1.3 Objectives of the Present Study

This research inquires into the persuasive dimension of a typical narrative section（chairman's letter）within CARs issued by major American and Chinese publicly traded companies.Drawing on genre analysis theory, the means of persuasion in classical rhetoric and metadiscourse research, it first explores the move structure of the American and Chinese texts, and then examines the linguistic devices used in the two sets of data for accomplishing the persuasive goal.The research aims to answer the following three questions:

（1）What kind of structural characteristics do American and Chinese chairman's letters exhibit?

（2）What kind of linguistic features do American and Chinese chairman's letters display to attain persuasion?

（3）How can similarities and differences in rhetorical features of the American and Chinese chairman's letters be explained within the two socio-cultural contexts?

By answering the above questions, this research may help reveal the often subtle persuasive undercurrent of corporate financial documents, which may be wrongly construed as objective reports of numbers and statistics.Besides, it may be able to shed some light on the similarities and variations in American and Chinese corporate communication practices as well as their business cultures, thereby contributing to cross-cultural business communication in today's globalized world.