The Discourse Coherence Study On Overseas Student Health Cover From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

Coherence is a key concept in discourse analysis. There is no systematic and generally accepted criterion by which discoursal coherence is explained due to the complexity of the concept up to now. With the upsurge of studying abroad, Overseas Student Health Cover has become a necessity in daily life abroad and a mandatory requirement for admission. The thesis has studied the explicit coherence, implicit coherence and interactive coherence of the Overseas Student Health Cover policies in top insurance companies in England, America and Australia within the theoretical framework of Speech Act Theory. 100 OSHC policies from insurance companies in UK, USA, and Australia have been collected. Multiple Methodologies such as systematic review, qualitative method, quantitative method, and observation are used in the research. Major findings of the study are as follows. Firstly, at locutions level, relative pronoun and second person, repetition and collocation are frequently used to make the discourse coherent; ellipsis and substitution are relatively few. Secondly, at illocutions level, the insurance policies mainly perform the illocutionary force of directives by the usage of “must”, “require” and “shall”, simultaneously performing the illocutionary force of authorizations by using modal verb“may”. Thirdly, at perlocutions level, to achieve the persuasive effects, the insurance policies adopt the persuasive style through rational analysis and factual account to influence the insured. The results illustrate that Speech Act Theory is an effective method in studying coherence of OSHC policies. The research has enriched applied linguistic discourse corpus database, and provided reference for health insurance regarding overseas students who study in China and guidance in health insurance selection for Chinese student overseas.