企业形象的生态语用话语建构：从宏观批评到微观策略分析

… In sum, organizations have a broad forum for the promulgation of their issues and corporate images. They have the resources, access and expertise to engage widely in the …

This paper discusses the idea of projecting corporate image in terms of culturally regulated codes of appeals by using, mainly, the examples of ad campaigns by some US business companies in the post‐9/11 environment. The image of patriotism those companies are aspiring to suggests corporate imagery can be a shared social phenomenon, i.e. collective ethos, thus raising questions about the traditional approach to corporate imagery, which is summarized as “self‐representation.” The way to build up collective ethos is through Burke’s “identification,” seen as both a strategy and goal of communication. The paper also provides an overview of rhetorical theory on using image as a presentation strategy to explore the reason why it has been treated in history as a way for self‐projection, or representation of a “corporate self.”

… Given the understanding of corporate discourse as corporate practice, this section focuses … corporate image and dissemination of that image to both internal and external stakeholders. …

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how language (choice) in CSR reports of leading oil companies in Nigeria is used to portray an image of “responsible organisation”. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws insights from communication studies (persuasion theory) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies to discursively unpack all those subtle and visible, yet equally invisible, linguistic strategies (micro-level elements): wording (single words), phrases and chains of words (clauses/sentences). These linguistic strategies (micro-level elements) proxy organisational discourses (meso-level elements), which are reflective of wider social practices (macro-level elements). The authors base the investigation on CSR reports of six leading oil companies in Nigeria from 2009 to 2012. Findings The findings of this study reveal that (leading) Nigerian oil companies linguistically use CSR reports to persuasively construct and portray the image of “responsible organisation” in the eyes of wider stakeholders (the communities) despite serious criticism of their corporate (ir) responsibility. Originality/value As opposed to the previous content analysis based studies, this paper contributes to the emerging stream of CDA studies on CSR reporting by providing a finer-grained linguistic analytical schema couched in Fairclough’s (2003) approach to CDA (and persuasion theory). This helps to unravel how persuasive language/discourse of responsible organisation is enacted and reproduced. The authors thus respond to the calls for theoretical plurality in CSR reporting research by introducing persuasion theory from communication studies literature which has hitherto been rarely applied.

… in this article, certain images can also be … images even less likely. In this article, we pay particular attention to the deliberate use of metaphor specifically in corporate branding discourse, …

… (to use a favourite metaphoric expression from corporate discourse). Companies further … be known as corporate social responsibility. And as we shall see, corporate discourse has also …

… This study examines the construction of a positive corporate image in public statements issued by 12 Chilean companies facing a crisis in the period January 2008 to July 2010. …

… ’s three-dimensional discourse analysis model, this research explores the linguistic features of Huawei’s corporate image construction from the perspectives of text, discourse practice, …

… findings about the linguistic means of corporate image-building. While analysing the … crisis communication, corporate discourse was carefully structured to present a favourable …

… with how the components of corporate culture and corporate image serve to shape … discourse . How relevant audiences interpret this discourse and allow it to affect any existing images …

Human beings are storytellers (Fisher, 1984, 1987) and recent work in organizational communication has examined how stories are used to understand, explain, and manage corporate life (Feldman, 1990; Hart, Willihnganz, & Leichty, 1995; Gabriel, 1998; Martin & Powers, 1983; O’Connor, 1997; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Wilkins, 1983). Within this line of work, organizations are “storytelling systems” (Boje, 1991, 1995), where the meaning of organizational life is created and recreated through the telling and retelling of stories. Narratives form the basis of organizational culture-“an open-ended, creative dialogue of subcultures, of insiders and outsiders, of diverse factions . . . the interplay and struggle of regional dialects, professional jargons, generic commonplaces, the speech of different age groups, individuals and so forth” (Clifford, 1983, pp. 136-137).

… of the most effective means of image formation." The researcher has explored how metaphorical modeling can be used to create the corporate image of cosmetic companies. Based on …

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine how Malaysian CEO Statements represent corporate social responsibility (CSR).Design/methodology/approach– A corpus of 27 CEO Statements was analyzed using Fairclough's three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA) model, which proposes analyzing text, discourse practice and social practice. The analysis emphasized image and language features in text while it explored intertextuality in discourse practice and ideology in social practice.Findings– The analysis revealed that selected image and language features contribute to six themes about CSR, namely achievement, identification, aspiration, disclosure, recognition and appreciation. The analysis also revealed that policies, standards and studies are often cited to reduce a credibility gap. These analyses indicate that CEO Statements represent CSR as a corporation's philanthropic initiatives for stakeholders. This representation reflects the ideology of CEO Statements. It establishes corporations as an agent of positive change in society, which helps to improve the social legitimacy of corporations.Research limitations/implications– Since the corpus was limited to ten corporations in three years, the findings might not be representative of the genre of CEO Statements. The corpus could be extended to include CEO Statements from other years, countries and languages and it can launch a productive enterprise in intercultural studies.Originality/value– This paper demonstrates CDA as an approach to understand CEO Statements. It may be useful to people practicing and teaching corporate communication because it encourages them to consider the meaning implied by image and language features, which can influence the meaning of CEO Statements.

… Unlike other approaches to discourse analysis, which take the abstract configuration of meaning in a discursive practice as their point of departure–such as the discourse theory of …

Both corporate identity and corporate social responsibilities are of strategic importance to companies’ reputation and competitiveness. From a social constructivist view, identity is constructed in discourse. Therefore, this study sets out to investigate how corporate identity is discursively constructed in corporate CSR communication. Taking Starbucks as an example, this corpus-assisted study explores how Starbucks deploys nomination, predication, and intensification strategies and the corresponding linguistic resources to discursively construct itself and its main stakeholder groups in the CSR reports from the perspective of Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. Also, how Starbucks addresses or presents issues in which scandals or problems reside is investigated. The findings show that Starbucks explicitly constructs itself as the supportive care-taker of the partners, faithful deliverer of good customer experience, powerful helper of poor farmers, and CSR-conscious selector of suppliers, who takes a strongly committed and proactive CSR stance through the discourse. However, behind such discursive construction are the hidden ideologies and corporate agenda of a capitalistic nature, with Starbucks veiling the power dominance and unequal power relations. This study not only contributes to the understanding of the discursive construction of corporate identity, but also helps raise peoples’ awareness of the power game at play behind the corporate discourse.

… We look at social practice in terms of what is at stake for the discourse participants by … ent within corporate identity work in order to identify and critique the discourse practices associated …

There is a paucity of knowledge of one key aspect of diversity in and around international organizations: national identity. This is especially the case with research on multinational corporations (MNC) that has focused on cultural differences instead of processes of national identification or national identity construction. Drawing on a critical discursive approach, this paper offers four perspectives that can help to advance this area of research. First, MNCs can be viewed as sites of identity politics, within which one can study ‘us vs. them’ constructions and the reproduction of inequalities. Second, MNCs can be seen as actors engaged in identity building and legitimation vis-à-vis external stakeholders, and the analysis of the discursive dynamics involved illuminates important aspects of identity politics between the organization and its environment. Third, MNCs can be viewed as part of international relations between nations and nationalities, and analysis of discursive dynamics in the media can elucidate key aspects of the international struggles encountered. Fourth, MNCs can be seen as agents of broader issues and changes, which enables us to comprehend how MNCs advance neocolonialism or promote positive change in society.

