Shades of transparency in the rhetorical appeals of energy sector disclosure practices

The present paper is part of ongoing research on corporate communication practices in terms of transparency, credibility and trust, social responsibility and ethics, identity and reputation construction. It focuses on some international companies of the energy sector – Edison (Italy), BP (UK), Chevron (USA), Saudi ARAMCO (Saudi Arabia) – and, more specifically, on the concept of transparency in disclosure practices across cultures, that is, in sustainability reports and in the rhetorical appeals they employ. Disclosing information that stakeholders perceive as transparent and trustworthy has become one of the most important aspects of a firm’s communication strategy and approach towards its external contexts. Transparency is a value of corporate social responsibility communication that improves the relationship between the company and its stakeholders. Sustainability reports primarily focus on non-financial data regarding environmental, social, economic and governance issues. Our theoretical framework ranges from the concepts of transparency, disclosure, trust, and sustainability reporting to metadiscursive markers, used by the writer to establish an active and reciprocal dialogue with the reader through the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos and logos. The findings show how stylistic features, such as intertextuality, reader-inclusive pronouns, self-mentions, attitude markers, and engagement markers contribute to easing information interpretation and to enhancing transparency and trust cross-culturally.