Critical Genre Analysis On Company Profiles From The Perspective Of Interdiscursivity

Previous studies on company profiles are usually carried out from the different perspectives or disciplines of economics, finance, or company governance, which have paid enough attention to the significance of the communicative strategy in company profiles. And these years have witnessed some researches focusing on genre analysis of professional communication, such as corporate disclosures, announcements, appealing letters, emails, and group buying websites etc. Some explore the generic structures of the discourses, while others examine the intertextualtiy shown in the data. In view of these two research hotspots, the present study attempts to conduct a critical genre analysis of company profiles from the perspective of interdiscursivity.Through integrating Bhatia’s(2010) patterns of discourse realization in professional contexts with Verschueren’s(1999) linguistic adaptation theory, this thesis proposes a critical genre analysis model from the perspective of interdiscursivity. By applying this model, the analysis is carried out from three dimensions. Firstly, with a detailed investigation of the moves in Chinese company profiles, it reveals from a macro view the general generic structure used in these profiles. Then, in terms of critical genre analysis, it analyzes how interdiscursivity serves as a strategy for a company to convey its messages to the audiences. Finally, from the perspective of professional culture, this study applies linguistic adaptation theory to the further analysis of the cultural context. It is hoped that from this three-dimensional analysis, we can get a comprehensive understanding of the company profiles as professional communication to achieve their communicative purposes.This study is mainly a qualitative one, with 80 Chinese company profiles collected from their official websites. Through the multi-dimensional study, it is found that although the generic structures of the 80 company profiles vary in moves, they can be concluded within a consistent structure which is intended for the communicative purposes. The moves are arranged in the following order: company introduction, chairman’s statement, company management, organizational structure, development and history, honors and awards, company culture, and company responsibility, etc. Then, since company profiles are regarded as professional discourses, interdiscursivity shown in the data is usually manifested in the form of genre embedding(like introduction genre is usually embedded with reporting genre or promoting genre). Meanwhile, interdiscursivity can also be regarded as appropriation across professional practices(such as the discourses of advertising, annual reports and company management are mixed together as a communicative strategy). Finally, the study explains the reasons why the interdiscursive strategies have been applied as realization of adaptation to the contexts in terms of the variables of the physical world, the social world, and the mental world. Or in other words, within professional contexts, it can be understood that company profiles are compiled after a process of adaptation, which are intended to present the best image of companies to customers and investors.This critical study of genres from the perspective of interdiscursivity can expand the scope of genre analysis and thereby improve readers’ critical awareness in different discourses. The companies will also benefit in making decisions on how to better utilize proper strategies to achieve their communicative purposes. Moreover, it is hoped that this study can provide a new perspective for the research on critical genre analysis of professional communication.