Telling the Investment Story: A Narrative Analysis of Shareholder Reports

Abstract

Narrative analysis helps us better understand how writers handle complex businesscommunication challenges. This study analyzed shareholder reports of equitymutual funds whose total returns were high in absolute terms, but low in relativeterms. These reports were complex in that the returns were ambiguous and,although the subject matter was technical, the readership was broad. Narrativeanalysis reveals that mixed-return shareholder reports use a nonlinear hyperstructure, dramatize ideas through contrasting narrators, embed a variety of subgenres,and complement verbal with visual discourse in order to make readers active participants in constructing the investment story. Readers' responses to these reportsdepends not only on their intellectual understanding, but also on their emotionalinteraction with the narrator personae and visual symbolism. The discourse texture, the underlying fabula, and the story affect how readers experience a text.Applied similarly, narrative analysis could elucidate other business communicationgenres, principles, problems, and questions.

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