A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of English Cover Letters By Chinese And Native English Writers

In recent years, with the development of stylistic analysis and discourse analysis,more and more linguists recognize the importance of communicative purpose andlinguistic strategies in discourse analysis. As one of the methods of discourse analysis,the aim of genre analysis is to identify moves as well strategies that realize the movesbased on the communicative purpose of genre. Cover letter is a certain type of socialletter used by the job hunters to promote himself/herself in order to get the opportunityfor an interview. Being a certain type of written communicative form, it also belongsto the research category of genre analysis. However, at the present time, the domesticresearch for cover letter mainly focuses on the comparative analysis between Chinesecover letters and English cover letters, research concerns comparative analysis forEnglish cover letters written by Chinese writers and native writers are limited. In viewof this, the present paper intends to fill the particular gap.The present study investigates30English cover letters written by Chinese writersand30English cover letters written by native writers as a small corpus. It aims atmaking move analysis and strategy analysis for these letters, summarizing thesimilarities and differences between the two kinds of structures, as well as summingup the underlying determining factors in making the differences between the two kindsof structures. According to the result of the research, the writer finds that first of all,usually there are14moves in English cover letters written by Chinese writers, while inEnglish cover letters written by native writers, the number of moves is usually10.Secondly, there are also some differences between the two groups of letters withregard to strategy analysis. For example, in terms of Move introducing candidature(IC), the native writers always use the strategy of educational qualification (EQ) andstrategy of work experience (WE); however, when it comes to the Chinese writers,apart from the two strategies used by native writers, they will usually another twostrategies, that is strategy of self information (SI) and strategy of personal attributes(PA). Finally, the present paper examines and analysis the English cover letters fromthe perspective of social and cultural level, and comes to the conclusion that the reasons lead to the above differences mainly include the differences betweenindividualism and collectivism, linear modes of thinking and annular modes ofthinking, as well as egalitarian system and hierarchical system.The study shows that to carry out genre analysis from the perspective of moveand strategy not only can help to explain the macro-structure of this type of genre, butalso can offer some guidance to the applicants in terms of the writing of English coverletters, as well enhance the critical thinking of the students. In addition, the writer alsohopes that the present study can shed light on ESP teaching and interculturalcommunication. It is suggests that during the process of teaching and learning of thisgenre, both the teachers and the learners should attach great importance to thedifferences that appear, for these differences are likely the reasons that bring about theproblems when the applicant is performing cover letters. In a word, the writer believesthat the research methods and analytical methods used in this paper can provide moreinformation for making teaching and learning more effective.