Exploring the Macrostructure of Management Forewords of Corporate Annual Reports

Abstract

Management foreword is an unedited qualitative section of Corporate Annual Reports (CARs). It is also considered as the most widely read section of CARs which may reveal the financial condition of the company. So far, only few language studies have embarked on analysis of this section and they have mainly focused on the genre content of management foreword rather than its genre structure. Nevertheless, the few genre studies conducted had several shortcomings in the model proposed. Besides, none of the previously move analysis studies on management foreword have considered corpus analysis tools in their procedure of analysis. Accordingly, the present study is aimed to bridge the gap in previous studies by describing the genre structure of management forewords. To that aim, a qualitative genre analysis study was conducted on 64 samples of management forewords of Asian companies using AntConc software. The analysis revealed six moves and nineteen move-strategy combinations. Most of the identified moves and strategies were also identified in previous move analysis studies on management forewords and other types of business reports and hence verified. The proposed move analysis model defined move boundaries and provided the most frequent words and verbs that represent each move. Additionally, the proposed moves consist of predictable strategies which are bound to their moves and do not appear within the boundary of more than one move. The findings of the present study could be useful for ESP practitioners as teaching material and raise awareness among business ESP students about the genre conventions of this genre.