Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Analyzing Genre-bending in Corporate Disclosure Documents 公司披露文件中體裁融變之分析
Funding Source	RGC Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (CERG)
Project Duration	Oct-2005 - May-2007
	This project focuses on critical genre analysis of corporate disclosure documents. It is an attempt to find out how and to what extent such documents are used to bend the socially accepted corporate and statutory norms of informing (minority) shareholders about the performance of the corporation in a specific period of time to project a positive and encouraging image of the corporation even when the corporation underperforms during that period. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the appropriation and exploitation of linguistic resources to promote their corporate interests within the process of factual corporate reporting. Based on a corpus of a range of corporate disclosure documents, such as corporate annual reports, especially the front matter, board of directors' statements, press releases and reports on periodic declarations of profits or losses, the study will use a multi-perspective critical genre analytical approach to study the use of linguistic resources employed to achieve the dual objectives of "informing" and "promoting" the company to (minority) shareholders and other parties who have interest in the economic health of the company.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Demystifying Corporate Disclosure Documents: Analysis of Genre-bending
Funding Source	CityU Strategic Research Grant for fundable CERG (SRG-Fd)
Project Duration	Dec-2003 - Oct-2005
	Corporate disclosure documents have long been considered the pulse of corporate realities. Their main purpose is to inform shareholders about the performance and health of the company. In recent years, however, their function, as in many others corporate genres, seems to have undergone a gradual shift, from "informing" to increasingly "promoting" the companies to their audiences by camouflaging corporate weaknesses through a subtle "bending" of corporate disclosure norms. The main purpose of this study is to demystify the construction, interpretation, and exploitation of corporate disclosure documents by analyzing how corporate writers appropriate and exploit linguistic resources to achieve their "private" intentions of promoting their corporate interests within the "socially accepted norms" of factual corporate reporting. Based on a corpus of corporate disclosure documents, such as corporate annual reports, board of directors' statements, and reports on periodic declarations of profits or losses, the study will use a multi-perspective critical genre analytical approach to study the use of linguistic resources employed to achieve these dual objectives, especially in the sections that are addressed to shareholders and other parties who have an interest in the economic health of the company.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Generic Integrity in Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts 多語文化法律話語的類統性
Funding Source	CityU Strategic Research Grant (SRG)
Project Duration	Aug-1999 - Jul-2000
	There is an increasing international need for accurate and authoritative translation of legal documents across languages, translations which both preserve the integrity of source documents and provide a robust representation of the legislation and contracts in question. This project will establish an internationally available, multilingual, computer-based corpus of legal language, available on-line and on CD-ROM, focusing on the field of international business, with particular reference to contract legislation and case precedents. The specific topics addressed will include freedom of trade, commerce and intercourse, commercial contracts, environmental legislation, and protection of intellectual property. The research will contribute to the basic knowledge of legal language from an international perspective, underpin international policy, and provide a grounding for legal practice and legal practitioner training. A contrastive/comparative multilingual typology of key issues and textualizations will be a valuable aid to translators, legislators, lawyers, and, ultimately, to parties entering into contracts.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Generic Patterns in Promotional Discourse
Funding Source	CityU Small-scale Research Grant (SMA)
Project Duration	Aug-1995 - Dec-1996
	This project aims to: develop a corpus of promotional discourse from published sources in Hong Kong; develop a genre-based description of promotional genres; and investigate patterns of genre-mixing and embedding in promotional discourse. The data will be collected primarily from printed public sources, i.e. newspapers, magazines for specialized groups of readers (professionals, women, teenagers, travellers, etc.), publicly distributed brochures and leaflets, mailed letters of sales and other documents, company brochures, reports and circulars, book jackets, catalogues and reviews, etc. The idea is to develop a profile of promotional discourse and its generic and sub-generic membership based on a systematic and explicit set of functional and formal criteria. This analysis will also help to determine the nature and extent of genre-mixing and embedding that is so very common in modern day professional discourse, be it academic, business or public.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Teaching English to Meet the Needs of Business Education in Hong Kong
Funding Source	Language Fund (LF)
Project Duration	Mar-1998 - Dec-1999
	The project is in response to call from the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research to investigate the demands on student English made by university staff, and to evaluate to what extent these are met by existing English courses. The project will involve collaboration among three of the leading universities in Hong Kong, and will focus on the use of English within their respective Faculties of Business. The main objectives of the project are to: describe the nature of English and communication skills demands placed on business students; evaluate the efficacy of current English courses to cope with these demands; and suggest measures to improve the teaching of English and communication skills for business studies.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multiculural Contexts
Funding Source	CityU Strategic Development (SDG)
Project Duration	Apr-1998 - May-2004
	This grant was made available to hold an initial and a final conference to support the CERG project 9040474.
