Study Of Coherence Strategies In English Business Law Textbooks

With the increasing popularity of bilingual teaching in China, English business lawtextbooks are introduced into China. As these textbooks were originally written for studentswhose mother tongue is English, Chinese readers find it difficult to handle such books well.In the processes of writing and using textbooks, unequal writer-reader relationship existsdue to their different backgrounds — writers as specialists and readers as laymen. In order tohelp their readers better understand the text, writers will employ some strategies to show thecoherence in their texts.The purpose of this study is to examine how English business law textbook writers builda coherent and logical textual world of business law through the analysis of three coherencestrategies employed in English business law textbooks. These three coherence strategies arePredictive Categories, topic structure, and information structure. Predictive Categoriesinclude six categories of prediction, namely Enumeration, Advance Labeling, Reporting,Recapitulation, Hypotheticality, and Question.This study analyzes the macro and micro coherence strategies adopted by textbookwriters, and helps students identify these strategies so as to arrive at a better understanding ofthe text. A theoretical framework is formed to analyze coherence in the selected chapters intwo English business law textbooks. In this theoretical framework, Predictive Categories setup a macro hierarchical structure by relating the concepts at different levels. The topicstructure works at both the micro level and the more macro level. The Given-Newinformation pattern achieves coherence at the most micro level.The data analyzed in this study are five chapters chosen from two classical Englishbusiness law textbooks used by MBA students at Tsinghua University and Peking University.Three chapters were selected from the first textbook — The Legal, Ethical and InternationalEnvironment of Business, and two chapters were chosen from another textbook — The Law ofInternational Business Transactions.The Predictive Categories, topic structure, and information structure in the data areidentified and their functions are analyzed respectively. The Predictive Categories, especiallythe categories of Advance Labeling and Enumeration, are found to be in wide use in theselected chapters. By making and fulfilling predictions, Predictive Categories set up a macrohierarchical structure, and relate the concepts at different levels in the text. Topic structureworks at both the sentential level and the discourse level. It achieves micro coherence by thesemantic connectedness between sentential topics, and contributes to macro coherence by therelationships between subtopics and the discourse topic. The Given-New information patternachieves coherence at the most micro level of the text, with the Given information providingnecessary background information for the New information.Analyses of selected chapters have shown that these three coherence strategies indeedexist in English business law textbooks, and they do contribute to the coherence in the text.Readers can get a better understanding of English business law by identifying and analyzingthese three coherence strategies.