A Contrastive Rhetorical Study Of Chinese And English Statements Of Apology In Business Transactions

Nowadays, business transactions between different countries develop more andmore quickly. If a company wants to succeed in the competitions, it is important forthem to have a good image. A good image can improve the core-competitiveness foran enterprise. Meanwhile, competitions exist everywhere during business transactions.All companies may make mistakes. Crisis exists everywhere during doing business.Crisis public relation is important for the enterprises’ development. If dealing withcrisis rightly, companies can not only keep their images stabilized, but also gaincustomers’ trusts again. So statements of apology are one of important means forhelping enterprises succeed in the crisis.In this thesis,we will study differences between Chinese and English statementsof apology in rhetorical aspect. Rhetorical Structure Theory will be used to write thisthesis. This theory is proposed by Mann and Thompson. The theory is used to analyzehow relations make a discourse coherent. Mann and Thompson hold that everydiscourse has a hierarchical structure, and this structure is constructed by therelationship between different parts.We will choose ten Chinese statements of apology and ten English statements ofapology at random. These twenty statements of apology will be analyzed by RSTTool345. The rhetorical relations of these twenty statements of apology will be shownby diagrams to analyze the similarities and differences.By analyzing similarities and differences between Chinese and Englishstatements of apology, we find that the rhetorical relations appeared mostly in Chinesestatements of apology are:Elaboration(19%),summary(12.7%), solutionhood(12.7%)，interpretation(10%), and evaluation(7.6%). But rhetorical relations appeared mostly inEnglish statements of apology are: evaluation(17.9),elaboration(10.9%), solutionhood(8.4%),interpretation(7.4%),circumstance(7.4%),evidence(6.3%), concession (5.3%),and justify (5.3%).At last, we will analyze the reasons caused these similarities and differencesfrom two aspects. They are: linguistic aspect and cultural aspect.