A Corpus-Based Analysis of Collocations in Chinese and American Letters to Shareholders

The letter to shareholder is a particularly important promotional genre and is published annually to report company financial performance, and also help manage the relationship between a company and its present as well as potential investors. This corpus-based study of keywords and their collocations investigates the letters to shareholders from 10 Chinese and 10 American Fortune 500 companies. The results show that: 1) the most concerned business themes are manifested in the two corpora, which involve the growth of business. What’s more, Chinese companies concerns more about business itself and the future development of business, while American companies also stress on the theme of customer; 2) the collocation analysis of these main concerns reveal that Chinese enterprises repeatedly mentioned the innovation and uniqueness of their business models, while American companies value whether their business models are right and diversified. In addition, Chinese companies seem to focus more about the status of growth than their American counterparts; 3) both Chinese and American enterprises favor the long-term development of their business. There are differences in featuring the status of growth: Chinese companies tend to enhance confidence and sense of dependence by repeatedly mentioning the status of growth both in home and around the globe, while American companies tend to use precise numbers to impress their investors and enhance their own reliable corporate images.