Migrant features in financial specialized discourse: the Corporate Annual Report genre

For an expert in economics and finance, the Annual Report (AR) is the identity card of a company. For a linguist, it is a text with highly relevant specialistic connotations. In this respect, it may be considered as a hybrid text, which includes characteristics from various areas of discourse. The purpose of this work is to establish the nature of these texts, through the re-defining of the concept of “specialized discourse”. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach, starting from the bases of genre analysis and ESP, then broadening its scope to include the economic and financial terminology necessary for the understanding of the texts considered. The data were collected from a body of ARs, selected from the two-year period 2005-2007, for a total of 75,000 words. This preliminary investigation of the Company Annual Report genre will examine a very interesting case of a hybrid text which includes aspects of advertising as well, highlighting emblematic examples of migration of information and of textual typologies in both a diachronic and synchronic perspective.