A Cross-Cultural Genre Analysis of Leadership Statements in Italian and American University Sustainability Reports

Background: Sustainability is becoming an increasingly important issue in higher education (HE). Leadership statements in university sustainability reports (LSUSR) represent a unique genre for university leaders to communicate sustainability. This study aims to demystify the genre so that future leadership statements might be crafted with a greater degree of reflexivity. Literature review: Sustainability discourse in HE has been regarded as a legitimacy tool and an opportunity for image improvement for universities. Some studies have examined university sustainability reports, whereas there is a lack of studies focusing on the section of leadership statements. Research question: Are there any cross-cultural similarities or differences in terms of rhetorical moves and communicative purposes between the Italian LSUSR genre and the American LSUSR genre? Research methodology: Using cross-cultural genre analysis, this study investigates the rhetorical moves of leadership statements produced by Italian and American universities. A move scheme is established and is used to annotate the sample texts. Results and conclusion: The findings show that although the Italian and American LSUSR genres share the communicative purpose of establishing a sustainable image, the degree of discourse force exerting on this communicative purpose varies. The image-building discourse force appears to be more noticeable in the American leadership statements, which tend to use a wider range and a larger quantity of image-improving moves. The Italian subcorpus, on the other hand, seems to pay more attention to the genre function of report-introducing, which is not explicitly linked to image improvement. This article suggests that practitioners could consider the potentials of the LSUSR genre in developing an institutional culture of sustainability.