Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigates the stances of US and Chinese energy giants on environmental sustainability through a corpus-assisted analysis of their sustainability reports (2016–2023). Three stances are identified in both corpora, with subtle cross-cultural differences. First, both groups adopt a supportive stance on environmental governance. US companies emphasize international frameworks, whereas Chinese firms align more closely with national policies. Second, a confident stance on corporate competence is evident in both, but with differing rhetorical styles. US companies express confidence through personal and reasoned claims, whereas Chinese companies use assertive, target-driven language. Third, both display an implicit stance of obscuring environmental responsibility by deflecting blame, generalizing responsibility, and downplaying their own environmental impact. This study not only applies the corpus-assisted stance analysis in comparative, cross-cultural corporate environmental discourse, but also extends the theoretical scope of stance analysis by refining the analytical framework and identifying both explicit and implicit stances. It provides a practical tool for business communication scholars to critically evaluate corporate sustainability discourse.

Keywords

stance environmental sustainability corpus-assisted study sustainability reports energy giants

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bhatia

(2012). The corporate social responsibility report: The hybridization of a “confused” genre (2007-2011). IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 55(3), 221–238.

Biber

Finegan

(1989). Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect. Text and Talk, 9, 93–124.

Biber

Johansson

Leech

Conrad

Finegan

(1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Pearson Education Limited.

Bondi

(2016). The future in reports: Prediction, commitment and legitimization in CSR. Pragmatics and Society, 7, 57–81.

Breeze

(2018). Researching evaluative discourse in Annual Reports using semantic tagging. Iberica, 35, 41–66.

Carbon Majors. (2024). The Carbon Majors database: Launch report. https://carbonmajors.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26

Dahl

(2022). Global villain, but local hero? A linguistic analysis of climate narratives from the fossil fuel sector. Applied Linguistics, 43(1), 1–20.

Du Bois

J. W

. (2007). The stance triangle. In Englebretson

(Eds.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction (pp. 139–182). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Fairclough

(1992). Discourse and social change. Blackwell.

10.

Fairclough

(2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Routledge.

11.

Ferguson

Sales

Aguiar

T. R.

Fearfull

(2016). Corporate response to climate change: Language, power and symbolic construction. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 29, 278–304.

12.

Fuoli

(2012). Assessing social responsibility: A quantitative analysis of Appraisal in BP’s and IKEA’s social reports. Discourse & Communication, 6(1), 55–81.

13.

Fuoli

(2018). Building a trustworthy corporate identity: A corpus-based analysis of stance in annual and corporate social responsibility reports. Applied Linguistics, 39(6), 846–885.

14.

Fuoli

Beelitz

(2024). Framing the path to net zero: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of sustainability disclosures by major corporate emitters, 2011-2020. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 29(3), 361–388.

15.

Gray

Biber

(2014). Stance markers. In Aijmer

Rühlemann

(Eds.), Corpus pragmatics: A handbook (pp. 219–248). Cambridge University Press.

16.

Hart

(2014). Discourse, grammar and ideology: Functional and cognitive perspectives. Bloomsbury.

17.

Huang

Rose

(2018). You, our shareholders: Metadiscourse in CEO letters from Chinese and Western banks. Text & Talk, 38(2), 167–190.

18.

Hunston

Thompson

(2000). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford University Press.

19.

Hyland

(1998). Exploring corporate rhetoric: Metadiscourse in the CEO’s letter. Journal of Business Communication, 35, 224–244.

20.

Hyland

(2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192.

21.

Ihlen

Ø.

Roper

. (2014). Corporate reports on sustainability and sustainable development: ‘We have arrived’. Sustainable Development, 22(1), 42–51.

22.

Jaworska

(2018). Change but no climate change: Discourses of climate change in corporate social responsibility reporting in the oil industry. International Journal of Business Communication 55(2), 194–219.

23.

Jaworska

Nanda

(2018). Doing well by talking good: A topic modelling-assisted discourse study of corporate social responsibility. Applied Linguistics, 39(3), 373–399.

24.

KPMG. (2022). Survey of sustainability reporting 2022. https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/se/pdf/komm/2022/Global-Survey-of-Sustainability-Reporting-2022.pdf

25.

Laine

(2005). Meanings of the term “sustainable development” in Finnish corporate disclosures, Accounting Forum, 29(4), 395–413.

26.

Laine

(2010). Towards sustaining the status quo: Business talk of sustainability in Finnish corporate disclosures 1987-2005. European Accounting Review, 19(2), 247–274.

27.

Lee

W. W. L.

(2020). Impression management through hedging and boosting: A cross-cultural investigation of the messages of U.S. and Chinese corporate leaders. Lingua, 242, Article 102872.

28.

Lee

W. W. L.

(2021). Emotion in business communication: A comparative study of attitude markers in the discourse of U.S. and mainland Chinese corporations. Discourse & Communication, 15(6), 629–649.

29.

Lischinsky

(2015). What is the environment doing in my report? Analyzing the environment-as-stakeholder thesis through corpus linguistics. Environmental Communication, 9(4), 539–559.

30.

Liu

(2023). Stance constructions in CEO statements of CSR reports of Chinese and US companies, English for Specific Purposes, 70, 237–251.

31.

Livesey

S. M.

(2002). The discourse of the middle ground: Citizen shell commits to sustainable development, Management Communication Quarterly, 15(3), 313–349.

32.

Livesey

S. M.

Kearins

(2002). Transparent and caring corporations? Organization & Environment, 15(3), 233–258.

33.

Zhao

(2025). Building corporate identity through interactional metadiscourse: A corpus-based study of the US and Chinese CEO letters. International Journal of Applied Linguistics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12772

34.

Martin

J. R.

White

P. R.

(2005). The language of evaluation. Palgrave Macmillan.

35.

Megura

Gunderson

(2022). Better poison is the cure? Critically examining fossil fuel companies, climate change framing, and corporate sustainability reports, Energy Research & Social Science, 85, Article 102388.

36.

Milne

M. J.

Kearins

Walton

(2006). Creating adventures in wonderland: The journey metaphor and environmental sustainability. Organization, 13(6), 801–839.

37.

Morhardt

J. E.

(2010). Corporate social responsibility and sustainability reporting on the internet, Business Strategy and the Environment, 19(7), 436–452.

38.

Rayson

Garside

(2000, October 7). Comparing corpora using frequency profiling [Conference session]. Workshop on Comparing Corpora, held in conjunction with the 38th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2000), Hong Kong (pp. 1–6).

39.

Tregidga

Milne

Kearins

(2014). (Re)presenting sustainable organizations, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 39(6), 477–494.

40.

United Nations Environment Programme. (2023). Emissions gap report 2023. https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2023

41.

(2020). Corporate environmentalism: A critical metaphor analysis of Chinese, American, and Italian corporate social responsibility reports. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 63(3), 244–258.

42.

Zhang

J. Y.

(2024). Climate change as represented in corporate social responsibility reports of American and Chinese energy giants: A critical frame analysis perspective. International Journal of Business Communication, 61(2), 414–451.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.19 MB

Stances on Environmental Sustainability: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Sustainability Reports by US and Chinese Energy Giants

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material