Engagement Resources In Letters To Shareholders In Corporate Annual Reports

Recently, the Appraisal Theory has made a rapid progress in the field of linguistics and it has been widely used in analysis of many kinds of discourses. This study conducts linguistic analysis of letters to shareholders under the framework of Engagement in Appraisal Theory. The letter to shareholders, as one part of the corporate annual report, has been receiving more and more attention because of its important role as a bridge of communication between the company and its potential investors. A letter to shareholders is a legally required document written by the management and submitted to the shareholders. In letters to shareholders, the writer briefly introduces the business of the company, and then shows some good achievements the company obtained during the previous fiscal year and finally ends the letter with a good forecast. Throughout the whole letter, there are large amount of Appraisal resources including Engagement resources used by the writer to explain the current situation of the company, to illustrate the efficient strategies and solutions that the company is taking and to demonstrate the positive attitude towards all of customers. In short, with the help of Appraisal resources, the writer sets up a good image of the company and tries to attract more investors’ attention. Engagement resources play the critical role in the whole process of company propaganda. Therefore, the study, based on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory, attempts to conduct a systemic analysis of the Engagement resources in letters to shareholders, which focuses on the distributions and functions of all Engagement resources and further exposes the letter writer’s interpersonal strategy behind these resources.Based on the list of Fortune Global500in2013,40letters to shareholders are chosen as a corpus from English-speaking country’s companies. First, with the help of Systemic Coder, a corpus tool, the corpus is analyzed by the quantitative method. Through analyzing the distribution of each resource in the whole Engagement system and in the subsystem to which the resource belongs, the study clearly demonstrates different occurrences and frequencies of each resource. The findings show that all Engagement resources are widely used in letters to shareholders; dialogic expansion takes up larger part of the total resources than dialogic contraction. Under expansion category, entertain enjoys the largest proportion among all types of resources, with the proportion of51.0%. By a strong contrast, attribution as another sub-system of expansion, only has the percentage of3.9%; finally under contraction category, disclaim resources are used more than proclaim resources, with the percentage of31.1%and14.0%respectively. Then by qualitative method, the analysis displays the realizations and different functions of Engagement resources that serve different roles of constructing interpersonal meanings. Entertain resources allow the letter writer to assess the corporate condition in the objective way and invite different alternative positions to discuss; attribution resources offer the writer the external support with the authoritative voice or data to prove the good performance of the company; disclaim resources deny or replace the readers’negative expectation about the company and establish the positive assessment; proclaim resources highlight the writer’s authorial voice, shifting the readers’attention to the sound aspects of corporate performance by emphasizing some certain advantages or achievements of the company. In short, every resource makes respective contribution to promoting corporate image and attracting customers’investment. Finally, by summarizing the quantitative and qualitative results, some Engagement resource selection strategies are exposed as:preference of dialogic expansion, weakening of external voices and enhancement of authority.Through analyzing Engagement resources in letters to shareholders, the present study provides a new linguistic perspective for letter to shareholders analysis and broadens the application of Appraisal Theory. Besides, it verifies the suitability of Appraisal Theory in analysis of letters to shareholders and proves the explanatory power of the theory. Moreover, it also has practical significance for the writer of letters to shareholders, helping him use the Engagement resources more effectively to achieve the communicative purpose of good corporate image establishment and public investment encouragement.