By taking the perspective of Social Constructivism and the Discourse-Historical Approach, and using the corpus linguistic tool Wmatrix, this study compares the discursive strategies adopted by Chinese and American banks in their construction of corporate identities. The research underlines the shared and unique features presented in prominent themes, communication strategies and lexical patterns. It is found that Chinese banks prefer to emphasise their historical development, industrial ranking and organisational structure to positively construct their identity as industry leaders, adopting a corporate ability strategy through the frequent usage of numbers and superlative adjectives. However, American banks tend to stress care for their employees, communities and environment. They prefer to use a corporate responsibility strategy to build their identity as social contributors through the frequent usage of performative verbs to exhibit specific corporate activities. This study may have practical implications for Chinese companies wishing to improve their international communication capability and may offer educational implications for Business English teaching.

… Given the speedy development of social media in revolutionising the way corporate … issue: the discursive construction of corporate identities on social media by Chinese corporations. …

With the assistance of the corpus analysis tool Wmatrix 4.0, this paper analyzes the semantic categories of the top 10 commercial banks of China and the United States to figure out their social-cultural behavior in the Internet business context. It is discovered that both common and distinctive identities were constructed: the common identities include the professional financial service provider, responsible corporation for employees, and relevant communities with environmental and social consciousness, while the distinctive identities are manifested in the communication strategy, style, and persuasion mode: (1) The Chinese Commercial Banks adopted the proactive strategy for corporate identity construction, are prone to take hierarchical and impersonal communication style, and more focused on the “credibility appeal” and “rational appeal” in persuasion mode; (2) the commercial banks of the United States are more reactive in the communication strategy, position themselves in short distance with the putative audience in communication style, and conform to the typical “affective appeal” regarding the persuasion mode. From the intercultural perspective, the distinctions are the representation of the peculiar high-context culture and low-context culture based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. Chinese banks should try to shorten the cultural gap by adopting communication strategy in conformity with the local cultural when going global rather than sticking to the domestic communication strategy.

… the articulation of individual identity—the dynamic discursive process of identity work. Seen as ‘ongoing struggles’ (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1164), identity work is defined as …

… A substantial literature suggests that discursive practices associated with senior managers, and those in positions of influence outside organizations such as government officials, exert …

Abstract Ecological identity involves all aspects of how individuals or collectives identify themselves with nature. This paper aims to examine the discursive construction of corporate ecological identities in corporate sustainability reports in China and evaluate how these identities are legitimated through the lens of ecolinguistic discourse analysis. Our data was drawn from a collection of English-language sustainability reports of Huawei Technologies Corporation (2016–2020). The findings suggest a mix of ecological identities across all texts, among which stewarding nature dominates and it relates to the belief that humans are obligated to steward nature for the sake of sustainability. These ecological identities are discursively legitimized in terms of defining characteristics, social roles, and community memberships. Innovativeness, leadership and ethicalness are legitimated as the corporation’s dominant characteristics which serve as moral identity standards, allowing further legitimation of the social roles and community memberships that the corporation claims. In the case of social roles, green manufacturing depends on green technologies, and both of them point to the instrumentality and rightness of technology in advancing sustainability. These construals uncover the ecological sustainability in the Chinese cultural context, that is, achieving the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. In legitimizing community memberships, hierarchical relationships between the corporation and other participants are revealed.

This paper is proposed to examine the discursive construction of online corporate identities by analyzing corporate websites under the framework of Systematic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA).Viewed as a kind of hypermodal discourse, websites can index the social practices and are also construed by the socio-cultural context in which the practices occur. Particularly, the corporate websites provide valid source to analyze the practices of constructing corporate identities when companies are searching for larger market share in both local and global markets. Based on the case analysis of Chinese companies, efforts are taken to investigate how corporate websites can help to mediate corporate identities in the era of globalization and what identities are constructed online. Keywords—multimodal discourse analysis; corporate identity; corporate websites; case study; globalization; Chinese companies

In this article, we analyse the principal antagonistic discourses on which managers in a large UK-based engineering company drew in their efforts to construct versions of their selves. Predicated on an understanding that subjectively construed discursive identities are available to individuals as in-progress narratives that are contingent and fragile, the research contribution we make is threefold. First, we argue that managers may draw on mutually antagonistic discursive resources in authoring conceptions of their selves. Second, we contend that rather than being relatively coherent or completely fluid and fragmented managers' identity narratives may incorporate contrasting positions or antagonisms. Third, we show that managers' identity work constituted a continuing quest to (re)-author their selves as moral beings. Antagonisms in managers' identities, we suggest, may appropriately be analysed as the complex and ambiguous effects of organizationally based disciplinary practices and individuals' discursive responses to them.

… Our purpose is to analyse how organizational members’ discursive practices come to … Identities, individual and organizational, are linguistic accomplishments authored within discursive …

… In this paper the discursive angle is drawn out in two ways. Firstly, in probing the regulatory effects of socially hegemonic discourses, I focus on the socio-discursive dimension of the …

… ‘corporate identity’, which refers to the identity attributed to an organization by what is normally its most powerful group – senior (corporate… corporate identity and organizational identity is …

Language and gender identities - 1

… and facilitating solidarity in the discourse of crisis. It may also … Focusing on the use of the two evidential markers I think and I … expression I think is so pervasive in public discourse (Wei, …

… for CDA in light of a recent ‘crisis’ (see Chilton, 2005). In Section … discourse, and in Section 5 I show how the semantic domain of evidentiality operates pragmatically in media discourse …

This article investigates the realization of authorial epistemic and effective stance in contemporary English newspaper discourse on migration, focusing on how journalists construct ideological meanings through linguistic choices. The object of the research is English media discourse on migration, while the subject is the linguistic and discursive mechanisms of stance-taking used by journalists. The aim of the study is to identify, classify, and interpret the epistemic and effective stance markers that shape evaluative positioning and ideological framing in news reporting. Modality is examined as a key discursive resource that enables writers to express certainty, probability, obligation, intentionality, and moral judgement. The analysis, based on recent publications from The Guardian, identifies the principal markers of epistemic stance – factive verbs, cognitive predicates, modal auxiliaries, and evidentials – as well as the components of effective stance, including deontic, intentional, and normative modalities. Epistemic stance reveals the degree of authorial commitment to truth and inference, whereas effective stance highlights how journalists assess political actions, articulate expectations, or construct evaluative judgements. The findings show that English media often frame migration through polarized lenses: either as a crisis associated with instability and political pressure, or as a natural, historically grounded phenomenon. Modal expressions play a central role in reinforcing these frames, subtly guiding readers toward perceiving migrants as either vulnerable groups requiring protection or as subjects of political contention. The conclusions indicate that the interaction of epistemic and effective stance forms a coherent modal metatext that mediates between represented reality and reader interpretation. Stance-taking thus operates as a powerful mechanism of ideological production, shaping how audiences understand migration, attribute responsibility, and evaluate political responses in contemporary media discourse.

