A study on the linguistic devices used to express “success” and “failure” in english and Vietnamese written economic reports

Abstract

This paper analyses the CEO’s letters drawn from 200 typical annual reports in English and Vietnamese during global crisis of 2008-2010. The research examines whether companies with improving and declining performance report success and failure in different ways. The finding are in line with expectations and most companies show a preference to emphasize the positive aspects of their performance. Futhermore, they prefer to take credit for success themselves, while blaming the external environment for failure. My objective in this study was to look at the different between “sucess” and “failure” annual report as communicated through the CEO’s letter in English and Vietnamese to the stockholders and determine how the linguistic choices actually used in a group of message may be interpreted.