Genre Analysis of Environmental Section in English Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Reporting by Oil-Palm Companies in Indonesia and Malaysia

Abstract

Background: Genre analysis is a study to explore the role of a language in delivering the communicative phenomenon from a certain community such as business.  Language has an important role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program by organizing the move structure and delivering the communicative purposes through a CSR report. Aims: This study aims to examine the move structure and communicative purposes in Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) reports from different oil-palm companies and different countries; Indonesia and Malaysia. This study focuses on the environment section that contains 11 CSR programs from both reports. Methods: This study uses a qualitative approach with Genre Analysis theory (Bhatia, 2013), Framework (Nuha, 2016), and Communicative purposes (Swales, 1990). This study also adopted the classification of move structure from (Kanoksilapatham, 2005). The data was collected from companies’ websites. The CSR reports were published in 2023 and written in English. Results: The findings shows that there are 3 obligatory moves: Headlines, Establishing Credentials, and INTHSE: Introducing the Health, Safety and Environment initiatives. There are 2 communicative purposes that were found from this research: 1. To build the company’s brand image to the readers and 2. To promote their company to the readers through environmental performance. Implications: This study helps the company to convince readers that they give positive impact and contribute to maintaining environmental sustainability.