… of evidentiality in this interview genre from a discourse-analyti… forms of evidentiality and counterevidentiality are used in … evidentiality in the genre of press briefings from a discourse-…

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the major public health events of the 21st century and has attracted global attention from the press since its outbreak. This research focused on the analysis of news coverage on the China-related epidemic by American media, aiming at revealing the features of evidentiality in the discourse and elucidating the underlying ideologies. This study can help news readers develop an objective and comprehensive understanding of China. Methodology: This study selected 40 China-related epidemic news reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post during the pandemic. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the selected news were conducted through AntConc4.2.2 in light of Fairclough's (1992) three-dimensional model. Results: The results of this study indicated the pervasive use of evidentiality in the coverage of the China-related epidemic by U.S. media, wherein distinct evidential markers demonstrated varying frequencies and served different functions. In terms of news sources, American media predominantly relied on hearsay evidentials to attribute information, thereby bolstering the credibility of the reports while subtly conveying a skeptical stance toward China. In terms of reporting modes, the reporting mostly used indirect discourse and employed deduction and induction evidentials to express negative attitudes toward China. All the results were highly related to the social context. Conclusion: Generally, the research underscores the widespread incorporation of evidentials in news discourse, employed to specify or obscure sources of information. Furthermore, evidentials embed certain ideologies and attitudes, which may mislead readers.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of English media discourse in terms of marking epistemic responsibility (ER). The study suggests 10 types of syntactic and lexical means used to mark a speaker’s responsibility for the proposition reliability. They are classified according to: (i) ER domain: high, low, disclaiming ER; (ii) level of the language system: syntactic or lexical; and (iii) lexico-grammatical features. The high ER domain is represented by two marker types: main clause and adverbials; low ER is marked by means of three types of markers: main clause, adverbials and modal verbs; disclaiming ER markers are most numerous, comprising five types of syntactic and lexical means, such as main clause, direct speech, adverbials, verbs and nouns. Thus, there tends to be a higher incidence of marking low ER or disclaiming it in English media discourse, whereas high ER is marked less often.

The language of mass media reporting serves as a tool for appealing to a wide readership. It inevitably reveals the author's viewpoint regarding the arguments and statements given in the current reportage. The aim of this article is a full review of implementation of the categories of evidentiality and epistemic modality in the context of mass media reportage. At the same time, a set of tasks is given in this respect: to define the notions of evidentiality and epistemic modality proposed by the linguists, to determine the pragmatic meaning of introductive predicates. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the reliability of the information presented in the reportage and the meaning of the introductive predicates and accompanying lexical markers. Summarizing the achieved results, it is worth noting that the category of evidentiality is based on linguistic coding of information source. In the context of mass media reportage, the relevant information is included by means of introductive predicates. Herewith being evidential markers, these predicates reflect direct or indirect source of information and the author’s relevant opinion about the reported situation. Consequently, the category of evidentiality is deeply interconnected with epistemic modality, since mainly the verbs denoting mental activity act as predicates introducing relevant messages. Considering the meaning of introductive predicates and accompanying lexical markers, it is quite possible to determine the degree of reliability of the given information. 2357-1330 © 2021 Published by European Publisher.

As Chinese State-owned Enterprises (CSOEs) expand globally, building credibility on social media is a crucial yet under-explored challenge in international impression management. This study addresses this gap by investigating how CSOEs construct credibility on Twitter/X. It specifically examines the thematic dimensions of competence, benevolence, and integrity (what to express) and the linguistic use of evidentiality—a key resource for marking information sources (how to express). Applying thematic content analysis and linguistic analysis to 2,472 tweets from eight major CSOEs, findings reveal a clear strategic pattern. Thematically, competence is prioritized by highlighting their daily operations and product exclusivity. Linguistically, CSOEs predominantly employ low-subjectivity evidentials (i.e., zero-marked, inferring, and reporting forms), with high-subjectivity forms (i.e., sensory and belief-based ones) being rare. This suggests a “conservative” intersubjectification strategy, as so-called “presenting myself with readers in texts,” using a neutral, news-report-like style to navigate the epistemic vigilance of a potentially skeptical global audience.

The article examines evidential adverbs that occur in initial positions of reactive utterances within a corpus of formal dialogic exchanges. These adverbs serve as markers of epistemic stance, revealing how speakers present themselves as bearers of knowledge or belief in institutional communication. The analysis shows a consistent tendency among respondents to activate evidential forms that lend explicitness and certainty to their statements, reinforcing the perceived factuality of what is being asserted. In most contexts, the use of these adverbs signals the speaker’s wish to clarify the origin or reliability of information and, at the same time, to demonstrate personal commitment to the propositional content of the response. The study combines corpus-based quantitative procedures with a qualitative pragmatic interpretation of the data, tracing how particular adverbial markers correlate with degrees of epistemic commitment. The findings indicate that epistemic adverbs represent the most frequent and functionally diverse category within reactive discourse, fulfilling both evidential and interpersonal roles. Their distribution and pragmatic load are discussed in terms of the communicative strategies by which speakers manage truth, certainty, and stance in dialogic interaction. The results carry implications for how epistemic positioning can be understood within reactive discourse. They show that evidential modality affects the pragmatic texture of a response – how speakers present themselves in relation to what is known, assumed, or inferred. In this sense, the study helps clarify how epistemic stance operates as a key mechanism in managing interactional balance.

… Similarly, evidently turned out to be evidential in all the cases, while clearly was evidential in a … Evidential and epistemic qualifications in the discourse of fact and opinion. In: Juana I. …

… tokens of rivelare and emergere are concerned, I will illustrate their contribution to argumentative discourse at the level of epistemic stance, as a local rhetorical alternative to …

Evidential constructions have two main semantic effects: They contribute information about an individual's source of evidence, and they potentially modify the force of a sentence. In this article, ...

This study employs a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method to explore how People’s Daily, the official newspaper of Communist Party of China (CPC), constructs ideological narratives in 43 front-page headline news covering China’s aerospace achievements from 2003 to 2023. Drawing on Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s frameworks, the research examines lexical choices and rhetorical strategies that frame aerospace advancements within China’s state ideology. Findings reveal the systematic use of nationalistic vocabulary, collectivist pronouns, verb expressions with neat parallelism, and emotive language to link technological success in China’s aerospace with political legitimacy. Rhetorical devices such as syntactic parallelism, metaphor, and presupposition reinforce narratives of national unity of Chinese and the historical destiny to develop aerospace. The discourse naturalizes CPC’s leadership and positions readers into a shared identity cantered on technological pride, and demonstrates how state media functions ideologically to shape public consciousness of building their nation and legitimize the legitimacy of the Party in power. This research enhances our understanding that technology-focused news coverage also serves a symbolic function in shaping China’s political narrative.

