A Corpus-Based Study on the Identity Discourse of Chinese and American New Energy Vehicle Companies

Abstract

This paper uses the 2020-2021 social responsibility reports and influence reports of BYD and Tesla respectively, two leading companies in the world’s electric vehicle production field, which rank among the world’s top 500 companies, as data. Starting from the identity of social constructivism, combined with the discourse-historical approach, and with the help of the corpus tool Wmatrix, the corporate responsibility reports and impacts of Chinese and American new energy vehicle companies are compared from the three dimensions of macro themes, meso communication strategies and micro language characteristics. Individuality and commonality in the construction of identity discourse in power reports. The study found that Chinese companies highlight themes such as industry rankings, development history, fairness and justice; they focus on corporate capability communication strategies, use quantitative markers and advanced adjectives to highlight the company’s strong strength, and actively construct industry leaders; while American companies emphasize employee care, global vision and sustainable development concepts, tend to communicate corporate social responsibility strategies, and use active verbs to present specific corporate activities and construct the identity of social contributors. This study has reference value for improving the ability of Chinese enterprises to construct international discourse.