Banks’ Annual Reports: An Analysis of the Linguistic Means used to Express Evaluation

In line with the most recent trends in genre analysis (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993; Dudley-Evans, 1994) and discourse studies on business communication (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998; Bargiela-Chiappini and Nickerson, 1999; Gillaerts and Gotti, 2005), the article focuses on a particular financial genre, Banks’ Annual Reports (ARs). More in detail, in contrast to widespread claims about the purely financial and informative nature of ARs, addressing experts only, this paper aims at illustrating, in accordance with Bexley and Hynes’s (2003) and Burrough’s (1986) considerations, that these reports endeavour to promote the company image and to leave readers with a positive impression.Consequently, by means of analysis of some discursive parts of ARs, the article presents the results of a quantitative and qualitative survey of the evaluative means (Hunston and Thompson, 2000) which contribute to the persuasion and manipulation of the reader through direct or implied attitudinal lexis (White, 2002). Particular attention is paid to the identification of the main semantic areas to which the recognized evaluative items belong in an attempt to show the core values that AR writers insist on the most (importance and competitiveness, positive performances, involvement and positive values, realis and irrealis evaluation).