… the text sample has been presupposed, the analysis proceeds … As a result, the metaphor will imply that it is America and … , for enactment of legitimate leadership based on integrity dates …

… These presuppositions elicit rejections of the metaphor as … house metaphor is rejected together with its associated lexical field. … As suggested earlier, it was partly to legitimate yet loosen …

This article analyses how Türkiye’s opposition to Sweden’s NATO membership is framed in the German media outlet -Deutsche Welle- employing content analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with a focus on lexicalization—a micro-level strategy conceptualized by van Dijk. Through qualitative analysis of ten English-language news articles published between 2022 and 2023, the study identifies a consistent pattern of negatively connoted language depicting Türkiye and President Erdoğan as authoritarian, obstructionist, and opportunistic. Lexical choices such as ‘threaten’, “stall”, ‘u-turn’, and “so-called terrorist” contribute to a discourse that delegitimizes Türkiye’s security concerns and diplomatic agency. Although occasional neutral or mildly positive phrases appear, they do not substantially alter the dominant critical tone. These findings reflect a broader trend in Western media narratives that problematize non-Western dissent and reinforce dominant geopolitical perspectives. The study underscores the role of language in shaping political narratives and affirms the utility of CDA in revealing ideological bias in international news coverage.

The article examines the linguistic means of realizing propaganda strategies in contemporary English-language media discourse, focusing on news coverage by Fox News and The New York Times between 2020 and 2024. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of critical discourse analysis and linguistic stylistics, the study explores how lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic features serve to encode ideological bias and persuasive intent. The research identifies several dominant mechanisms of propaganda realization, including evaluative lexis, metaphorical and symbolic framing, manipulation of agency, and the strategic use of modality. Comparative analysis reveals that Fox News employs emotionally charged and moralizing language to construct narratives of national defense and cultural threat, whereas The New York Times relies on analytical and reform-oriented discourse emphasizing rational inquiry and democratic values. These findings support the view that propaganda in modern journalism operates less through overt manipulation than through the subtle normalization of ideological perspectives. The study underscores the importance of linguistic awareness and critical media literacy in identifying the hidden persuasive strategies that shape public understanding of political and social reality.

Using the example of the European Union’s foundational myth that post-war cooperation led to peace, in this paper I attempt to develop both a theory of mythopoetic legitimation and an analytical framework for its analysis. I start from the position that mythopoesis is a form of legitimation through history or, more specifically, through selective narratives of history. I utilise Berger and Luckmann’s social constructivism to show that myths are deeply sedimented narratives that integrate existing (objectivated) phenomena into a cohesive story. I then propose a framework for critically analysing myths as legitimation strategies. After detailing the EU’s origins story, the remainder of the paper operationalises the framework by analysing how the EU’s foundational myth is used in three, very different contexts: Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, and a State of the Union address. In doing so, I argue that the EU has become a prisoner of the past it has mythologised.

… Thus, the existential presuppositions carried by the … However, the following discussion will also show that the analogy … reference, presupposition, and lexical cohesion, the advertisement …

… News reports, headlines, editorials, and opinion columns do not simply reflect fiscal realities; they actively frame taxation through specific lexical choices, metaphors, presuppositions, …

… , presenting opinions as facts by putting them into presupposed constructions, like that-clause in … : metaphor. In political discourse, the role of metaphor is ‘‘to legitimate (or de-legitimate) …

Introduction Towards a perspectival theory The identification of metaphor An interlude concerning context: A relational theory of meaning Intepreting metaphor Some alternative approaches: A critique Semantic field theory Semantic fields and the structure of metaphor concluding remarks: Reference and truth in metaphor Bibliography Index

This paper elucidates the ideology of tolerance underlying speeches delivered by HM King Abdullah II. Three speeches were analysed according to Fairclough’s framework (1989). The analysis has revealed the underlying ideological outlook emphasised and constructed in King Abdullah’s speeches to consolidate the value of tolerance, such as eliminating all types of ethnic, religious, and social intolerance; spreading mutual respect, compassion, and peace; and supporting equality and anti-terrorism. Semantic features encompassing presupposition, metaphor, modality, lexical choices, and repetition have been employed to clarify His Majesty’s ideology of tolerance and rebut the claims of extremism, advocating a peaceful and prosperous world for humanity and creating a positive mental image of Islam. The findings show that tolerance discourse is a discourse of power that plays as a persuasive communication of ideological propositions. The findings could benefit researchers, linguists, and students who are interested in interpreting texts of various genres.

… of grammatical metaphors, shifts in lexical choice, modifications of cohesive pattern, and … marked tendency to replace referential cohesion with lexical cohesion. Such changes are in …

Numerous studies have revealed how Lexical Cohesion supported the fulfilment of political leaders’ persuasion intention in their rhetoric. The purpose of this study was to cross-culturally explore President Obama’s and President Buhari’s Inaugural Speeches to examine the impact of culture on the persuasive functions of Lexical Cohesion in their rhetoric. Therefore, while drawing on Pragmatics, the study adopted a qualitative discourse analysis approach, utilised an eclectic framework of Lexical Cohesion based on Hoey (1991), Martin (1992) and Eggins (2004) to analyse Obama’s and Buhari’s first inaugural speeches. The findings indicate, on one hand, that although Obama deployed more categories and more frequencies of Lexical Cohesion than Buhari did, ‘Repetition’ (50%) was the most dominant source of Lexical Cohesion in each of the two speeches. Moreover, the most reiterated item in the two speeches were personal pronouns, where Obama mostly repeated the pronoun ‘we’, which had inclusive function, and Buhari mostly repeated ‘I’ and the exclusive ‘we’. On the other hand, the findings suggest that Obama utilised Lexical Cohesion mainly for ‘emotional appeals’, ‘audience involvement’, and ‘credibility-building strategies’; while Buhari used Lexical Cohesion for ‘emphasizing his (and his team’s) personal commitment’, ‘building his credibility’, and ‘demonizing past administrations’. Finally, in the light of these findings, the study has drawn two major conclusions: (1) that on the preponderance of repetition of personal pronouns in both the two speeches, the findings suggest that the generic conventions of the use of personalised English in the inaugural address outweigh any culture-specific discourse practices of the two communities; (2) that Obama’s strategies of emotional appeals and audience involvement that enabled him to ‘speak along with his audience’, which contrast with Buhari’s strategies of emphasizing personal commitment and audience-exclusive tone that made him to ‘speak alone’, seem to have rendered Obama’s speech more interactional and more audience-engaging than Buhari’s speech.

