International genre, local flavour: Analysis of PetroChinas Corporate and Social Responsibility Report

Abstract

In spite of the recent globalization of trade and industry under the aegis of World Trade Organisation and the current international awareness about global warming, climate change, and other environmental issues, corporations differ significantly in the way, and the extent to which, they fulfil their responsibility and obligations regarding sustainable industrial development and reporting of their actions as well as intentions. There has been considerable awareness in the West about corporate social responsibility reporting, but a relatively modest inclination to meet such obligations is seen in other parts of the world. In the Peoples Republic of China, the government seems to have actively encouraged their key industries to take their social responsibilities more seriously and to report on their actions and achievements, but no studies have reported, so far, the nature and function of corporate social responsibility reporting practices in China. This paper, taking as its data PetroChinas Sustainability Reports, employs certain specific aspects of genre analytical framework (Bhatia, 2004, 2008, 2010) in order to explore how the corporate social responsibility reports are discursively constructed, why they are constructed in this manner, and what their intended communicative functions are. Analysis of the linguistic and rhetorical resources exploited in this reporting genre helps reveal the extent to which such disclosure practices meet the expectations of various stakeholders, and how the fairly flexible adoption of corporate social responsibility practices has hybridized the reporting genre with expression of promotion and self-justification.