A Comparative Study On Company Profiles Between China And The US From The Perspective Of Move Structure And Metadiscourse

As a kind of business text,the company profile is essentially a resume of the company to the outside world.Company profiles can help customers and prospects understand a company’s business operations,methods,unique strengths,and relevant experience.Because of the different countries and different industries involved,the company profiles will also be different.Nowadays most of the research on company profiles are from the perspective of language translation,and few of the detailed analysis is from the perspective of linguistics.This study focuses on the similarities and differences between Chinese and American e-commerce company profiles in terms of metadiscourse and move structure.The research is conducted to answer the following two questions:(1)To what extent are the move structures in company profiles of Chinese E-commerce enterprises different from those in the US enterprises?(2)To what extent are the metadiscoursal textual and interpersonal features in company profiles of Chinese E-commerce enterprises different from those in the US enterprises? Then,based on 20 company profiles selected from the top ten e-commerce enterprise rankings from Chinese and American rating agencies,the research used a move structure model that extended from Swales’ CARS Model and Hyland’s Model of Metadiscourse to collect the specific statistics in two corpora.After that,with the help of the data analysis tool SPSS,a comparative analysis of the differences between the two corpora can be conducted.With regard to move structure,both Chinese and American E-commerce companies prefer a four-move organizational pattern while writing company profiles.The differences lie in the choice of moves,the order of moves,and the proportion of each move in different company profiles.Move1 introduction is a necessary move for the two kinds of company profiles and has the highest frequency in two corpora.Every company profile in the two corpora contains Move 1 introduction.Move3 Achievement and Contribution ranks first place in the proportion of each move in both two corpora.As for metadiscourse resources,the American e-commerce companies prefer to use metadiscourse to organize the text and Chinese e-commerce companies lack the consciousness of using metadiscourse markers.Both American and Chinese e-commerce companies rarely used evidentials and code glosses while writing their company profiles.Transitions and frame markers rank the first two places on the occurrences of metadiscource markers both in Chinese and American corpus.At last,some suggestions are put forward based on the above results.For e-commerce company which needs to write Chinese company profile,the suggestions are as follows:(1)Using a four-move organizational pattern which is best to contain Move 1 introduction and Move 6 vision.(2)Move 1 Introduction and Move 3Achievement and Contribution should occupy a relatively larger proportion than other moves.(3)Using much more primary discourse than metadiscourse.Then,for an e-commerce company that needs to enter the US market to write an English company profile,the advice are presented below:(1)Using a four-move organizational pattern which is best to contain Move 1 introduction and Move 3 Achievement and Contribution.(2)Move 3 and Move 4 occupy a relatively larger proportion than other moves.(3)Paying attention to exploiting metadiscourse resources to organize the text.