Rhetorical organization of chairmen's statements

This paper takes as its point of departure Swales' (1990) model of research article introductions. Despite its widely acknowledged merits, this model is restricted to one genre within one type of discourse community. The present article is an attempt to apply Swales' Move‐Step approach to a different genre belonging to a different discourse community. A model of the rhetorical organization of chairmen's statements in annual reports issued by British companies is proposed. This Relationships and Confidence (RECON) model reflects the communicative purpose(s) of corporate annual reports, which is the primary determinant of genre membership. The nomenclature of the three moves in the RECON model indicates the specific non‐linguistic purposes of the introductory part of corporate annual reports: establishing the relationships between the chairman/company and the readers, maintaining confidence, and reinforcing the relationships already established. The different steps identified in the RECON model are rhetorical strategies utilized for achieving the different communicative aims, among which image creation is central. By way of a conclusion, some pedagogical potentials of a Move‐Step analysis for raising ESP students' genre awareness are discussed as a means of improving ESP courses.