Virtue and Its Eloquence. CSR Reporting in China

The genre of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports has developed as a new thread in Chinese corporate communication since 2006. The process parallels growing attention from Chinese media, government bodies, and academic community for the theory and practice of CSR. In order to explore the ongoing process that is shaping the genre of CSR reports in China, this chapter applies a discourse analytic methodology to a corpus of reports in Chinese published between 2007 and 2008. It relies on a genre analytic perspective to identify the recursive structures that characterise the Chinese version of the genre. Based on reflections about its structural and rhetorical features, the chapter will attempt to outline the emerging Chinese definition of corporate social responsibility.