Genre Study Of English Sales Promotion Letters Based On Functional Grammar Move Structure

English sales promotion letter, as an external communication channel, serves as a business letter to deliver the information of products and services to the potential customers effectively so as to persuade them to purchase the product or service being offered. However, few linguistic scholars focus their study on the generic structure and language features of English sales promotion letters up to now. The primary aim of the thesis is to investigate the unique generic structure and linguistic features of English sales promotion letters. To achieve this purpose, the author attempts to adopt the method of genre analysis. Then based on Swales and Bathia’s move structure model and Hasan’s Generic Structure Potential (GSP), the writer analyzes the 30 English sales promotion letters from their generic structure and linguistic features by the way of qualitative analysis and quantitative test. In addition, some linguistic features of certain moves are found out in the light of Functional Grammar, which is a supplemental part to the methodology of the genre study.Through the investigation, it is figured out that the main communicative purpose of English sales promotion letter is to persuade potential costumers for purchasing product or service. There are 9 moves in English sales promotion letters:Getting attention, Establishing credentials, Introducing the offer, Testimonials, Enclosing documents, Offering incentives, Using pressure tactics, Soliciting response and Ending politely. Among them, Getting attention, Establishing credentials, Introducing the offer, Offering incentives and Soliciting response are obligatory moves and the others are optional ones. The position of Getting attention and Ending politely is fixed while the other moves are relatively flexible. On the other hand, this thesis does a research on the linguistic features of English sales promotion letters according to Functional Grammar theory. It informs that positive words and compound modifiers frequently appear in obligatory moves. The adoption of first and second personal pronouns strengthens the persuasive effects to some extent. Writers of English sales promotion letters tend to use active voice, definite sentences in the obligatory moves. What’s more, some writers prefer to employ direct speech act to realize the move of soliciting response. This paper studies from aspects of generic structure and linguistic features, the author hopes that the findings may help students to improve their reading and writing skills of English sales promotion letter.