Move structure and communication style of leaders’ messages in corporate discourse: A cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

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.