A Study On Amplifiers In Business English Correspondence Based On Co-Selection Theory

As an important branch of intensifiers, amplifiers are a kind of degree adverbs that are used to strengthen or weaken the meaning of the modified language unit for the purpose of expressing the speaker or writer’s attitude. With the acceleration of economic development, business English correspondence plays a significant role in the process of international trade transactions. Since the complexity of amplifiers used in Business English Correspondence(BEC), they have posed notable difficulties to learners of BEC. Therefore, it is essential for researchers to study the usage of amplifiers in BEC in detail. Although a lot of scholars have made great achievements in the related area, there is still much room for further study of amplifiers in BEC from the perspective of co-selection theory. This paper aims to probe into the usage patterns of amplifiers in business English correspondence by drawing on the Business Letter Corpus(BLC) based on co-selection theory.The research objects are selected according to their frequency in BLC. The list of native speakers’ most frequently used 24 amplifiers(8 maximizers and 16 boosters)provides reference for the present study(Kennedy, 2003). We retrieve these 24 amplifiers in BLC one by one, and choose 12 most frequently used amplifiers proportionately. They include four maximizers fully, completely, absolutely, entirely and eight boosters very, very much, really, greatly, particularly, highly, extremely and clearly.The research procedures cover four steps: first, we search the amplifiers in the BLC; then identify its colligation patterns through analyzing; next generalize its collocation patterns, and then describe its semantic preference, semantic prosody and the types of business correspondence where it frequently shows up.The results show that maximizers tend to modify verbs and adjectives, and they collocate with words or phrases to express the writer’s gratitude or satisfaction.Besides, maximizers mainly have neutral semantic prosodies, and are broadly used in all kinds of business correspondences, particularly in collaborative ones. By contrast,although boosters also modify verbs and adjectives, their colligation patterns are really complicated: Very much and greatly always modify verbs or verb phrases, while extremely usually highlights adjectives; very mainly emphasizes adjectives and adverbs; and highly primarily highlights adjectives, and so on. However, the semantic preferences of boosters are quite similar to those of maximizers. The boosters mainly have positive semantic prosodies, except for really and clearly. Compared with maximizers, the types of business correspondence in which boosters are used are more sophisticated: the most frequently-used three boosters-- very, very much and really-- mainly show up in convivial and collaborative business correspondence. By contrast, greatly, particularly and highly are employed in collaborative and competitive business correspondences prominently. These findings provide implications for the learning and teaching of amplifiers in business English correspondence, and also shed some light on the compiling of Business English dictionary.