Stance Markers in Industry Report: A Corpus-Based Study of the Deloitte <i>Art &amp; Finance Report </i>

Abstract Extensive linguistic research has been conducted on stance, while few studies have explored stance in industry reports, an important business genre. Therefore, this paper examines the usage of stance markers in the latest three editions of Art &amp; Finance Report (2019–2023) published by Deloitte. Through a corpus-based approach, we examined how attitudinal stance, epistemic stance and modality can help deliver information through three aspects: the distribution of stance markers across the reports; how Deloitte utilizes the stance markers to convey information under the ‘objective’ standard in marketing research; and more function of stance markers in stance delivering based on the usage and features in detail. The results show that high-frequency utilization of stance markers contributes to both objective narration and subjective expression in reports. The findings mirror the important use of stance markers in commercial report writing and provide insights into the study of stance markers in marketing research.