Linguostylistic means of implementing strategies and tactics to create a positive image of an employer in the UK and China (based on job advertisements)

Abstract

The study aims to identify the culturally conditioned features of the linguostylistic realization of employer branding strategies within British and Chinese recruitment discourse. The subject of the study is the written form of recruitment discourse, specifically, job advertisements, while the object comprises the linguostylistic means used to shape a positive employer image, categorized across four levels: lexical-semantic, stylistic, syntactic, and structural-compositional. The study addresses a number of objectives: it defines the hypernym-hyponym relationships between the terms "business discourse," "recruitment discourse," and "job advertisement"; it constructs a methodological matrix for the multi-level comparative analysis of job advertisement texts; it compiles a representative corpus of Chinese and British job advertisements and analyzes them using the developed methodology; it identifies the most frequent tactics and linguostylistic means used to create a positive employer image in each linguistic culture and determines the dominant patterns; and it interprets the identified differences within the framework of the cultural dimensions developed by G. Hofstede. The analysis is based on a corpus of 30 job advertisements (15 published in the UK and 15 in China in 2026) and employs a combination of research methods: componential and contextual analysis, discourse analysis, linguocultural analysis, the comparative method, and quantitative analysis. The study’s scientific novelty lies in its interdisciplinary comparative analysis – сonducted for the first time – of the English-Chinese language pair within a specific form of written recruitment discourse: job advertisements. The identified differences are interpreted through the lens of a linguocultural approach, which makes it possible to determine the dominant values within British and Chinese linguocultures that have become integral components of a positive employer image. The analysis reveals typical employer image models: "partner," "expert," and "missionary" in British recruitment discourse, and "institution," "leader," and "partner" in the Chinese context. The linguostylistic means employed to implement the tactics for creating these images – such as evaluative vocabulary, various forms of address, shifts in modality, and metaphors, as well as compositional techniques – vary depending on the cultural specifics of the texts in question, as well as the business ethics and corporate traditions of the UK and China.