… are distributed over clauses and what degree of grammatical integration these clauses show… explanatory concept, but without denying their legitimate cognitive role. To clarify that role …

This chapter questions the ideologies underpinning unsustainable neoliberal economic processes and challenges activities that cause ecological degradation. Critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics are employed to scrutinize companies’ websites on the environment. Capitalistic practices are examined that represent things as ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’ when multinational corporations discoursally shape the environmental state of the world. Computer-generated concordances reveal specific linguistic features that uphold larger discourse processes. A case study of Coca-Cola and its partner the WWF discussing water conservation and use illustrates the method. Ecolinguists can play a significant role in showcasing examples of actors responsible for damaging environmental activities.

… to interpret linguistic representations in corporate discourse and is scarcely applied to … ecolinguistic framework can also be utilized to analyze visual resources in corporate discourse …

Abstract This article presents a comprehensive and detailed survey of ecolinguistics, defined as an enterprise oriented to how language plays a role in the interactions between human beings, other species, and the natural environment. Since the early 1990s, ecolinguistics has been driven by a concern for life on Earth and as such it comprises the linguistic study of the current ecological crisis. Through a detailed close reading of the literature, in combination with the bibliometric tool of VOSviewer, it surveys eleven subfields of contemporary ecolinguistics. The eleven surveyed subfields of ecolinguistics are: discourse-oriented ecolinguistics, corpus-assisted ecolinguistics, ecostylistics, narratological ecolinguistics, identity-oriented ecolinguistics, ethno-lexical ecolinguistics, ecological discourse analysis, harmonious discourse analysis, cognitive ecolinguistics, educational ecolinguistics, and decolonial/transdisciplinary ecolinguistics. In the conclusion, the article discusses two challenges that face contemporary ecolinguistics: the repetition of certain tropes and narratives about the field, even in the absence of empirical evidence, and the lack of internal debate and critique.

Abstract This paper develops a visual analysis of the environmental webpages of 20 global companies, considered to be the world’s greatest polluters in terms of their carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Our aim is to determine how these companies build a public reputation as environmentally concerned agents in relation to climate change. The analysis is based on the theoretical and methodological propositions put forward by Critical Discourse Analysis, ecolinguistics and multimodal analysis. More specifically, we take into account Kress and van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design, which enables us to describe and classify the images on webpages and to determine how these images are used to enforce certain narratives and ideologies. The paper also develops a comparative study of promotional strategies and the level of development and communicative efficiency of the sustainability webpages of Western and non-Western companies, on the one hand, and of global companies and environmental NGOs on the other.

The global environmental crisis has highlighted the need for deeper engagement with ecological sustainability. Language plays a crucial role in shaping how societies conceptualize and respond to environmental issues. Amidst scientific, technological, and policy-oriented efforts to address ecological degradation, the often-overlooked role of language emerges as a powerful force in shaping environmental thought and action. This research demonstrates that specific linguistic strategies—such as eco-centric framing, constructive metaphors, and inclusive narratives—can significantly influence environmental awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. Through an analysis of various linguistic structures and communication patterns across media, education, activism, and corporate discourse, the study identifies how narratives, metaphors, frames, and discourses either perpetuate ecological harm or promote sustainable mindsets. It finds that anthropocentric and extractive language frameworks often hinder ecological engagement, while relational and empathetic language fosters stewardship, interdependence, and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, the study reveals the manipulative nature of greenwashing in corporate discourse and underscores the empowering role of digital activism and eco-linguistic hashtags in shaping collective ecological identity. Language is shown not as a passive medium but as an active agent in shaping environmental consciousness and action. The research ultimately calls for the adoption of eco-linguistic strategies to inspire deeper ecological empathy, foster ethical engagement with nature, and promote systemic change through transformed linguistic landscapes.

As the ecological crisis facing our planet deepens, understanding the role of language in shaping perceptions and behaviour in relation to the environment becomes ever more critical. This special issue focuses on ecolinguistics, an interdisciplinary domain of linguistics that explores issues of ecological significance through the lens of language and its functioning. Although the field has a rather eclectic history with researchers invoking the term ecolinguistics in diverse spaces from language contact and language acquisition to language policy and bi/multilingualism, it now seems quite clear that contemporary ecolinguistics is most reflective of and aligned with a discourse analytic approach that examines language use in a variety of contexts with aims to either critique language use that perpetuates ecological degradation or elevate alternative language practices that contribute to wellbeing and sustainability. This introductory article overviews recent developments in the field and outlines the main directions of ecolinguistic studies, specifying the range of its methods and approaches. It then introduces the exemplary collection of articles in this special issue and highlights their contribution to ecolinguistics research. The challenges we face are global in nature, and the dialogue between Russian and Western scholars in this issue underscores the importance of collective action and shared knowledge in confronting the ecological crisis. It is hoped that this growing body of ecolinguistics research will deepen our mutual understanding of ecological discourse and inspire concrete initiatives in the direction of a more sustainable and resilient future and foster a united approach to the urgent ecological challenges of our time.

Abstract The present study deals with erasure in commercial advertisements of multinational companies. For this purpose, commercial advertisements for food products were selected. The data were collected from the official websites of the relevant companies. The study applied Stibbe’s (2015) theoretical framework to analyze the element of erasure. The study focused primarily on erasure. However, other aspects such as conviction and metaphor, have also been analyzed to erasure. The study results reveal that nature has been partially or entirely erased from commercial advertisements. Nature and its resources (cows and fruits) are presented in more abstract form, or there is no mention. The study also found that the advertisements underpin the stories of conviction, metaphor, and erasure. The study is significant because language does ideological work in how one thinks, writes, and talks about the ecosystem.

This article argues for using discourse analysis in business and management curricula to increase language awareness. To that end, an ecolinguistic discourse analysis approach (Stibbe, 2015a) for teaching sustainability is proposed. The article first explores sustainability discourse in two chief executive officer letters to shareholders followed by a classroom implementation enabling students to practise discourse analytical skills. Students examined vocabulary, hedging, modals, abstract and concrete representation, and social actors. Linguistic features were interpreted to reveal communicators’ underlying ideologies. This systematic analytical approach allows students to reflect on communication processes and how these processes can be used strategically when communicating in organizational contexts.

In the context of the ever-worsening climate crisis, the global debate around fossil fuels is keener than ever. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Press Release of 20 March 2023 stated: “In 2018, IPCC highlighted the unprecedented scale of the challenge required to keep warming to 1.5°C. Five years later, that challenge has become even greater due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The pace and scale of what has been done so far, and current plans, are insufficient to tackle climate change.” Against this background, this paper investigates the discourse of oil giant TotalEnergies in its report “More Energy, Less Emissions: Sustainability Climate 2024 Progress Report”. The paper throws an ecolinguistic light on one of the main drivers of climate change, and explores the extent to which such a report may represent an instance of greenwashing. The aim of the study is to reveal linguistic strategies that enable such companies - who have played, and continue to play the most significant role in producing global warming - to present themselves as agents for environmental good. From the critical, discourse-historical perspective, the paper highlights the circulation in government, environmental, corporate and public contexts of both positive and destructive discourses. The findings appear to support the greenwashing hypothesis; the paper thus contributes to the growing tradition of ecolinguistic studies that expose the role of (corporate) language in perpetuating situations of environmental harm.

