Study On The Cohesive Devices In English Business Correspondence

With the globalization of economy and the development of multi-national trade, English business correspondence, as a typical written representative of communicative way in business transactions, has been widely recognized as an important media in business negotiation and communications, and its writing often directly influences the result of communications. At present, the linguists and scholars at home and abroad have conducted a great deal of in-depth studies of its features from different perspectives. However, most of the previous studies focus only on explaining grammar and vocabulary, on stylistic features or on the economy of language, and have not attached enough importance on cohesive devices, which are indispensable for a text to convey a complete and coherent meaning. Directed against this, the author intends to make an exploration of cohesive devices in English business correspondence to reveal the in-depth meaning of discourse and the function of achieving discourse coherence. The findings of the study are expected to shed some light on the teaching and study of English business correspondence and the practical business correspondence writing for the practitioners in the field of foreign trade.The study takes cohesion theory of Halliday and Hasan as its theoretical framework and chooses 90 pieces of English business correspondence from Internet, foreign trade practitioners' writings, and the textbook for quantitative and qualitative analyses. Firstly, the study starts from the introduction of English business correspondence, including its definition, functions and classifications. Secondly, it moves to the detailed description of Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory. Thirdly, it analyzes cohesive devices in all samples. In the process of analysis, the author gives some concrete examples so as to draw a clear picture of the theory for the readers. In the end, the conclusion is drawn.The findings of the thesis unveils that, from the macro perspective, the number of grammatical cohesion far exceeds that of lexical cohesion. From the macro perspective, the often-used cohesive device is reference. Following the reference, conjunction is preferred. The number of lexical cohesion is generally the same as that of conjunction. More specifically, the repetition of the same word occupies the highest percentage within lexical cohesion, and collocation is much higher in percentage. In the order of frequency, the percentages for substitution and ellipsis are very small, but the ellipsis is used slightly more than substitution.The findings of the thesis indicate that use of cohesive devices can facilitate the process of English business correspondence, making the discourse more coherent so as to fulfill the target of effective communication. So cohesive devices should be explained within certain context rather than in isolation, and systematic cohesion training should be based on raising practitioners' awareness of cohesive devices, improving efficiency and proficiency in writing performance on textual level, and finally realize successful communication.