A Comparative Analysis Of Interpersonal Meaning Between Offer Letters And Counter-offer Letters

Business letters have provided themselves as river and bridge role amid the huge international trades with them arising abundantly and rapidly and online business platforms gradually setting up perfectly.More and more interpersonal messages are carried in the business letters,which means interpersonal relations being established between buyers and sellers through these communication letters.On different kinds of elements,business letters can be divided into many kinds of categories among them the most outstanding ones are offer letter and counter-offer letter.The main function of interpersonal messages is the promoting work on mutual communication and interaction.This in and out messages are made to persuade the other party to accept the proposals and keep a healthy cooperative relation.This thesis has conducted a comparative study on interpersonal messages hidden in the offer and counter-offer letter.This study mainly aims at exploring the specific and common features expressed by varied modality expressions in both letters and trying to make out a sensible explanation on this phenomenon to finally produce a general summarize of the interpersonal functions in letters.There are three observing aspects of mood,modality and person system to conduct the interpersonal relation research on a foundation of 60 original and target passages employing a method combining qualitative and quantitative together.To find out the similarities and differences between offer letters and counter-offer letters by the distributions and frequencies of interpersonal meaning.The final results are shown in the following passage.Here are the common parts: 1)In the mood system,the indicative mood were used frequently to state facts while imperative mood rarely appeared.2)In the modality system,median modal verbs have taken a huge percentage in their appearance by expressing the senders' purposes without hurting the other party's feelings.Also,there were some low valued modal verbs existing.3)In the whole person system,both letters showed a tendency towards the first and second person to hold onto their own interest position while maintain a good cooperation atmosphere.The specific features are: 1)In the mood system,interrogative mood appeared as none in the offer letters,rare in the counter-offer letters for the buyers bargaining over the price.2)In the modality system,the high value modal verbs were not related in the offer letters for sellers betterexpressing their opinions objectively.