ABSTRACT
The semiotic created by the authors of the corporate reporting script is based upon the implicit assumption of incompatibility. The semiotic analysis suggests that there must be a strong motivation for the authors of the script to attempt the task of segregation given the impossibility of any complete form of audience segregation. The analysis undertaken shows that the written reports have greater prominence than the financial reports in the corporate report. In maintaining the dialectic of the difference between financial performance and social performance, the authors of the script need to make use of a variety of techniques to continually reinforce the existence of the dialectic. Good performance in the financial dimension leads to good future performance in the environmental dimension and vice versa. Thus there is no dichotomy between environmental performance and financial performance and the two concepts conflate into one concern.
