A Multi‐Dimensional Analysis of English Tweets by Chinese and American Automotive Companies

ABSTRACT While multi‐dimensional (MD) analysis is a widely used method for register analysis, it receives limited attention in studies of corporate tweets, especially from a cross‐cultural perspective. This study conducts a full MD analysis on an English‐language corpus of tweets from three automotive manufacturers per country in China and the United States. It aims to interpret the communicative functions behind the statistical co‐occurrence patterns of linguistic features in these automotive corporate tweets, and to examine cross‐cultural similarities and differences in these patterns. The results reveal two interpretable sets of co‐occurring features, labelled as: (1) corporate self‐promotional narrative versus addressee‐focused interaction and (2) affective versus volitional interaction. Although both dimensions are found in Chinese and American subcorpora, Chinese automotive companies slightly favor self‐promotional narrative and affective interaction, whereas American automotive companies comparatively display addressee‐focused and volitional interaction. The observed differences may relate to the variations in national culture and economic conditions. This study offers sector‐specific insights into the co‐occurrence patterns of linguistic features in corporate social media communication and contributes to research in applied linguistics and corporate media discourse.