for companies in their construction of corporate apologies.