… His research interests include political discourse analysis, ecolinguistics, sociolinguistics, … , meanwhile, is the fact that multinational corporations such as oil companies now routinely …

Abstract Since the concept of ecology was first applied to language over 50 years ago, the field of ecolinguistics has developed into a thriving branch of linguistics that is more than ever closer to the pressing issues of our time. This article aims to trace the historical development of ecolinguistics, discusses the main trends in current research, and provides a brief projection of potential future developments. The first part includes an overview of research connected to Einar Haugen’s article “Ecology of Language”, published in 1972, which focuses on the interaction between languages in multilingual contexts. A large part of the article is then devoted to the role of language in dealing with environmental problems (e.g. aggravating or solving them), which is the biological understanding of ecology in the study of language inspired by Halliday’s 1990 talk “New Ways of Meaning: The Challenge to Applied Linguistics”. Ecolinguistics will certainly have an interesting future. It will take up topics such as climate change, which surprisingly has largely been excluded from ecolinguistic research until recently. Other topics that need to be dealt with are the negative effects of tourism, the migration of human, plant, and animal populations. Ecolinguists, in the future, will also expand their methodology towards multimodal research and study how non-European languages present the ‘environment’, or rather ‘con-vironment’.

… area of ecolinguistics as a form of critical discourse study. While ecolinguistics tends to use … To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link …

The aim of this volume is to verify how the concepts conveyed by the keywords wilderness and wildness have varied in recent years with respect to their original/ literal meanings, as well as the effects these changes may have on discourse about the environment and the protection of remaining wild lands. The words have been chosen because they thoroughly conceptualize the idea of untamed nature and can help shed light on beneficial environmental discourses. The reference framework of this work is ecolinguistics in its attempt to determine how environmental issues are discussed and narrated; and its rationale is that of combining corpus linguistics with narrative and discursive use analyses. Association of these methods can heighten the results and offer new tools for ecolinguistics scholars. The analysis displays many occurrences of wilderness and very few of wildness that nuance various meanings in the SibBol corpus and in The Guardian sub corpus, reflecting differing reference contexts. Wilderness largely keeps its literal meaning, compared to a broader meaning associated with wildness which is connected with qualities that can be dissociated from nature. The term is progressing toward a metaphorical meaning, as its discursive usage demonstrates. Instead, the wilderness discourse – whether in articles, books, social media or documentaries – can play a pivotal role in wilderness conservation by educating the public, influencing policy, engaging communities, building emotional connections, documenting issues, and promoting sustainable practices. The success of conservation efforts hinges on communication through various forms of written and spoken words.

Using Huawei annual reports as data sources, this study examines rhetorical strategies in business discourse for the construction of corporate identity. A socio-pragmatic framework is proposed for analysing such strategies, incorporating a textual analysis of rhetorical strategies, a discourse analysis of pragmatic functions and discursive tendencies, and a social analysis of the construction of corporate identity. The research concludes that, among other strategies, allusion and reference demonstrate the discursive tendency of commodification, while parody and metaphor highlight the discursive tendency of democratisation. In terms of the constructive functions, allusion, reference, parody, and metaphor are used to construct the commerciality, legitimacy, approachability, and entrepreneurship of an enterprise, respectively. This study highlights the importance of rhetorical strategies for the construction of corporate identity and the necessity for annual report writers to employ rhetorical strategies for better corporate communication.

… that corporate identity is not merely a product of visual design or managerial strategy, but is … In this study, pragmatic identity is treated as a discursive outcome grounded in recurrent …

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a new integrated strategic framework entitled, “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum” and elucidates the central and strategic importance of corporate identity apropos corporate communications, corporate image, attributed stakeholder identifications and resultant behaviours. The strategic importance of corporate identity is noted. The continuum incorporates a variety of disciplinary/theoretical perspectives. Design/methodology/approach The paper/framework is informed by corporate marketing and strategic perspectives; legal theory of the firm; social identity branch theories; and stakeholder theory. The effects and management of corporate identity are seen as a continuum. The framework accommodates Tagiuri’s (1982) scholarship on corporate identity. Findings This paper formally introduces and explicates “The corporate identity, total corporate communications, stakeholders’ attributed identities, identifications and behaviours continuum”. Corporate identity management is an on-going strategic senior management/strategic requisite. Notably, the legal theory of company law – routinely overlooked – and its impact on corporate identity management is accepted, acknowledged and accommodated. The importance of stakeholders and stakeholder identification (a derivative of social identity theory) is underscored. Practical implications Via the explication of the continuum, managers can comprehend the nature and importance of corporate identity; appreciate that corporate identity adaptation/change is on-going; comprehend its interface/s with corporate communications, stakeholder attributed identities, identifications and the business environment; understand the need for on-going fidelity to an institution’s legally based core purposes and corporate identity traits (juridical identity); cognise the efficacy of constant stakeholder and environmental analysis. Corporate identity sustainability requires corporate identity to be advantageous, beneficial, critical, differentiating and effectual. Stakeholder prioritisation is not solely dependent on power, legitimacy and urgency but on legality, efficacy, ethicality and temporality. Originality/value The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and, moreover, seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate marketing, strategy and company law. Arguably, therefore, the framework is more ambitious than extant framework on the domain. The resultant framework/approach, therefore, aims to make a meaningful advance on the territory and seeks to be of utility to scholars and practitioners of corporate identity, communications, images, identification, stakeholder theory, company law and, importantly, corporate strategy.

