A Corpus-based Study On The Stylistic Features Of Corporate Profile

Facilitated by info-technology,corporate profiles on official websites are becoming a more and more important channel for people to know a company,which play an important role in companies' internationalization and self-promotion.The small-sized self-built Corporate Profile Corpus collected raw data from enterprises on the Forbes Global 500 List.Adopting a framework of modern stylistics and taking a corpus-based approach,this thesis analyzes the stylistic features of corporate profiles with a method combining qualitative and quantitative techniques.With the aid of Antconc,Wordsmith,Perl and Excel,the analysis of corporate profiles was conducted on the the graphological,lexical and syntactical level,with an aim to discover the graphological,lexical and syntactical features of corporate profiles.The results show that on the graphological level,corporate profiles are featured by clear hierarchical structure with parallel columns in parallel distribution.Punctuations and signs are used less compared with general English and the use of individual punctuations and signs also shows different features.On the lexical level,the vocabulary used in corporate profiles is less diverse and the application of high frequency words reveals distinctive features:the full use of CAN only,the preference of the first person plural forms and formal verbs,the abundance of business-related nouns and positive evaluative words.On the syntactical level,long sentences are frequently used.Besides,passive voice and active voice are used alternatively determined by different focuses.This study may shed light on the overall exposure of the stylistic features of corporate profile and could have reference significance on the understanding,studying and composing of such introductory and promotional texts for Business English learners and users.