Linguistic Analysis of Self-representation in Multinational Corporations: A comparison of leading automobile multinationals

• Project/Area Number: 23K01591
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 07080:Business administration-related
• Research Institution: Nihon University
• Principal Investigator: Joe Geluso 日本大学, 法学部, 准教授 (20938055)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 臼井 哲也 学習院大学, 国際社会科学部, 教授 (60409422)
• Project Period (FY): 2023-04-01 – 2026-03-31
• Project Status: Granted (Fiscal Year 2023)
• Budget Amount: ¥4,160,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,200,000、Indirect Cost: ¥960,000); Fiscal Year 2025: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000); Fiscal Year 2024: ¥1,690,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥390,000); Fiscal Year 2023: ¥1,170,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥270,000)
• Keywords: Automotive corporations / Annual Reports / Self representation / linguistic analysis / corpus linguistics

Outline of Research at the Start

We intend to elucidate how Japanese automotive multinational corporations (MNCs) differ from or are similar to their counterparts abroad in the way they choose to engage their stakeholders through their annual reports (ARs) and how this relationship evolved over time.

To achieve our goals, we will collect ARs from 2016 through 2022, from MNCs representing five different countries. We will conduct statistical and qualitative linguistic analyses to examine language variation in how the companies engage their audiences' via their ARs (e.g., focus on shareholders vs focus on broader stakeholders).