Corporate Marketing Discourse in Saudi Arabia: A Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the functional organisation of Saudi corporate marketing discourse through the application of Biber’s multidimensional analysis framework. Using Biber’s five-dimensional framework, a balanced corpus of Arabic marketing texts from five leading Saudi companies was compiled from social media, corporate websites, and video-based promotional materials and analysed using a purpose-built Arabic multidimensional tagger. The results show a high degree of functional convergence across companies. Saudi corporate marketing discourse is consistently informational rather than involved, non-narrative rather than event-oriented, explicit in reference, restrained in overt persuasion, and oriented toward concrete rather than abstract information. At the same time, statistically significant differences emerge in the degree to which individual companies occupy these shared multidimensional continua, indicating graded variation rather than distinct discourse types. The findings suggest that corporate marketing communication in the Saudi context operates within a stable functional space shaped by institutional authority, public visibility, and expectations of clarity and credibility. The study demonstrates the cross-linguistic robustness of multidimensional functional constructs and provides a systematic account of corporate brand communication in an institutionally distinctive national market.