Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

BP plc 2010 – a case of linguistic legitimation?

D'Northwood, G.

BP plc 2010 – a case of linguistic legitimation? Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this article is to examine statements by the Chairman and CEO in BP plc’s Annual Report 2010 for linguistic evidence of reader positioning. This is based on the premise that reputational fallout from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill would have heightened the need for such positioning to repair the company’s legitimacy. Design/methodology/approach Applying Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework, a comparative register analysis was undertaken of the respective statements of the Chairman and CEO of BP plc. This was informed by corpus analysis of these statements, of comparative statements from industry competitors and of two larger-scale corpora constructed from Chairman and CEO statements extracted from the annual reports of 25 FTSE100 companies. Findings The findings suggest that readers’ perceptions are likely to be shaped by the statements of the Chairman and CEO of BP plc in the company’s 2010 annual report, but similarities and differences are apparent in the way this positioning is engineered. Broader corpus analysis hints that these similarities and differences are not localised to BP plc. Research limitations/implications The analysis relies on the assumptions that the Chairman and CEO are the writers of each piece. As with prior research, questions of intent on the part of the corporate authors and impact upon target readers remain unanswered. Practical implications This article demonstrates and highlights the issue of reader positioning through lexico-grammatical choices in corporate disclosures. Originality/value This article makes a contribution to the literature by demonstrating how reader positioning may be engineered through lexico-grammatical choices in corporate disclosures. This article further responds to a call from Sydserff and Weetman (1999, 2002) for interdisciplinary approaches to investigating corporate narrative reports involving linguistics, through foregrounding Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework as an analytical tool.

Citation

D'Northwood, G. (2017). BP plc 2010 – a case of linguistic legitimation?. Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 18(4), 480-495. https://doi.org/10.1108/jaar-02-2016-0022

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 19, 2017
Online Publication Date Oct 2, 2017
Publication Date Nov 13, 2017
Deposit Date Feb 10, 2017
Publicly Available Date Feb 13, 2017
Journal Journal of Applied Accounting Research
Print ISSN 0967-5426
Publisher Emerald
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 4
Pages 480-495
DOI https://doi.org/10.1108/jaar-02-2016-0022
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1394650

Files

Accepted Journal Article (384 Kb)
PDF

Copyright Statement
This article is © Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here http://dro.dur.ac.uk/20930/. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited





You might also like



Downloadable Citations