CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Topic
With the intention to invite customers and influence their behaviors, financial institutions make great efforts to present themselves to the public. Deeming Internet as a great helper in self-presentation, financial institutions endeavor to present themselves as ideal destinations for potential stakeholders on the Internet, where the ―About us‖, ―Company Overview‖ or the ― Company Story‖ parts will serve as the window through which customers can take a glance at. However, time has evolved into a period when information is no longer conveyed by plain written text only, but by images, sounds, videos and other multimodal resources as well. Company profiles on websites, as the bridge through which customers can get a panoramic view, play a vital role in communicating the right information. Company profiles interact with customers to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their attitude and behavior, to express their attitudes, which is termed as interpersonal meaning (Thereafter IM will be used to replace interpersonal meaning). Under the guidance of Halliday’s Mood and Modality system and the Visual Grammar proposed by G. Kress and T. van Leeuwen(1996,2006), this thesis explores different realizations of interpersonal meaning in both Chinese and American profiles on official websites from perspectives of lexico-grammatical level (written texts) and Visual Grammar (images and videos). On the basis of discrepancy analysis of IM construction, this thesis then makes a contrastive comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the realization of IM under the model of Strategic Credibility raised by Richard. B Higgins (2000). This model is used to evaluate the effect of a company’s investors relation management.
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1.2 Definition of Profiles of Financial Institutions
As an introductory text, company profiles play an important role in establishing their images and offer a view through which customers can get a full picture. They are written to communicate the information like what kinds of products, services can be offered to potential customers, the concrete strategy and the overall performance in recent years. To a certain degree, it is what Bhatia calls ― a representative promotional genre of text‖(Bhatia, 1993:74).
Scholars maintain that company profiles turn out to be a general introduction of the range of products and services that a company provides. A company profile is of vital importance because it can help build the company’s credibility with the market the company serves. An effective profile will definitely interact with customers in a right way, thus leaving them a favorable image and influencing their behavior.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Various Perspectives on the Profiles of Financial Institutions
A financial institution is an institution that provides financial
