A Study of Generic Intertextuality in Corporate Press Releases

Ruiqi Zhou*, Yongcui Zhao**
* Associate Professor of English, School of English for International Business, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China.
** Teaching Assistant, Chengdu Institute of Sichuan International Studies University, Chengdu China.
Periodicity:March - May'2018
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jmgt.12.4.14525

Abstract

As an important communication vehicle in the area of public relations, Corporate Press Releases (CPRs) contribute to establishing favorable corporate images and maintaining good relations between corporations and stakeholders. Through Corporate Press Releases, companies usually report on the corporate news while attempting to develop positive reputations which may be reflected by the generic intertextuality in those releases, where genres of both news reports and advertisements are embedded.

In order to find out whether there exists such generic intertextuality in CPRs, the authors of this paper conducted a qualitative research. The authors collected 50 pieces of CPRs from the official websites of 42 Fortune 500 companies as research data for the current study. Firstly, to find generic intertexuality between different genres, the authors adopt Swales' move analysis to identify the move structure of CPRs and then compare it with those of news reports and advertisements respectively. It turns out that there is a high level of similarity between the move structure of CPRs and that of news reports and also between those of CPRs and advertisements. As a result, the generic intertextuality of CPRs is exposed. This paper also indicates that social transformations, such as commercialization and rise in technology have impact on CPRs, which lead to the emergence of generic intertextuality.

Keywords

Generic Intertextuality, Corporate Press Releases, Move Structure, Causes.

How to Cite this Article?

Zhou, R and Zhao,R. (2018). A Study of Generic Intertextuality in Corporate Press Releases. i-manager’s Journal on Management, 12(4), 21-31. https://doi.org/10.26634/jmgt.12.4.14525

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