An Interactive Study Of Business Negotiation Discourse

With the rapidly developing world economy, as well as technology’s fast paced communication devices, innovative ways of international business communication is occurring more frequently. If people hope to augment their fortune they must keep up with this rapid changing communication development in the business, and technology world. In light of this new international industry order, business negotiations continue to play a more significant role, which are more closely related to the bilateral interests and economic growth of both parties. Obviously, in business negotiations, both sides expect to reach a consensus through purposeful argument in order to capitalize on their ultimate objective, profit. Therefore, compared to courtroom discourse, doctor-patient dialogue and teacher-student interaction, the discourse of business negotiation, which is an indispensable part of institutional discourse, is more purposeful and less constrained from social elements like power or identity.Consequently, based on the self-built Business Negotiation Corpus, this dissertation takes discourse of business negotiation as a research object, which mainly refers to the oral expressions used in negotiation when people pursue their economic benefit. All the data were collected from the Foreign Affairs Office of Heilongjiang Province, Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Harbin and Chair Harbin International Economic and Trade Fair, who negotiated with sister cities of Harbin, state run companies and individual private enterprise, etc. The essence of negotiation includes propagation, skiing project, education cooperation, hi-tech project, tourism, medicine, food and sanitation. After much field work, the writer transcribed the sound recording into characters and tagged the discourse markers. We criticize the Principle of Goal Direction, in order to construct the theoretical framework about Goal Negotiation, which is suitable for business negotiation. Based on these exchanges, we analyzed the interaction structure of business negotiation discourse quantitatively and qualitatively. Subsequently we will discuss the initiations and responses in exchanges by dividing them into pre-act, core-act and post-act, sum up their construct patterns and choose strategies; finally, explaining the result from the perspective of goal. Last but not least, we will illustrate the limitations of this study and the image of future study, which will supply the suggestions of discourse choice to teachers and negotiators.The main contents of this dissertation briefly summarize as follows:Chapter One primarily makes an introduction to the concept and distinguished features of business discourse, negotiation and business negotiation, as well as the institutional nature of the discourse of business negotiation. Then we mainly discuss the three features:interactive, negotiated and purposeful, from the perspective of intersubjectivity. Finally, the chapter progresses to make an overview of the dissertation:the research objects, the data, the content, the purposes, the methods, the theoretical framework, the research significance and the whole organization of the dissertation.Chapter Two reviews the literature on the studies of business negotiation discourse at home and abroad, analysis of the research history of business discourse, especially the discourse of business negotiation, in order to summarize the trend of development.Chapter Three takes the Principle of Goal Direction as the basis, to absorb and extend the useful parts to construct an entire theoretical framework for the present study. It begins with the philosophical reflection of goal studies, discusses the relationship between discourse and purpose. Then we separately summarize the linguistic research which chose purpose as the standing point before and after the Principle of Goal Direction, and finally provide the main views and framework of Goal Negotiation.Chapter Four focuses on the interaction structure of business negotiation discourse. We will use the analysis method of Birmingham School, combined with the social factors like context and the purpose of speakers, to research its interaction structure. According to the type of speech act in the move of initiation, the interaction structure can be divided into three categories:the eliciting exchange, the informing exchange and the directing exchange. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, we conclude with some typical structures and their variants, followed by explanation of their possible formational reasons.Chapter Five distinguishes the concept of initiation, initiation sentence and question, proposes the working definition of initiation in this dissertation. Each initiation pattern is divided into pre-act, core-act and post-act, in order to expose their construct patterns and choose strategies. This entire chapter attempts to reveal how the negotiators maximize their economic benefit and achieve social aims by using different initiations.Chapter Six concentrate on the responses in business negotiation discourse. It begins with the distinction between response, response sentence and reply, illustrating the interrelationship between initiation and response, and then underlines the directing effect of goal or purpose when people choose the linguistic element to form their responses. Responses are the reactions of a receiver’s understanding of initiation, but not the sentence the speaker spoke. Therefore, we graphically represented the formation process and generic pattern of response, expecting for the goal negotiation in the micro level of business negotiation discourse. Finally, this chapter gives some implications on responses choosing to the teachers and business negotiators. Chapter Seven draws a conclusion. It also discusses the contributions to the current research, the limitations and suggestions of the study.This dissertation contributes to the field of study in many aspects, including:first, Business Negotiation Corpus is created, on which data-driven research method is employed; second, the Principle of Goal Direction are critiqued and extended as the holistic theoretical framework for business negotiation discourse study; third, this dissertation enlarges the scope of Chinese discourse study by analyzing business negotiation discourse as a particular genre; fourth, this research can deepen the recognition of business discourse, which also is an important supplement to the study of business discourse in China; finally, the findings of this study bears implications on business education, institutional discourse study and business negotiation practices; and of course, keeping up with innovative communication technology.