A STUDY ON LEXICAL COHESION IN VIETNAMESE AND ENGLISH CORPORATE ADVERTISINGS

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale of the study

The Vietnamese government and people have a more and more positive point of view

the role of trading activities in which the value of corporate advertisement has been

highly appreciated after Vietnam operated the open-door policy as well as officially

joined the biggest trade organization “WTO”. In order to create good images of a

company or an organization, it is essential to build an informative and eligible

advertising. The purveyors might market their branches of business, operational

policies, and organization and so on through their skills of textual and lexical

manipulation.

The corporate introduction is normally written by the owner of the company in

his/her mother-tongue language and has it translated into target language or by the

copywriter. Thus, sometimes the terminology and terms used to render the text might

be different from the original meanings. Besides the sentences and grammatical

cohesive devices, the lexical cohesive devices are also essential to make a text to be a

coherent message.

To a writer of corporate advertisings, knowledge of linguistics, culture in general and

discourse analysis is really important for a coherent text. Corporate advertising is a

means of introducing company or organization name, operation methods, potentials,

services, production, staff and so on. I recognize some challenges in dealing with an

interesting but demanding text of corporate advertising. These might be solved by

writers if they have a thorough comprehension of and ability to use coherence and

cohesive devices in the discourse. In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation with

coherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in reading, writing. They are

features related to elements that produce cohesive and coherent texts. Thus, I make

decision to study the use of lexical cohesion in the English and Vietnamese corporate

advertisings as well as the frequency of occurrence.

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2. Aims of the study

This thesis aims to:

- give a systematic and comprehensive description of lexical cohesion features in

English

- figure out how these devices are used in texts

- make comparative analysis of lexical cohesion between English and Vietnamese

corporate advertisements to help copywriters and readers surmount difficulties

in using and understanding the lexical cohesive devices.

3. Scope of the study

Within the framework of a minor M. A thesis, we only study on lexical cohesion in the

corporate advertisement texts in English and Vietnamese taken from the only sources

of websites that introduce companies or organizations. The sample includes 3 texts in

English and 3 texts in Vietnamese used as written discourses.

4. Methods of the study

The methods of description, analysis and statistic in linguistics are used in this study.

The data are collected by pointing out the frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive

devices used in the written discourse of corporate advertisements. The investigation

will lead to the implication of better methods of writing corporate advertisements using

lexical cohesive devices.

5. Design of the study

This minor thesis consists of three parts as follows:

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Development

There are three chapters in this part

Chapter 1 deals with theoretical background of the research with three main sections

like: discourse and discourse analysis, cohesion & coherence and lexical cohesion

Chapter 2 presents specific features of advertisement in general and corporate

advertisements in particular

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Chapter 3 gives comparison of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese corporate

advertisements

Part C: Conclusion

In this part, the author summarizes the findings and giving suggestions for further

development in writing corporate advertisements.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter aims at dealing with theoretical framework of investigation such as

concepts of discourse, cohesion and coherence, cohesive devices, register and genre in

discourse analysis which are relevant to the purpose of this study, as well as the

definition and properties of advertisement in general and corporate advertisement in

particular.

1. Discourse and discourse analysis

1.1. The concepts of discourse

There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse. Halliday (1985)

defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process”. According to Crystal (1992)

discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often

constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative”. Cook

(1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches of

language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive”. In other words, as

Brown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, in

actual uses by speakers (and writters) of the language.

1.2. Text and Discourse

It is still in vagueness to define whether or not discourse and text are of two separate

entities and some linguists are trying to set them apart. According to Widdowson

(1979) text is sentences in combination whereas discourse is the use of sentence for

communication.

For some linguists, discourse is different from text. According to Cook (1989:158) text

is “ a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context”. However, Brown and

Yule (1983:6) argue that text is the representation of discourse and the verbal record

of a communicative act.

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