Astudy Of Interpersonal Meaning In Business English Letters Of Claims

In trade activities, the performance of a contract is especially important, but sometimes it is unavoidable that one party might fail to fulfill the contract. In such situation, the party that suffered from the loss has the right to make claims. Therefore, according to the terms of the contract, the aggrieved party will ask for compensation for the loss or safeguard his rights. The letters thus written are called claim letters which fall into one genre of business letters. In claim letters, the two parties are certainly in conflicting position, however, its main purpose is to persuade the responsible party to take positive actions rather than blaming and complaining. Therefore, in claim letters, the writer should adopt the proper words and appropriate tone so as to show positive attitude and thus the interpersonal meaning of claim letters is essential. So far, a lot of scholars have done researches on sales letters, letters of establishing trade relationships and so on, but few studies focus on claim letters, and the exploration of the interpersonal meaning of claim letters is even less . Based on the previous theory and studies, this paper intends to explore the linguistic devices that realize the interpersonal meaning in claim letters.Halliday holds the viewpoint that the use of language in a specific context is to achieve certain functions. He proposes three metafunction of language: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Interpersonal function refers to the interactive relationship between the speaker and hearer of the interaction and the attitude hold by the speaker for what he has said or written. Halliday points out that the interpersonal function is mainly realized though mood, modality, tone and other ways. Martin's evaluation system widens the theoretical framework of the interpersonal meaning. On the basis of previous researches, this paper analyzes interpersonal function of the claim letters from the mood, modality, person and evaluation system. The aim of the present study is to explore how to choose and use appropriate language to express the attitude and position, thus achieving the purpose of claim letters.The author chooses 30 claim letters randomly from the Modern Business English Writing, Longman Business Success Letter, Business Communication Theory and Skills and internet, etc. as the study data and both quantitative and qualitative analysis are employed in the paper. Quantitative analysis is used to study the frequency of interpersonal communications of language resources; qualitative analysis is applied in the implementation process of mood and modality and as well as evaluation of interpersonal communications in claim letters.Through the detailed analysis and discussion, some findings can be generalized as the follows 1) In claim letters, the writer mainly applies declarative to state his dissatisfaction and list his loss. Sometimes the imperative beginning with please is used in order to gently express his commands or requests. The conditional clauses are also sometimes employed in claim letters to express indirect claims and at the same time highlight politeness principles. 2) In modality, the writer often adopts low value word can and the median value words will and would to express his attitude politely and avoid the excessively coercive manner of speaking. 3) In the aspect of person system, the first person pronouns we and I are dominantly applied so as to show the authority of the writer. In addition, the second person pronoun you is sometimes employed to apply pressure on the responsible party and urge him to resolve the problem as soon as possible. 4) As for evaluation, the writer applies some vocabularies with emotional meanings to express his unpleasant feelings and realize the persuading function.The application of the persuading function of language can be urged to persuade the other party to take compensatory measures as soon as possible. The present study is a tentative analysis on the realization of interpersonal meaning in claim letters. It is sincerely hoped that this study can in a way enrich the researches on interpersonal meaning and business English letters. It is also the author's hope that the analysis on the linguistic devices realizing the interpersonal meaning will help people focus on effective use of claim letters in trade activities so that they will learn how to achieve communicative purposes of claim letters through proper language use and successful realization of interpersonal meaning. Therefore, the study also puts forward some useful suggestions for the business English letters teaching and writing.