2.1.1 Review of Domestic Studies of Letters to Shareholders
Domestically, researchers mainly carry out studies on letters to shareholders fromthree aspects, that is, genre, stylistics and linguistic resources.
(1) GenreAnalysis of Letters to Shareholders
In terms of genre analysis, Liang Xinquan (2012) drew on Swale and Bhatia's genretheory and Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics to delve into the genre featuresof letters to shareholders and the findings suggested that (1) Establishing credentials,reviewing performance of the previous year, looking into the future and expressinggratitude are four major moves identified in letters to shareholders; (2) The discoursein letters to shareholders is developed by the application of various progression patterns and it is helpful in shaping a positive company image.
In addition, Gao Tian (2013) probed into the move structure of 15 letters toshareholders within the framework of Bhatia's genre theory and concluded thatestablishing credentials, business review, offering incentives, indicating prospects andending politely are requisite moves while results announcement, new changes andfinancial position are optional moves in letters to shareholders. Moreover, the letter toshareholders is certified as a promotional genre.
The following table is a brief summary of domestic studies with regard to genreanalysis of letters to shareholders.
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2.2 Previous Studies of theAdjectives in Business English
In contrast with the considerable studies on the adjectives in general English, studieson the adjectives in business English are deficient. By searching papers ranging from1990 to present in specialized literature databases such as Sage Journals or CNKI,only a limited number of them are related to adjectives in business texts and they arepresented as follows.
Xie Wenyi (1996) examined adjectives in advertisements and it was revealed thatadjectives in advertisements do boast the following characteristics: (1) There are twokinds of adjectives in ads, that is, descriptive adjectives and illustrative adjectives.Descriptive adjectives are usually subjective and they express manufacturers' attitudeof recommendation towards products while illustrative adjectives are usuallyobjective in demonstrating features of products. (2) In ads the employment ofadjectives should be easy to read and promotional.
Wu Peng (2007) made a comparison regarding the employment of adjectivesbetween Chinese tourism ads and English tourism ads and he noted that (1) Relativelyspeaking, the occurrence frequency of adjectives in Chinese tourism ads is higher than that in English tourism ads; (2) The adjectives in English tourism ads are morecolloquial and their functions are to narrow down the distance between consumers andproducts so as to get consumers touched.
Feng Rui (2010) conducted a quantitative analysis on the use of adjectives in 90Chinese real estate ads and 90 English real estate ads and it was found that (1)Chinese and English real estate ads do have similarities, that is frequent use ofpositive evaluative adjectives and employment of real estate property relatedadj
