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Texturing a responsible corporate identity: A comparative analysis of Appraisal in BP's and IKEA's 2009 corporate social reports

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Author

  • Matteo Fuoli

Editor

  • Gisle Andersen
  • Kristin Bech

Summary, in English

In response to a growing public demand for corporate accountability and social responsibility, large companies are investing increasing efforts in the communication of their responsible conduct. Through corporate social reports, they voluntarily account for the social and environmental effects of their operations and document their efforts to implement sustainability principles. This paper presents a comparative analysis of BP’s and IKEA’s 2009 corporate social reports. The analysis combines Appraisal theory and corpus-linguistic methods to identify and compare patterns of evaluative language and modality in the two reports. The main goal of the analysis is to explore how, through these language resources, BP and IKEA construct their corporate identity and negotiate their relationship with their audience. The analysis reveals significant differences in the use of Appraisal resources between the two reports, which reflect broader differences in the relative emphasis the companies put on certain traits of their corporate persona.

Department/s

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

209-235

Publication/Series

English Corpus Linguistics: Variation in Time, Space and Genre. Selected papers from ICAME 32

Issue

77

Document type

Book chapter

Publisher

Rodopi

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0921-5034
  • 978-94-012-0940-3