… This pragmatic perspective on corporate reputation is having an … and, in comparison with the pragmatic perspective, employs a … internal and deals with corporate identity and integrity. …

… However, from a utilitarian point of view, one could argue that pragmatic or wrong intentions … In March 2004, BASF changed its corporate design to stress its new corporate identity. This …

Although ellipsis has been extensively researched in theoretical linguistics, the pragmatic applications of ellipsis in corporate interactions remain largely unexplored. While previous studies have empirically established that the omission of noun phrases (NPE) and verb phrases (VPE) serves to economise and facilitate communication and create a different interpretation for the recipient, little is known about the pragmatic functions of these elliptical constructions within a corporate context and how the pragmatics of NPE and VPE can help contribute to achieving the communicative goals. The current study seeks to identify the pragmatic value of NPE and VPE in corporate communication in order to see how they contribute to the efficiency of the discourse and its emotional intensity. The study captures both qualitative and quantitative data. Data were gathered from 312 transcripts obtained from corporate communications (negotiations, meetings, presentations). During the qualitative phase, discourse analysis was used to analyse the function of NPE and VPE in achieving communicative functions such as clarity, emphasis, and rhetorical effect. For the quantitative phase, measuring the frequency of occurrence and contextual usage of these constructions contributed to discerning patterns and functions in the use of NPE and VPE in corporate discourse. Across both the qualitative and quantitative phases, results indicated that NPE and VPE improved discourse efficiency by eliminating redundancies and narrowing focus on strategic elements for an audience. It was additionally shown that NPE improved the emphasis on important content by eliminating redundancies while the use of VPE conveyed urgency and immediacy across communicative contexts. The quantitative phase also illustrated NPE and VPE as easily replicable constructs and that their strategic use influences an audience’s emotional reaction. Additionally, the analysis showed NPE and VPE may contribute to recipient’s perception of confidence and authority regarding their communicative competency in a corporate setting. The study thus challenges the traditional view of ellipsis from linguistic theory to be understood as a tool of pragmatics, not only for its ability to reduce language, but to direct attention and interpretation. The final conclusion of the research is NPE and VPE have specific value in building improved strategies of corporate communication, creating clarity, and emphasising information of importance.

… of pragmatic structure is appealed to by writers ( Ws) of advertisements, ie, advertisers, and what kind of pragmatic strategies are … , resort to enthymemic pragmatic structure of argument. …

: Words matter when talking about climate change. They influence thinking and ultimately behaviors. We contend that certain kinds of words frequently used in climate change communication, namely euphemisms, can undermine the objectives of raising climate change awareness and changing behaviors to reduce emissions. We characterize euphemisms related to climate change issues and show how they are often manipulated to serve vested interests opposing climate change action. In particular, we highlight euphemistic names of astroturfing organizations that aim to persuade consumers or citizens. We conclude by suggesting some practical ways to prevent or avoid detrimental consequences associated with euphemisms and draw several policy implications.

This study explores the use of the strategy of erasure in environmental science discourses to explore the deletion of the agent. Three environmental science textbooks have been chosen for analysis. Stibbe’s (2015) framework of erasure has been used as a model for analyzing the data. He asserts that the natural world is marginalized in texts through the use of certain linguistic strategies; these strategies run throughout the whole discourse to construct the erasure of the ecosystem. The researchers aim to identify erasure at the level of void, which is the complete erasure or deletion of the agent from these discourses. Stibbe mentions nine linguistic strategies for the construction of erasure in environmental discourses. These strategies are passive voice, nominalization, co-hyponymy, hyponymy, metaphor, metonymy, construction of noun phrases, transitivity patterns and massification. For the construction of void, the researchers have analyzed the strategies of passivization and nominalization. It has been found that these strategies are pervasive in the discourses, thereby deleting the agent and constructing void. The study suggests a new way to look at the language of ecological discourses and proposes further studies on how euphemistic language in these discourses can negatively influence readers. Keywords: erasure, mask, void, environmental discourse

This research aims to explore the role of print media in spreading information about pandemics and environmental changes during pandemics of Covid-19. As environmental issues, climate change and such pandemics are common problems of the planet and connected to the health of ecosystem. Therefore, media, especially print media, is central in disseminating information regarding such disasters. Therefore, this research seeks to explore the strategies utilized in the development of four narratives: erasure, salience, conviction, and evaluation, as presented in articles from English newspapers. It emphasizes the role of various linguistic features in rendering the text both natural and persuasive. The researcher has selected thirty articles from three English newspapers, namely Dawn, The Express Tribune, and The News. Authors frequently utilize these techniques to eliminate or highlight significant elements. Stibbe (2015) serves as the theoretical framework for examining the strategies involved in the creation of erasure, salience, evaluation, and conviction in articles related to Covid-19 in newspapers. The findings of the research suggest that a range of strategies is employed in the development of these four narratives within environmental discourses. These strategies encompass appraisal patterns, modality, facticity patterns, euphemism, foregrounding, activation, personification, metaphors, co-hyponymy, passive constructions, nominalization, abstraction, and hyponymy, among others. Additionally, the study concludes that emphasis has been placed on the enhanced environment during the pandemic, yet selfish humans are held responsible for generating the conditions for COVID-19 through environmental destruction. By examining these narratives, the researcher explores the link between the environment and covid-19. The research highlights the need to promote positive narratives and counteract negative ones by raising public awareness about the detrimental effects of harmful stories.

… are responsible for a tremendous amount of environmental … the environment in positivist terms but that “the environment is … We recognize that such euphemisms are employed mainly …

Abstract Many organizations, especially businesses, make heavy use of euphemisms when communicating on sensitive issues. We explore whether the use of euphemisms, as opposed to equivalent plain terms, influences the moral judgments made by recipients of these messages, notably pertaining to (un)ethical behaviors in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Using six ethical and unethical scenarios in a between-subjects experiment, we find four main results. First, individuals judge ethical actions more favorably when they are presented in euphemistic terms versus in plain terms. Second, euphemisms increase the acceptability of unethical CSR practices, which are judged to be significantly less unethical when described using euphemistic terms relative to plain terms. Third, most examined euphemisms are found to increase (respectively, decrease) the likelihood of stated willingness to sign a petition supporting (respectively, denouncing) the considered practices. Fourth, euphemisms remain effective for respondents who view firms as hypocritical.

… To discuss greenwashing in the light of legitimacy, we build on the corporate legitimacy … of the different cases of greenwashing and their effects on corporate legitimacy. In the following …

… In this sense, we contribute to incipient literature on ‘‘greenwashing’’ (Huang and Chen … terms of environmental legitimacy. In this sense, our results suggest that greenwashing might not …

Background The aggravation of environmental problems has led companies to seek the development and commercialization of green products. Some companies mislead their stakeholders through a phenomenon called greenwashing. Results This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of greenwashing through a systematic literature review in search of its main concepts and typologies in the past 10 years. This research has followed the proceedings of a systematic review of the literature, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). We identified a major classification of greenwashing: firm-level executional, firm-level claim, product-level executional, and product-level claim. Conclusion It was possible to highlight and catalog the types of the phenomenon. A structure based on such type has been observed in the literature.

In recent decades, corporate communication has undergone significant changes in terms of channel, content and receivers. To be accountable, companies are called upon to satisfy a plurality of stakeholders who are increasingly interested in non-financial information. In addition, the type and scope of information can significantly influence the competitive advantage of the company and especially, its credibility and reputation. Today, companies are required to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to give response to the call for action from their stakeholders and society. However, some companies engage in CSR initiatives with the aim of only achieving or increasing their level of legitimacy. When companies offer misleading communication and then try to influence the perceptions of their stakeholders, they incur the phenomenon known in literature as “greenwashing”. Thus, the aim of this work is to analyse the phenomenon of greenwashing, tracing its evolution in the extant literature. Greenwashing will then be analysed through the lens of the legitimacy theory and starting from Habermas’s communication theory to define and broaden the relationships between the concepts of disclosure, credibility, legitimacy, perception and greenwashing.

