Genre Analysis On English Business Promotional Discourse

As an important means for business participants to exploit certain potential markets, promotion strategy attaches importance to the process of business transaction activities. More and more people focus on the related studies in this research field. English business promotional discourse, as a concrete specific way to realize promotion strategies, has aroused linguists' interests of studying. Therefore, the studies on a certain specific text of business promotional discourse become abundant. Especially, the studies and analyses on advertisements and sales promotion letters from different angles have becoming matured. Though accounting for a large part of studies on these sub-genres of promotional discourses, English business promotional discourse which is regarded as a whole unity of genre has not received due attention. There has been little researches, however, taking the whole colony of English business promotional discourse as the research subject. No linguistic monograph has ever performed as a systematic and all-sided research into genre analysis on English business promotional discourse.On the basis of Swales'and Bhatia's Move Models and Hasan's Generic Structure Potential, the author, has randomly selected 100 English business promotional texts, covering 20 sales promotion letters,20 job application letters,20 advertisements,20 book reviews and 20 brochures as well. Through qualitative analysis and quantitative test, the thesis figures out the generic structure and linguistic features of business promotional discourse. And at the same time, it further explores the generic similarities and differences among these five kinds of business texts. After detailed analysis, the author concludes that they all belong to promotional genre. Furthermore, present study proves the facts that shared communicative purpose is the core of a genre, which determines generic structures and classification of genres. It also illustrates that the changes in contextual parameters give rise to the differences in generic structure.The thesis falls into 5 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces research background, research objectives and significances of the study. Chapter 2 reviews genre theories, including Generic Structure Potential (GSP) proposed by Halliday and Hasan, Move Models pioneered and developed by Swales and Bhatia respectively. It also introduces previous studies on specific sub-promotional genres abroad and at home, and then brings forward a workable model for present study. Chapter 3 gives a detailed introduction to the research methods and data collection, and then a specific case study is also presented. Chapter 4, based on the theories in Chapter 2, conducts a detailed systematic investigation into samples. Qualitative analysis is carried out. The inferred 10-structure is tested by quantitative analysis to see if it is applicable to all samples. The final statistics shows that this postulated 10-move structure is universal to all the samples in the corpus. Move 1:Headlines. Move 2:Establishing credentials. Move 3: Introducing the offer. Move 4:Endorsements/Testimonials. Move 5:Brief biography of the author or editor. Move 6:Enclosing documents. Move 7:Offering incentives. Move 8:Using pressure tactics. Move 9:Soliciting response. Move 10:Ending politely. Among them, move 2 and 3 are obligatory while the other moves are optional. Move 1 and 2 are fixed in position while others are flexible. Chapter 4 implements a detailed analysis of the generic features of English business promotional discourse on linguistic level. It claims that the uses of positive words and compound modifiers usually exist in obligatory moves. The uses of first and second personal pronouns could help promotional texts to strengthen persuasive effects to some extent. In the obligatory moves of English business promotional discourses, writers prefer to use active voice, definite sentences, or even imperative sentences. Chapter 5 makes a summary of the findings and puts forward that it is meaningful for English teaching of business promotional discourse, especially it is useful to help students to get better understanding to writing and reading of this genre. And hence it is of some practical value in international business communication. Finally, the limitations and suggestions for further research have also been given.