Contrastive Analysis On Chinese And English Sales Letters-Case Studies From The Perspective Of Register Theory

This thesis is based on the theoretical framework of Register Theory and analyzesrespectively eleven Chinese sales letters and eleven English sales letters. After analysis, thelinguistic and register features of Chinese sales letters are generalized, so is that of English salesletters. At the same time, because they are produced under different contexts of culture,referring to genre, the thesis also makes contrastive analysis to find out the similarities anddifferences of their register and linguistic features.The analysis shows that at the stratum register, Chinese and English sales letters havesimilar register features. Their field is that a salesman promotes his product to his customer.When talking about the tenor, the two main participants---the salesman and the customer---havea fair relationship and the salesman keeps a polite tone. As a sales letter is for a customer toread, their mode is mostly written.The further analysis towards the stratum lexico-grammar shows that Chinese and Englishsales letters have similar and different linguistic features. Their similarities include that material,mental and relational processes are the most commonly used process types, while existential,behavioral and verbal processes occur rarely. The indicative mood for clauses to exchangeinformation captures most of the clauses, and accordingly, the propositions are frequenters. Torealize the textual function, clauses as messages rarely start with an interpersonal or textualtheme, which leads to the scare occurrence of multiple themes and unmarked themes.Their differences are composed of the following points. English sales letters apply moreprocess types and mood types at the clause level. The textual theme to continue a context ismore commonly used in English than in Chinese and the ellipsis of the topical theme onlyappears in Chinese sales letters.The analysis of Chinese and English sales letters under Register Theory has several virtues.Firstly, it can uncover the complete context of situation for the application of Chinese orEnglish sales letters. Secondly, it can help the understanding of the linguistic choices in Chineseand English sales letters and reveals their register and linguistic features. Thirdly, based on theabove-mentioned two virtues, the contrastive analysis between them can be carried out. Allthese serve as basements for the study of translating or writing sales letters.