A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of English Sales Promotion Letters Written By Chinese And Native English Speakers

With the increasing trend of globalization, the international trade is becoming more and more frequent. Expanding business overseas has become an important method to win more customers. Sales promotion letter is regarded as a sub-category of business correspondence, whose main function is to convey the information of products and services to the prospective customers in order to persuade them to purchase certain commodity or service which being promoted. On the influence of globalization, English sales promotion letter is becoming more universal and effective in the international business transaction. Thus, they are chosen as research objectives.Based on genre analysis theory and qualitative research, a contrastive analysis is carried out to explore the similarities and differences in macro-generic structures and micro-linguistic features between English sales promotion letters by Chinese writers and native English writers. Quantitative analyses with the help of software Oxford Wordsmith Tools4.0and Text Analyzer are carried out. Possible underlying causes from the cross-cultural perspective for these differences are disclosed.The main results of the present study are the following:At the macro-generic level, there is a nine-move structure of this promotion genre written by Chinese writers, Salutation, Introduction, Establishing credentials, Introducing the offer, Offering incentives, Enclosing documents, Soliciting response, Using pressure tactics, Ending. Move1, Move2, Move4, Move7and Move9are obligatory move, while the left moves are optional ones. Meanwhile, there are eight moves of this promotion genre written by native speakers, Salutation, Establishing credentials, Introducing the offer, Offering incentives, Enclosing documents, Soliciting response, Using pressure tactics, Ending. Move1, Move4, Move7and Move9are obligatory move, while the remaining are optional ones. At the micro-linguistic level, nouns and gerunds are most frequently used than any other kinds of words in this promotion genre. Many hard words and long words are adopted. English sales promotion letters are regarded as hard-reading texts. Contrastive analyses discover that similarities and differences do exist between English sales promotion letters written by Chinese and native English writers: significant differences are found in Move2and in Strategy2of Move4; native English writers tend to use longer sentences, more hard words and longer words than Chinese writers do. The underlying causes for these differences can be explained by value dimensions and high-context and low-context from the cross-cultural perspective.Findings of the present study show that genre analysis not only can disclose the overall features of this promotion genre, but also provide Chinese writers with some guided suggestions for writing English sales promotion letters, and more importantly, it has enlightenment for the teaching and learning of English sales promotion letters in practical applications.