Exploring the linguistic features of About Us texts on the official websites of international organizations: A corpus-based move analysis with multi-dimensional analysis

Abstract

Official websites serve as an important channel for international organizations to communicate with the public, and About Us (AU) pages, usually among the most frequently visited, provide basic information and act as a self-promotional platform to establish a positive institutional image. To explore the linguistic features of AU texts, this study combines a corpus-based move analysis with multi-dimensional analysis to examine the AU pages of 529 major international organizations. Thirteen moves are identified, with Moves 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 11 represent informational discourse focusing on conveying factual information, while the remaining moves express stance and evaluation as promotional discourse. Multi-dimensional analysis reveals that promotional and informational discourse differ significantly in Dimensions 1 and 4. Specifically, the strategic use of high-frequency nouns emerges as a key linguistic feature in constructing informational discourse, which also shows a marked avoidance of certain linguistic features such as analytic negation, stranded prepositions, and the pro-verb do. In contrast, promotional moves use more private verbs, first-person pronouns, and predicative adjectives to express evaluations, assessments, and stance. Modal verbs are also used to articulate organizational aspirations and future commitments.