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Article
Publication date: 27 June 2018

Kumaran Rajandran

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Malaysian CEO Statements employ language and image to convey interaction between the CEO and stakeholders.

523

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Malaysian CEO Statements employ language and image to convey interaction between the CEO and stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines an archive of 32 Malaysian CEO Statements. The archive is analyzed with Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA), where several interpersonal systems can establish how language and image features articulate interaction. The analysis identifies who the stakeholders are, and how these stakeholders and the CEO interact.

Findings

There are four stakeholders, who are the community, customer, employee and environment, and these stakeholders are sub-categorized by type or activity. The stakeholders and the CEO share multisemiotic interaction through contact, reaction and equality. These three strategies mimic a face-to-face conversation (contact) and the CEO is depicted to reveal some positive emotions (reaction) to social equals (equality). These strategies reflect synthetic personalization, through which the CEO and stakeholders seem to interact because the CEO speaks directly to stakeholders in friendly conversation about CSR. CEO Statements are part of the quest for social legitimacy and designate corporations as agents of positive social change. Their ideology can be stated as a general principle: corporation A recognizes problem B and proposes solution C, which has positive result D for stakeholder E.

Originality/value

Previous research has not emphasized interaction in CEO Statements. The paper also utilized SF-MDA, which may enhance the discursive competence or a systematic way to decipher language and image for people who practice or teach corporate communication.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 23 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 5 September 2020

Kumaran Rajandran

Financial communication produces various texts, among which are earnings videos. The videos employ language and image in multimodal discourses to convey specific social meanings…

471

Abstract

Purpose

Financial communication produces various texts, among which are earnings videos. The videos employ language and image in multimodal discourses to convey specific social meanings about corporate performance. The purpose of this paper is to select earnings videos and study their incorporated genres, styles and discourses.

Design/methodology/approach

Interdiscursivity permits hybridity because it mixes the choice of genres, styles or discourses. An interdiscursive analysis is conducted on earnings videos in English, French and Spanish from corporations in the global finance industry. It involved three sequential stages: (1) to detect the discourses, (2) to name the discourses and (3) to consider the function of the discourses.

Findings

Earnings videos are hybrid because interview and presentation genres, formal and casual styles and the discourses of financial accounting, strategic management and public relations are encountered. The genres, styles and discourses are interwoven to create an interdiscursive mix, which constructs earnings through a (pseudo)personal social relation and easified discourses. The multimodal discourses convey robust corporate performance in an interim, and their use is symptomatic of marketization. Corporations may “market” their performance to seem like a worthwhile investment to persuade (potential) investors.

Originality/value

The paper enriches existing research in financial communication because it studies how multimodal discourses in earnings videos are tailored for marketization. The videos have not been analyzed, and their analysis complements earlier studies on other financial communication texts. The analysis examines discourses through language and image features, whose co-deployment conveys meaning about corporations.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 26 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 7 March 2016

Kumaran Rajandran

– This paper aims to analyse how Environment Sections in Malaysian corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports disclose environmental CSR.

1359

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to analyse how Environment Sections in Malaysian corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports disclose environmental CSR.

Design/methodology/approach

The analysis is grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which helps to examine the macrostructure (topics) and microstructure (language features) of Environment Sections. It is complemented by interviews with corporate representatives to obtain insights about these structures.

Findings

The macrostructure consists of five topics of Introduction, Initiative, Featured Initiative, Adherence and Finance to enable a comprehensive understanding about environmental CSR. The microstructure emphasizes language features about corporate actions and descriptions to enable environmental CSR in a particular time, place and way. Through the macro- and microstructures, the disclosure in Environment Sections portrays corporate involvement as bringing environmental improvement. It displays the corporate perspective, which promotes corporations as agents of positive social change. The disclosure is seen to be influenced by Malaysia’s corporate context.

Research limitations/implications

As the corpus is limited to ten corporations in three years, future research should expand the corpus to comprise Environment Sections from other years, countries, languages and industries.

Originality/value

The paper is useful to people practicing and studying corporate communication, as knowing SFL can improve discursive competence or a systematic way to decipher and deploy language.

Details

Social Responsibility Journal, vol. 12 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-1117

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 29 July 2014

Kumaran Rajandran and Fauziah Taib

– The purpose of this paper is to examine how Malaysian CEO Statements represent corporate social responsibility (CSR).

1841

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Malaysian CEO Statements represent corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Design/methodology/approach

A corpus of 27 CEO Statements was analyzed using Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA) model, which proposes analyzing text, discourse practice and social practice. The analysis emphasized image and language features in text while it explored intertextuality in discourse practice and ideology in social practice.

Findings

The analysis revealed that selected image and language features contribute to six themes about CSR, namely achievement, identification, aspiration, disclosure, recognition and appreciation. The analysis also revealed that policies, standards and studies are often cited to reduce a credibility gap. These analyses indicate that CEO Statements represent CSR as a corporation's philanthropic initiatives for stakeholders. This representation reflects the ideology of CEO Statements. It establishes corporations as an agent of positive change in society, which helps to improve the social legitimacy of corporations.

Research limitations/implications

Since the corpus was limited to ten corporations in three years, the findings might not be representative of the genre of CEO Statements. The corpus could be extended to include CEO Statements from other years, countries and languages and it can launch a productive enterprise in intercultural studies.

Originality/value

This paper demonstrates CDA as an approach to understand CEO Statements. It may be useful to people practicing and teaching corporate communication because it encourages them to consider the meaning implied by image and language features, which can influence the meaning of CEO Statements.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 19 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

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