A Study On Persuasiveness In Letters To Shareholders Under The Framework Of Appraisal System

The rapid development of Chinese economy has promoted many Chinese companies to go public overseas and writing an English letter to shareholders can contribute to attracting foreign investment.There is a great need to explore how persuasion in CEO letters to shareholders is achieved.This study,based on the corpus of 30 letters to shareholders from American companies,applies Martin's appraisal system and Aristotle's three rhetorical means of persuasion to explore the persuasiveness of letters to shareholders.This study mainly answers the following questions:(1)What are the frequency and distribution of appraisal resources in the corpus of letters to shareholders?(2)How is persuasion achieved by appraisal resources in letters to shareholders from the perspective of Aristotle's three rhetorical means of persuasion?(3)What factors contribute to the choice of appraisal resources in letters to shareholders?The findings are as follows: firstly,there are altogether 2665 units of appraisal resources in 30 letters to shareholders.The distribution of appraisal resources in these letters to shareholders is significantly unbalanced.Attitude resources take up the largest proportion for 79.32%.Graduation resources and engagement resources are less frequently used,respectively accounting for 13.36% and 7.32%.In attitude resources,more positive resources are used than negative ones,which shows CEOs tend to leave a positive impression to shareholders by using a large quantity of positive appraisal resources to present positive voice.Judgment and appreciation resources are used in a large quantity,which can highlight the company's performance and qualities and build a reliable corporate image.Among Engagement resources,there are more dialogic contractive resources than dialogic expansive resources,which indicates that CEOs tend to present their authority and certainty on the company by contracting dialogic space.In graduation resources,force resources greatly outnumber focus resources.Especially intensifications in force resources can work with attitude resources,which contributes to amplify CEO's attitude.Secondly,under the guidance of Aristotle's three rhetorical means of persuasion,it is found that attitude and graduation can achieve pathos as they can be used to share emotions to shorten mental distance between CEO and shareholders or to arouse emotional resonance;attitude,engagement and graduation can achieve ethos as they can be used to build a good CEO's or corporate image,improving credibility of the company;engagement can achieve logos as they can be used to guide shareholders to infer and follow CEO's ideas,helping make a logical alignment between CEO and shareholders.Thirdly,the possible factors that influence the choice of appraisal resources in letters to shareholders include genre,corporate culture and CEO's personal writing style.Theoretically,this study examines the feasibility of using appraisal resources to analyze persuasion in letters to shareholders and explores persuasive functions of appraisal resources;practically,it provides some suggestions for CEO about how to strengthen persuasiveness of a letter to shareholders by using appraisal resources.It is hoped that this study can give some inspiration to the writing of a letter to shareholders and promote the fast development of Chinese companies overseas.