Cross-cultural Research of Speech Codes: Transitivity Processes in Corporate Social Responsibility Reports

Abstract

Evolving from ethnographic research that determines what meanings are shared within a culture, studies regarding Speech Codes Theory have been conducted with implications for intercultural communication. Arguing for transitivity as speech codes in diverse cultures, this paper aims to describe and explain the transitivity attributes of English-medium Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports by Chinese and British/American corporations, and the transitivity variances between industries by Chinese corporations. Results reveal that frequencies of transitivity features in the Chinese CSR reports are significantly lower than those in the British/American reports, and that the relational process dominates in the corpus under investigation. Also, cross-industrial comparisons among Chinese corporations show that the mechanical manufacturing enterprises and the iron & steel enterprises share similar transitivity codes, but they differ from the energy enterprises distinctively. The paper concludes that linguistic/cultural contexts, translation strategies, moves in the CSR reports, and industry attributes together contribute to the transitivity codes and communicative conducts in different cultural and industrial backgrounds. This paper might help writers/translators of CSR reports in China better understand lexical and functional conformities and peculiarities reflected in Chinese and British/American CSR reports, enhance their corporate narration in the international communities, and thus reinforce communication with the general public by appropriately expressing and accurately translating transitivity processes.