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia
Title	Generic Integrity in Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts
Funding Source	Generic Integrity in Legal Discourse in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts
Project Duration	Dec-1999 - May-2004
	This project investigated the generic integrity of legislative discourse constructed, interpreted and used in multilingual and multicultural legal contexts by analyzing internationally available multilingual corpora of international arbitration laws from a number of countries, including Brazil, the People's Republic of China, the Czech Republic, Demark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, and South Africa. The analysis investigated the linguistic and discoursal properties of various subsets of these corpora from different languages, language varieties, cultures and legal systems, focusing, in particular, on the nature and use of qualifications, specification of scope, all-inclusiveness, expressions of contingency, intertextuality and interdiscursivity, and degree of control and transparency. The research had a threefold orientation: a contribution to basic knowledge of legal language seen from an international perspective, an underpinning for international policy, and a grounding for legal practice and legal practitioner training. Such a contrastive/comparative multilingual typology of key instances and key textualizations, supported by explanatory commentary, will serve as a very valuable aid to the translator, to the legislator and the lawyer, and, ultimately, to the parties entering into such contracts. The project has been completed with the organization of two international conference on Law and Language in International Arbitration, one at CityU in which more than 80 scholars from Law and Language, both from the academy and professional practice participated and the other in Rome, Italy, in which more than 60 people participated. Apart from different kinds of international cooperation, including mutual presentations and articles, the outcome of the project so far has been two books. In addition, three more edited volumes are in preparation. A special edition of the journal HERMES focusing on linguistic analysis has also been published. Besides these, a number of articles in journals have been published as well as specialist presentations at several international conferences.
as Co-Principal Investigator / Co-Investigator
Investigator	Prof Vijay Bhatia, Dr David Chor-shing LI
Title	Changing Patterns of Genres and Identity in Hong Kong Public Discourse 香港傳媒用語中不斷變更的文體與身份
Funding Source	RGC Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (CERG)
Project Duration	Dec-1995 - Mar-1998
	Academic forms of discourse such as textbooks, essays, examinations, lectures, and discussions are rarely found outside of the tertiary classroom. The purpose of this research is to prepare the groundwork to determine what are the most significant forms of discourse (genres) in which our students should be educated and what are the most significant forms of discourse which are currently influencing their learning of both academic and public discourse. This research will use ethnography, genre analysis, and other interpretive research methodologies to determine the principal genres of public discourse in Hong Kong, the ethnographic/socio cultural setting in which these genres function, their internal structures, how these structures interact with the rhetorical use of these genres, and the differences in generic structures and rhetorical strategies between primarily English and primarily Chinese genres. The findings of this research are expected to be of both theoretical significance and to provide a firm basis for pedagogical reform.
Investigator	Ms Nicola M LANGTON, Prof Vijay Bhatia, Prof Christopher N Candlin
Title	Promoting Life-long Learning Skills: Student Participation in Curriculum Development
Funding Source	CityU Quality Enhancement Fund (QEF)
Project Duration	Jul-2001 - Apr-2003