Since the first Earth Day in the 1970s, corporate environmental performance has increased dramatically, and cases of greenwashing have increased sharply. The term greenwash refers to a variety of different misleading communications that aim to form overly positive beliefs among stakeholders about a company's environmental practices. The growing number of corporate social responsibility claims, whether founded or not, creates difficulties for stakeholders in distinguishing between truly positive business performance and companies that only appear to embrace a model of sustainable development. In this context, through the lens of legitimacy and signalling theory, we intend to understand and assess the different influences that various types of misleading communications about environmental issues have on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and greenwashing. Stakeholder responses to an environmental scandal will also be assessed. The hypotheses tested through a four‐for‐two design experiment reveal that different levels of greenwashing have a significantly different influence on stakeholders' perceptions of corporate environmental responsibility and stakeholders' reactions to environmental scandals.

… a corporate constituency with integrity. If for no other reason, with accusations of greenwashing and … of legitimacy. For those who invest in socially screened funds, the stakes are just as …

… a link between ESG performance and greenwashing? and (4) How does greenwashing affect firm financial performance? We find that stakeholder legitimacy is an antecedent to ESG …

Introduction Amid China’s pursuit of its “dual carbon” objectives and the escalating emphasis on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure, corporate environmental responsibility has emerged as a critical regulatory and market concern. However, mounting institutional and stakeholder pressures have incentivized some firms to engage in greenwashing—strategically overstating or misrepresenting their environmental commitments—to sustain legitimacy and competitive positioning. Methods This study empirically investigates the impact of greenwashing on corporate financial performance using panel data from 157 publicly listed Chinese public health firms between 2020 and 2022. A mediation model is utilized to identify the mechanism role of organizational legitimacy in affecting the relationship between greenwashing and corporate financial performance. Results The findings reveal that greenwashing significantly undermines organizational legitimacy, which, in turn, leads to negative financial repercussions. Firms that overstate their environmental commitments experience diminished stakeholder trust, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational damage, ultimately eroding their financial performance. Discussion By analyzing the indirect pathways through which greenwashing influences firm performance, this research advances theoretical discourse on corporate environmental accountability and legitimacy-based performance dynamics. Furthermore, the study offers actionable insights for public health enterprises, emphasizing the necessity of transparent and verifiable environmental communication to mitigate reputational risks and ensure sustainable financial outcomes. Additionally, it provides empirical evidence to inform policymakers in refining regulatory frameworks that enhance transparency in environmental reporting and foster substantive sustainability practices.

… dismissed as corporate greenwashing now. The study concludes that where a corporation’s ‘‘… issuing company’s legitimacy, irrespective of whether it reflects substantive greening or not. …

… Legitimacy lost addresses the various situations where companies struggle with a legitimacy deficit: We make use of the greenwashing concept to illustrate the loss of legitimacy in a …

Abstract As customers' green awareness improves, a growing number of Chinese companies are seeking to implement green management. However, in the implementation process, many green brands have engaged in greenwashing. After greenwashing, brand trust between green brands and their stakeholders can suffer a great deal of damage. A valid brand strategy and underlying mechanism should be identified to repair green brand trust after greenwashing. This study focuses on brand strategies and their underlying mechanisms adopted from institutional theory for green brand trust repair after greenwashing. Based on an organizational-level trust repair model, this study finds that companies should adopt a “timely-considered-timely” or “timely-considered-considered” brand strategy with three separate stages of brand trust repair, as opposed to other timely or considered brand strategy combinations, in order to achieve an optimal green brand trust repair effect. Moreover, this study also shows that the “considered-timely-timely” brand strategy achieves the worst green brand trust repair effect and that green brand legitimacy plays a significant mediating role in the brand trust repair process. These findings enrich the theories of brand management, green marketing, and trust repair and offer important managerial implications to help enterprises repair damaged trust.

Based on the legitimacy theory, A-share-listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2007 to 2018 are taken as the research sample. This paper explores the internal mechanism of how internationalization degree affects the greenwashing behavior of Chinese multinational enterprises, and tests the moderating mechanism of legitimacy pressures from the home country. The findings are as follows: First, under the background of internationalization, enterprises are more inclined to greenwash, and this tendency is more obvious with the increase in internationalization degree. Second, in the full sample analysis, the moderating effects of environmental regulation, public pressure, and industry pressure are not statistically significant. Third, the moderating effect of legitimacy pressures varies due to the heterogeneity of regions and property rights of the enterprises. The statistical significance of the moderating effect is affected by the diversity of environmental regulation measures, but it can be roughly concluded that the eastern and western regions show a negative moderating effect, and the central region shows a positive moderating effect. The current moderating effect of public pressure is much stronger than the lagging moderating effect, and it shows obvious regional and property rights differences. The moderating effect of industry pressure also shows obvious regional and property rights differences.

… corporations, especially those that have been portrayed as key contributors of environmental harm. Greenwashing is a … This paper aims to raise awareness of corporate greenwashing, …

… List in 2013,’’ revealing the trust crisis arising from greenwashing by ‘‘green’’ brands (Duan and Jie 2013). Greenwashing here refers to the integration of two corporate behaviors: poor …

… of greenwashing manifestations. Additionally, in response to academic calls to shift the focus of corporate … By integrating the oversight pressure hypothesis and the legitimacy incentive …

ABSTRACT The world’s resources, especially nonrenewable ones, are depleting exponentially due to accelerated consumption. Environmental degradation, obesity, pollution, human rights violations, and poverty are often caused or exacerbated by companies themselves. Pushback from communities worldwide due to threats to ecosystems, environments, economies, and indeed the planet, has made it essential for individuals and groups to fundamentally change the way they function. Sustainability has become a necessary transformation for creating shared value, and companies are discovering that it is indeed possible to “do well by doing good”. However, not all companies have the ability and/or inclination to engage in sustainability initiatives, and the ones that do are all across the spectrum in terms of the efficacy and appropriateness of their programs. Indeed, many stakeholders question the depth and genuineness of the efforts which then raises doubts about the value of increasing investments in sustainability programs if companies’ efforts fail to be perceived as legitimate. This paper takes a stakeholder approach toward sustainability and introduces the concept of legitimacy as a measure of the degree to which companies are, in fact, dedicated to sustainability.

… on greenwashing. Drawing on the resource-based theory, legitimacy theory, and corporate governance theory, this paper explores the mechanism of DF on greenwashing, which …

… impact of legitimacy pressures on corporate greenwashing, … between legitimacy pressures and corporate greenwashing?… between legitimacy pressures and corporate greenwashing? …

… improvements in legitimacy and firm reputation based on signaling theory, we argue that symbolic actions pertaining to environmental performance will fail to confer legitimacy in our …