A Multimodal Analysis Of The Meta-Discourse Used On About-US Pages Of Chinese And American Companies

The company about-us page is the most fundamental channel of communication for a company to introduce itself and attract potential cooperation.For a Chinese company,an impressive about-us page will certainly help establish the positive image,whereas its English prose as well as its discursive organization of introductory writing may backfire in the internationalization process.Based on the data collected from the about-us pages of some Chinese and American companies,this study takes a comparative perspective and applies a meta-discourse framework(incorporating multimodal discourse analysis)to explore the linguistic features of company introductory writing between them and the cultural factors behind them.Meta-discourse,which simply means ‘discourse about discourse’(see Hyland2008),is a systematic method used to organize a text,express the author’s attitudes towards the content of the discourse and predict the reader’s responses.Based on Hyland(2008)’s meta-discourse model,this study investigates the verbal and visual meta-discourse on English about-us pages.The sample texts are sourced from 60 Chinese companies and 60 American ones on the 2021 world Fortune 500 list.Based on the statistical test and textual analysis,it has been found that Chinese companies have insufficient awareness as American companies do to use meta-discourse markers,especially interactional ones,in company introductory writing,and the distinction can be ascribed to cultural differences between these two countries.In addition,visual devices are also essential for a company’s about-us page.Within an integrated framework of multimodal discourse analysis,this study provides a reference for enriching and developing the theoretical model of meta-discourse,pointing out the improvement of idiomatic use in about-us pages for domestic companies with regard to the target audience of English.