A Contrastive Study Of Genre Analysis Of Chinese And American Corporate Apologies

Corporate apology is a way to fix relation with customers and restore corporate image when negative news about the company occurs.A well-organized corporate apology can also earn customers’ trust,build up a corporate image of being responsible,even serve as an advertisement for the company.Given this,corporate apology is worthy of attention.Researchers have been exploring corporate apology from different angles,yet the study has mostly focused on corporate apology within one certain culture.Comparison between corporate apologies come from different cultural background is quite limited.Therefore,a small corpus of a total of fifty corporate apologies is built,with Chinese and American corporate apologies accounting for half each,which are all written in their native languages.The author adopts move analysis theories proposed by Swales(1990),Bhatia(1993)and Rasmeenin(2006)as well as Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential(1989)and explores move types,frequencies and positions where they occur.Results suggest that eight moves can be found in both Chinese and American corporate apologies,which are Account of the Offence,Explanation,Response to the Offense,Offering Apology,Image Repair,Relation Repair,Responsibility Acknowledgement and Expression of Sincerity.However,Chinese and American counterparts show differences in frequencies for some certain moves and steps that are used to realize moves.On the other hand,differences in Generic Structure Potential imply that they also have tendency for the position and sequence that moves occur.It is hoped that this tentative research could contribute to the study of genre and corporate apology and facilitate readers’ understanding of this genre.The major findings may also serve as instruction and guideline for corporate apology writers to compose satisfying and effective apology when managing crisis.