臺灣和美國企業在官方網站上的自我展現:一個跨文化及跨產業的比較

A Cross-Cultural and Cross-Industrial Comparative study: Self-presentation of Corporate Profile Texts in Official Websites in Taiwan and the United States

陳佑婷(Yu-Ting Chen)

指導教授 ： 張玉櫻

元智大學/人文社會學院/應用外語學系/碩士(2013年)

https://doi.org/10.6838/YZU.2013.00191

摘要

由於網路的高度普遍化，國內外越來越多企業在官方網站上建構其企業形象來吸引全球消費者及讀者的目光。企業在官方網站簡介(corporate profile texts)中的自我呈現扮演重要的角色，這類的相關討論也因此漸漸引起應用語言及言談分析學者的研究興趣。許多產業的公司已利用線上簡介在網路上建構企業形象以及利用其為和全球消費者溝通的平臺。然而，過去的文獻少有探討企業在其網路上的簡介，如何建構其渴望的形象以更進一步吸引更多消費者，跨文化的官方網站簡介對比分析研究更是甚少；因此，本研究旨在分析在不同文化及不同產業的網路公司簡介文本中，語言使用的狀況；探討的使用面向包括自我展現策略 (self-presentation strategies)、以及句法結構和詞彙特性 (lexico-syntactic features)。延續Chen Jun-Wei 陳峻偉 (2007) 的研究，本研究增加較大量文本資料也加入跨文化分析與陳峻偉的研究結果做比較。
本研究共分析了臺灣及美國三種不同產業的英文版企業簡介(傳統製造業、非傳統製造業和服務業)，臺灣及美國每種產業各蒐集15篇簡介，共90篇簡介。本論文延續Chen Jun-Wei 陳峻偉 (2007)，採用Lee et al. (1999) 自我展現策略為分析架構。此外，句法結構和詞彙特性的分析(人稱代名詞和動詞) 則採用Gugau & McLaren (2003) 所提出分析架構。最後，形容詞的使用也將被分析，探討形容詞表達是否能彰顯不同的國家文化及不同的產業文化的形象展現。
研究結果發現，來自不同國家的語言文化及不同產業文化的企業，確實影響公司簡介中自我展現的形式，而產業文化對文本中自我展現的影響又更甚於語言文化。在臺灣及美國的不同產業文化的企業簡介上，也發現了句法結構特性及詞彙使用的差異性，尤其是在人稱代名詞和形容詞的使用上。這些策略的選擇及在簡介上所傳遞的訊息，隨著產業類型的不同而有所差異。最後，本研究的結果與發現能夠提供簡介文本撰寫者及網頁編纂者語言使用的訊息，也提供企業有用的資訊來訓練這些人才。

關鍵字

商業英語 ； 自我展現 ； 言談分析 ； 跨產業比較 ； 跨文化比較 ； 官方簡介

並列摘要

Owing to the highly widespread use of the Internet, more and more domestic and overseas enterprises have tried to attract the attention of consumers worldwide through constructing the company image on their websites. The self-presentation on the corporate profile texts has thus become important in the business world. Many corporations from different industries have already used on-line profiles to construct their images and used the on-line profile texts as a medium to communicate with global consumers. However, few linguistic studies have been conducted to explore how corporations use on-line profiles to construct their desired company image in order to further attract more consumers. Cross-cultural comparative studies of the use of self-presentation in on-line corporate profile texts are even fewer.
Therefore, the present study aims at examining the self-presentation strategies and important lexico-syntactic features (e.g., self-references, verbs, and adjectives) used in the English version of on-line corporate profile texts from three different industries in Taiwan and the United States. The three industries are traditional manufacturing industry, non-traditional manufacturing industry, and service industry. Especially, this study further explores cross-cultural and cross-industrial differences in the use of self-presentation strategies in on-line corporate profile texts.
In total, 90 corporate profile texts were studied in this study - 15 from each industry in Taiwan and the United States. Following Chen (2007), the present study adopted the Self-Presentation Tactics model to analyze the use of self-presentation strategies. In addition, the framework for analyzing the important lexico-syntactic features (i.e. self-reference and verbs) was adopted from Gurau & McLaren’s (2003) study. Finally, the use of adjectives in the profile texts is also examined in this study in order to discuss whether different industries from different cultures try to project their desired images on their corporate profile texts in different ways.
The results indicate that corporations from different industries in different cultures seem to prefer different kinds of on-line self-presentation strategies; moreover, the influence of industrial culture on corporate profile texts seems to be much greater than that of the national culture. In addition to influencing self-presentation strategies employed in the profile texts, the differences of industrial culture also affect the lexico-syntactic choices used in the profile texts, particularly the use of self-references and adjectives. Through the use of different self-presentation strategies and highlighting lexico-syntactic features, corporations from different industries in Taiwan and the United States seem to highlight different aspects of business information such as identity and culture. Finally, the results and the findings of this study provide useful information to the training for profile text writers and webpage designers.

並列關鍵字

self-presentation ； discourse analysis ； English for Business Purposes ； cross-industrial comparison ； cross-cultural comparison ； corporate profiles

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