A Corpus-based Study Of Corporate Image In The English Version Of Business Discourse

Corporate image is an important intangible asset of an enterprise and companies should go to great length to nurture and protect their positive images in the public.This thesis examines Huawei's corporate image constructed in its ten years corporate social responsibility report from 2008 to 2017.It is a corpus-based critical discourse analysis assisted with the systemic functional grammar as the analytical tool conducted within the Fairclough's three-dimensional model.According to this model,the thesis probes into the self-built corporate image of Huawei compared with two reference corpora BT and Telstra from descriptive,interpretative and explanatory level.At the descriptive level,the texts are processed and presented in detail from three aspects: high-frequency words,keywords and modal verbs.At the interpretative level,a synchronic and diachronic study has been taken for the classification of the words together with an interpersonal meaning exploration of high-value modal verbs.At the explanatory level,reasons of the image construction are given from the perspectives of economy,culture and national policy.The results show that Huawei is a humane social contributor devoted to shouldering the corporate social responsibilities.Huawei embodies the unique humanistic care in the aspect of employee training,customer service,charitable donations and so on.The number of high-value modal verbs in the Huawei corpus is significantly higher than in its reference corpora,which reflects the company's enterprising culture.After 2012,with the continuous enhancement of Huawei's strength and the change of market strategy,the company shifted its original low-key style,leading to a significant increase of the words related to strong strength such as“leadership,largest,and power”.The author also explores the collocations and concordance lines of “customer-centered”,finding that the creed of “customer is the god” serves as an important factor during the construction of corporate image.The results of the article show that Huawei's corporate culture is deeply influenced by Chinese traditional philosophy and Maoism,focusing on disciplines and rules,regarding markets as battlefields,emphasizing strategies and tactics.At the same time,Huawei's success attributes to its emerging with the wave of smartphone reforms and also the huge investment in research and development.Huawei's image in the domestic media is basically the same as its self-built image while it tends to be negative in American media.This study may,to some extent,enrich the research on image from the perspective of linguistics and shed light on the corporate image building for Chinese companies who are emerging onto the global stage.