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- Title
CORPORATE IDENTITY METAPHOR AS CONSTITUTIVE DISCOURSE IN MINIATURE: THE CASE OF NEW CHINA LIFE.
- Authors
Zhang, Peter
- Abstract
This essay critically engages the cluster of corporate identity metaphors deployed by the ex-chair of a life insurer based in Beijing to construct the corporate persona, consolidate his personal authority, negotiate ideological tensions, and produce a morphing collective identity for employees of the company to live up to. It lays bare the constitutive, justificatory, and defusing functions the metaphors served both individually and as a strategic formation. The essay contributes to the discipline by bringing constitutive rhetoric to bear on the study of metaphor in action. It models a way for consumers of corporate identity metaphors to slip the symbolic trap embedded therein. Incidentally, it also gives a flavor of the symbolic peculiarity of corporate China and questions the serviceability of imagining corporations as mere economic entities.
- Subjects
METAPHOR; CORPORATE image; GROUP identity; RHETORIC &; psychology; NEW China Life Insurance Co. Ltd.; FIGURES of speech; RHETORIC; PSYCHOLOGY; 21ST century (Literary period)
- Publication
ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 2011, Vol 68, Issue 4, p375
- ISSN
0014-164X
- Publication type
Essay