A Comparative Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Csr Reports Between Chinese Energy Companies And American Energy Companies

Although six energy companies are at the top 10 of Fortune Global 500 list in 2020,there is no energy company at the top 10 of best CSR corporations around the world.As CSR report is an important tool to disclose CSR information and policies to stakeholders in order to build responsible corporate image and improve corporate reputation,the interpersonal meaning used to communicate with stakeholders in CSR reports is paramount.Interpersonal meaning means that the speakers use language to express their judgement and attitude in specific context so as to influence the listeners’ behaviour as well as attitude and to shape good social relationship with them.With the high risk of environmental pollution,energy companies are under strict scrutiny of the government and the public.Therefore,this study selects 60 CSR reports of Chinese and American energy companies as research discourse,and then employs qualitative methods as well as quantitative methods to analyze the interpersonal meaning for communicating with different stakeholders based on Appraisal System and Stakeholder Theory.To be more specific,30 CSR reports from Chinese energy companies and 30 CSR reports from American energy companies are first imported into the corpus tool UAM to build Corpus-US and Corpus-CH,and then Appraisal System is adopted to conduct feature coding of appraisal resources.Next,Chi-square test is used to compare the appraisal resources between Corpus-US and Corpus-CH.At last,the similarities and differences of specific language use for construing interpersonal meaning in Corpus-US and Corpus-CH are explained from the perspectives of culture,genre and ideology.The research questions are as bellow:(1)What are the comparative results of the types and frequencies of appraisal resources in Corpus-CH and Corpus-US?(2)What interpersonal meaning is realized by appraisal resources in the two corpora? And what are the similarities and differences of appraisal resources in the two corpora?(3)What are the reasons for the similarities and differences of appraisal resources between Corpus-CH and Corpus-US?The results are as follows:(1)Attitudinal resources account for the most in both corpora with 73.59% in Corpus-CH and 70.05% in Corpus-US,and the percentage of engagement resources and graduation resources is 5.7% and 20.48% in Corpus-CH,while the number is 5.94% and 23.8% in Corpus-US.The results of Chi-square test show that there is a significance in the normalized frequency of judgement and appreciation resources,while there are no differences in the normalized frequency of engagement resources and graduation resources.(2)In terms of specific appraisal resources to realize stakeholders’ interpersonal meaning,“safety”,“all”,“training”,“satisfaction”,“health”,“opportunities” are among the top 50 realizations of interpersonal meaning in both corpora,meanwhile,“diversity”and “diverse” are among the top 10 words in Corpus-US while “poverty” and“harmonious” are emphasized in Corpus-CH.(3)The similarities and differences of appraisal resources between Corpus-CH and Corpus-US attribute to the factors of culture,genre and ideology.According to the results,useful suggestions will be provided for CSR communication practice and business communication teaching,so CSR report writers and CSR communication practitioners will improve the communicative strategies as well as CSR engagements.