Contrastive Genre Analysis Of Chinese And English Cover Letters

This contrastive genre analysis examines the discourse structures of cover letters written by applicants who are native writers of Chinese and native writers of English, with the aim of showing how different the generic structures of a same purpose-oriented genre in western and Chinese cultures. An approach based on genre study (Hasan, 1989; Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993) is used to explore the communicative purposes and structure level of the text. A corpus of sixty cover letters (thirty in Chinese and thirty in English) has been examined. On the basis of the analysis of the communicative purposes, the moves (Swales, 1990; Bhatia, 1993) of the discourse structures of these letters in two different languages were identified and compared. The GSP analysis is used to describe the obligatory and optional components of the structures of Chinese and English cover letters in a linear sequence. Findings suggest that the Chinese cover letters adopt a striking different discourse structure from that of the English cover letters, and those differences show to be largely due to a number of factors of socio-cultural backgrounds.This research argues that the translator should enhance the awareness of analyzing the generic structure of the purpose-oriented genre, and the structure and the content should be modified according to results of the genre-based analysis of the discourses. The implication of the research may contribute to some insights into the use of the proposed suggestions in this research in translating international purpose-oriented discourses.