TY - JOUR
T1 - Move structure and communication style of leaders’ messages in corporate discourse
T2 - A cross-cultural perspective
AU - Ngai, Cindy Sing Bik
AU - Singh, Rita Gill
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - As an important tool to influence stakeholders’ perception, leader messages, subsumed under public relations discourse, play an integral role in corporate communication. Drawing on the analysis of linguistic move structure and communication styles employed by researchers, this study adopts a multidimensional framework by using both discourse and quantitative analysis to compare how leaders in Global 500 corporations in China and the United States rely upon specific linguistic features to engage stakeholders in corporate discourse published on their websites. The results show pertinent differences in communication styles, where Chinese corporations tend to be more instrumental, elaborate and competitive while US corporations are more affective, succinct and harmonious. These observations depart from previous findings on interpersonal communication styles in cross-cultural research. This study also extends the boundary of corporate genre analysis by suggesting that the moves adopted in the structure of corporate messages are highly specific to the particular genre.
AB - As an important tool to influence stakeholders’ perception, leader messages, subsumed under public relations discourse, play an integral role in corporate communication. Drawing on the analysis of linguistic move structure and communication styles employed by researchers, this study adopts a multidimensional framework by using both discourse and quantitative analysis to compare how leaders in Global 500 corporations in China and the United States rely upon specific linguistic features to engage stakeholders in corporate discourse published on their websites. The results show pertinent differences in communication styles, where Chinese corporations tend to be more instrumental, elaborate and competitive while US corporations are more affective, succinct and harmonious. These observations depart from previous findings on interpersonal communication styles in cross-cultural research. This study also extends the boundary of corporate genre analysis by suggesting that the moves adopted in the structure of corporate messages are highly specific to the particular genre.
KW - Communication styles
KW - corporate public relations discourse
KW - cross-cultural
KW - global corporations
KW - leaders’ messages
KW - move structure analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019965831&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1750481317697860
DO - 10.1177/1750481317697860
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85019965831
SN - 1750-4813
VL - 11
SP - 276
EP - 295
JO - Discourse and Communication
JF - Discourse and Communication
IS - 3
ER -