Annual report and accounts

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Annual report and accounts

• Marianne Grove Ditlevsen
• Aarhus School of Business
• Tartu 2000

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Financial reporting in the UK

• Introduction
• We can define financial reporting as the
  communication of information about the financial
  position and performance of an entity to
  interested parties.
• For a business entity the traditional means of
  communication has been by the issue of a balance
  sheet and profit and loss account, but it is now
  the practice to issue these together with
  additional statements. The balance sheet, profit
  and loss account and other statements may b
  referred to as the financial statements. However,
  they are often called the annual accounts or,
  more simply, the accounts. They are made publicly
  available in the form of the document which is
  the subject of this book, the annual report and
  accounts, often referred to as the annual report.
• (Laidler Donaghy 1998 1)

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Interested parties, otherwise called the users
of accounts, may include personnel from within a
company, for example directors and managers, and
people from outside the business. (Laidler
Donaghy 1998 1)
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Act Pattern
Circumstancial factors
Determination
Typicality
Function
Textual Realisations
Ways and means
Engberg, Tartu 2000
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Text-external criterias
Sender
Receiver
Overall communicative purpose
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Receivers / users

• investors
• employees
• lenders
• suppliers and other creditors

• costumers
• governments and their agencies
• the public

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Genre Description Elements

• Communicative purpose
• Move structure
• Rhetorical strategies
• (Cf. Bhatia 1993)

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Move Structure
... refers to the staged, step-by-step
organization of the genre, or, in Martins
terms Move structure represents the positive
contribution genre makes to a text a way of
getting from A to B in the way a given culture
accomplishes whatever the genre in question in
funtioning to do in the that culture (1985
251) Martin points out that the reason that
genres have stages is simply that we usually
cannot make all the meanings we want to at once.
Each stage in the genre contributes a part of the
overall meanings that must be made for the genre
to be accomplished successfully. (Eggins 1994
36)
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R. Hughes Son Ltd. 21 Mead Road, Swansea,
Glamorgan 3 ST 1DR Mr. R. Cliff 3rd February
1985 Homemakers Ltd. 54-59 Riverside Cardiff CF1
1JW Dear Mr. Cliff, I received a consignment
of 6 dressing tables from you yesterday, my order
No. 1695, which were ordered from your summer
catalogue, Cat. No. GR154. But on unpacking them
I found that six heavy mahogany-finished dressing
tables had been sent, instead of the light
pine-finish ones asked for. As most of my
customers live in small flats earning a moderate
income it is doubtful that I will be able to find
a market for larger more expensive products. I
also have firm orders for the goods asked for.
Would you send someone with my consignment as
soon as possible and at the same time pick up the
wrongly delivered goods? Thank you. Yours
sincerely, R. Hughes (Engberg, Tartu 2000)
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Obligatory Text Parts( Moves)
Section Source
Financial review Code of best practice
Report of the remuneration committee Code of best practice
Statement of directors responsibilities Code of best practice
Directors report Companies Act
Auditors report Companies Act
Balance sheet Companies Act
Profit and loss account Companies Act
Cash flow statement Accounting standards
Statement of total recognized gains and losses Accounting standards
Note on historical cost profits and losses Accounting standards
Reconciliation of movements in shareholders funds Accounting standard
Notes to the accounts Companies Act
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Facultative Text Parts( Moves)

• Group financial highlights
• Brand building and divisional highlights
• Retail devision
• Beer division
• Leisure division
• Community and environment

• Board of Directors
• Five-year record
• Shareholder information
• Notice of meeting
• Financial calendar

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Relation between the three elements of genre
analysis
Communicative Purpose
Moves
Rhetorical Strategies
(Frandsen, Johansen, Ellerup Nielsen 1997 116)
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Assignment

• Consider each text part at macro-level to be a
  move!
• Who is the receiver of each move?
• What is the local purpose and how can you
  recognize this purpose?
• Which contribution does each move pay to the
  overall communicative purpose?
• Contrast your results with Estonian Annual Report
  and Accounts! Similarities? Differences?
• If there are any differences, should this have an
  impact on translation? (Skopos!)