Analysis Of Business English Discourses From The Angle Of Contemporary Rhetoric Theory

As is known to all, with the globalization of the world economy and gradual blooming of the international trade, the domestic and foreign scholars are drawn to the study of Business English (hereinafter referred to as BE) discourses. Reviewing comprehensively the domestic and foreign scholars’research on BE plus rhetoric in BE discourses, the author of this thesis finds that most of such researches are confined to the field of the feature or teaching of BE discourses. Few scholars probe into the rhetorical phenomenon in BE discourses. But much weight is given to figures of speech, which is kind of biased. The figures of speech are well acknowledged for their structural characteristics, distinction of expressive function, diversity and vividness, but they are only part of rhetoric and can not represent the whole story of rhetoric. The domestic research focuses excessively on the aesthetic rhetoric and makes a point that rhetoric is aesthetic or that communicative rhetoric can not be equal to aesthetic rhetoric.First of all, a careful discussion of contemporary rhetoric including the definition and the classification, namely communicative rhetoric and aesthetic rhetoric, is conducted based on the reasons mentioned above. Furthermore, the definition, classification and content of BE discourses, especially the classification of BE discourses into law discourses, document discourses and advertisement discourses are analyzed carefully. From the perspective of contemporary rhetoric, this thesis finds by employing the case analysis method that different kinds of BE discourses will be liable to use the appropriate rhetoric mechanisms on the basis of describing the distinctive features of different types of BE discourses from the angle of communicative rhetoric and aesthetic rhetoric.This thesis expounds the rhetoric characteristics and mechanisms of BE discourses from the angle of communicative rhetoric and aesthetic rhetoric respectively, especially the lexical and syntactical features of law discourses and document discourses as well as the features of advertisement discourses. The results show that different types of BE discourses tend to employ communicative rhetoric or aesthetic rhetoric based on their communicative goal. Generally speaking, law discourses and document discourses prefer to use communicative rhetoric and advertisement discourses take aesthetic rhetoric as their first choice to achieve their persuasive function of the text.