CHAIR’S LETTER: ANALYSING DISCOURSE MARKERS IN BP’S ANNUAL REPORTS
Chair’s (also referred to as Chairman’s and Chairperson’s) letters to stakeholders
form part of a typical business communication strategy that is embraced by British
Petroleum (further – BP), which is considered to be one of the leading international actors
on the fossil fuel and energy markets. Normally, Chair’s letters introduce BP’s annual
reports and provide a very succinct yet informative outline of BP’s activities. Due to its
compressed discursive space, Chair’s letters present an interesting aspect of corporate
communication to be investigated from the vantage point of discourse studies. The present
paper describes a quantitative study whose aim is to establish the frequency of discourse
markers in a corpus of the Chair’s letters in annual reports published by BP within the time
frame 2015 – 2024. The study uses the concordance program AntConc (Anthony, 2022) in
order to identify and quantify discourse markers in the corpus. The results of the corpus
analysis reveal that the frequently occurring discourse markers are: (i) and, (ii) as, (iii) but,
and (iv) however. The findings are further illustrated in conjunction with the pragmatic
roles of the aforementioned DMs. The article concludes with a contention that the findings
of the study provide a deeper insight into the discursive space of the Chair’s letters and
show the way the Chair communicates with the stakeholders and other actors by using
discourse markers.
Key words: British Petroleum (BP), Chair’s letter, corporate annual report, discourse
markers
form part of a typical business communication strategy that is embraced by British
Petroleum (further – BP), which is considered to be one of the leading international actors
on the fossil fuel and energy markets. Normally, Chair’s letters introduce BP’s annual
reports and provide a very succinct yet informative outline of BP’s activities. Due to its
compressed discursive space, Chair’s letters present an interesting aspect of corporate
communication to be investigated from the vantage point of discourse studies. The present
paper describes a quantitative study whose aim is to establish the frequency of discourse
markers in a corpus of the Chair’s letters in annual reports published by BP within the time
frame 2015 – 2024. The study uses the concordance program AntConc (Anthony, 2022) in
order to identify and quantify discourse markers in the corpus. The results of the corpus
analysis reveal that the frequently occurring discourse markers are: (i) and, (ii) as, (iii) but,
and (iv) however. The findings are further illustrated in conjunction with the pragmatic
roles of the aforementioned DMs. The article concludes with a contention that the findings
of the study provide a deeper insight into the discursive space of the Chair’s letters and
show the way the Chair communicates with the stakeholders and other actors by using
discourse markers.
Key words: British Petroleum (BP), Chair’s letter, corporate annual report, discourse
markers
Publisert i Любословие, 2025
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