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Abstract Abstract: In this study, we conduct a contrastive study on the discourse structural relations of the English CSR annual reports by two banks, ICBC and Citibank. Based on the Rhetorical Structure Theory and with the help of RSTTool345, we investigate their similar and different discourse communication strategies used by the two banks to promote their external communication. The study has found that 1) six rhetorical structure relations are used in the texts by both banks. However, the relations of background and summary are only used in the ICBC text, while the relations of volitional-cause, nonvolitional-cause and evidence are only used in the Citibank text. 2) The ICBC text uses more list, background and summary relations than the Citibank text, while the Citibank text shows higher frequencies in relations of elaboration, cause, evidence, time and space. 3) These texts of the two banks adopt different rhetorical relations to achieve their communicative strategies. The ICBC text uses more presentational relations to affect readers’ attitude, but the Citibank text uses more subject matter relations to achieve its communication purpose, which indicates significant difference from the ICBC text. This study not only has implications for teaching business English writing and translation, but also has application value in improving students' business English understanding and communication ability and enhancing the effectiveness of enterprises’ external communication.
Key words: Rhetorical Structure Theory; discourse structural relations; communication strategy; annual report
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