Green Hushing or Greenwashing?
A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of ESG Communication among Chinese
Listed Companies
Zhang Yinan1 Kong Yue2
(1.Faculty of Business, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, 999078;
2.School of Literature and Joumalism, Gansu University of Political Science and Law, Lanzhou, Gansu, 730070)
Abstract: Drawing on impression management theory and signaling theory, this study employs acorpus-assisted discourse analysis (CADA) approach to systematically examine and contrast the divergent linguistic strategies of greenwashing and green hushing in ESG reports published by Chinese A-share listed companies. By constructing a parallel corpus of approximately 324,000 words,this research addresses key operationalization issues by introducing prior filters for "under-communication" and "media accusation verification" to classify firms into a high-greenwashing-risk group, a high-green-hushing-risk group, and a control group. Utilizing AntConc, we measure thecommitment-to-action lexical ratio (CALR), vague modifier frequency (VMF), comprehensivereadability index (CRI), and semantic prosody. The empirical results demonstrate that: (1) the CALRis significantly higher in the greenwashing group but lower in the green-hushing group compared tothe control; (2) vague modifiers appear with a significantly higher density in the greenwashing group,functioning as a key marker of verbal inflation; (3) green-hushing reports display a significantly lowerCRI, indicating strategic obfuscation. This study integrates both strategies into a unified "ESGcommunication continuum" framework, identifying "discursive deviation from performance" as itscore dimension. The findings remain robust after controlling for industry endogeneity and reportlength, offering operational screening indicators for regulatory surveillance under mandatory disclosure regimes.
Keywords: greenwashing; green hushing; ESG reporting; discourse analysis; corpus linguistics;impression management
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