PHÂN TÍCH các PHƯƠNG TIỆN LIÊN kết từ VỰNG TRONG THƯ yêu cầu TIẾNG ANH

Introduction

1. Rationale

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Discourse Analysis was greatly influenced by a number of

studies. Halliday emphasized the social functions of language. In Britain, Sinclair and

Coulhard developed a model for the description of Teacher-Pupil talk; other similar works

have dealt with Doctor-Patient interaction, interviews, debates and so on. Meanwhile, in

America, the work of Goffman, Sack and Jefferson is important in the study of

conversation, turn-taking, and other aspects of spoken interactions. Thus, Discourse

Analysis is a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language in

use and therefore of great importance to language teaching. Traditionally, language

teaching has dealt with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; but now it is Discourse

Analysis that raises our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gain

successful communication.

Business letters in general and letters of enquiry in particular have long been considered as

key documents in the business context due to the fact that Vietnam nowadays is step by

step adhering to the development in the world. Consequently, we have joined a lot of

international organizations and corporations; we also have signed international documents

particularly in the business transactions with other countries. Among those documents and

texts, business correspondence plays a key role. In fact, writing business correspondence is

becoming a more and more important task in many corporations and companies. The letter

of enquiry is indeed significant among various kinds of business letters thanks to its

frequency in use. So many factors have to be taken into consideration in the process of

writing a letter of enquiry; namely the format, the style, the language, so on and so forth.

Additionally, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence is greatly essential in discourse

construction and comprehension for communication. Cohesion and coherence are actually

regarded as the important aspects of language usage.

With all the reasons above, the author would like to choose “An Analysis of Lexical

Cohesive Devices in English Letters of Enquiry” as the topic of this study

2. Aims of the study

The main aims of the thesis are as follows:

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1. To identify lexical cohesive devices used in English Letters of Enquiry.

2. To realize the role and contribution of lexical cohesive devices to successful

letters of enquiry.

3. The research questions of the study

In order to achieve the aims stated, the study is meant to find out the answer to 2 following

research questions:

1. What are the lexical cohesive devices used in English Letters of Enquiry?

2. How do lexical cohesive devices contribute to the success of a letter of enquiry?

4. Assumptions of the study

In conducting the research, I have assumed that there are some differences in the use of

lexical cohesive devices in English enquiry letters and in other kinds of text and each

lexical cohesive device plays a different role in terms of importance level in the success of

a letter of enquiry. I drew heavily, among many publications, on Brown and Yule’s (1983)

Discourse Analysis and on the classic study of Cohesion in English by Halliday and

Hasan (1976).

5. Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying the correctness and

significance related to linguistic theories in discourse analysis by working on a certain kind

of discourse (Letters of Enquiry).

Practical significance: This thesis helps gaining an insight into the use of lexical cohesive

devices in the Letters of Enquiry.

6. Scope of the study

This study focuses on the lexical cohesive devices in only one kind of business

correspondence, namely the Letter of Enquiry in English. The paper explores the

process in which coherence is achieved in the formal written genre of letters of

enquiry. As explicitness, conciseness and unambiguity are fundamental qualities in

such a discourse, the main emphasis is put on lexical cohesive devices, such as

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repetition or careful use of synonymy. Data analyzed is taken from 15 English letters

of enquiry chosen randomly.

7. Methodology

7.1. The data of the study

The data is taken from 15 English Letters of Enquiry chosen randomly from some foreign

corporations and organizations.

7.2. Methods of the study

To attain the aims of the study, the research shall conduct the following activities:

Firstly, set up a framework of lexical cohesive devices in order to find out the defining

characteristics of Letters of Enquiry as a genre.

Secondly, three previous studies on lexical cohesive devices used in other types of genre

are reviewed to latter compare with the use of lexical cohesive devices in letters of

enquiry.

Thirdly, various letters of enquiry are collected and analyzed in terms of lexical cohesive

devices: reiteration and collocations. All the 15 letters are analyzed to identify the lexical

cohesive devices used, their frequencies of occurrence are counted, and it is through this

process that the significance level of each device to the letters is made clear.

Finally, necessary comments and conclusions are made according to the data analyzed.

The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on a collection of sample

letters of enquiry.

8. Design of the study

Within the scope mentioned above, the study consists of three main parts: introduction,

development, and conclusion

Part B (Development) is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, Literature Review,

theoretical knowledge of cohesive devices and Letters of Enquiry is presented. The second

chapter deals with the literature review of some previous studies on the similar issue. The

third chapter, also the main one of the study, focuses on the analysis of the lexical cohesive

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devices employed in the English letters of enquiry. In the last chapter, we attempt to

present some findings and implications.

Chapter I. Theoretical Background

1.1. Discourse and Discourse Analysis

1.1.1. Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and

the context in which it is used. This has been developed from the works of different

disciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology,

anthropology, and sociology. Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts and

spoken data of all kinds under the approach different from those old grammarians. There

have been numerous interpretations to what is meant by Discourse Analysis.

British discourse analysis was mainly influenced by M.A.K. Halliday’s functional

approach to language. Halliday’s framework emphasized the social function of language

and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing. De Beaugrande (1980),

Halliday and Hasan (1976) as well as Prague School of linguists have made their

significant contribution to this branch of linguistics in pointing out the link between

grammar and discourse.

Yule (1996: 139) states: “In the study of language, some of the most interesting questions

arise in connection with the way language is ‘used’, rather than what its components are.

(…) We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users interpret what other language￾users intend to convey. When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we,

as language-users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers mean

despite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse,

and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertaking

what is known as discourse analysis.”

As can be noticed clearly, the term “discourse analysis” is very ambiguous. For the sake of

research, we would like to take the definition from Hoa’s (2000) An Introducition to

Discourse Analysis as the base of our study: Discourse analysis is considered “as a study

of how and for what purposes language is used in a certain context of situation and the

linguistic means to carry out these purposes”

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1.1.2. Discourse and Text

The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1998) defines

discourse as follows: “Discourse is a general term for example of language use, i.e.

language has been produced as the result of an act of communication.” Sharing the same

concern, many other linguists have so far given definitions of discourse. Widdowson

(1979) states: “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication which

cohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern which

characterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication.” Whereas

Crystal (1992: 25) says: “Discourse is a continuous stretch of language larger than a

sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or a

narrative.” Quite differently from the others, Halliday and Hasan (1976) give a simple

definition: “We can define text (discourse) in the simplest way perhaps by saying that it is

language that is functional.”

Linguists have paid much attention to the distinction between a discourse and a text since

confusion of these two terms may result in the failures of discourse analysis. Even though

that the distinction is not always clear and the two terms are used interchangeably by some

linguists. As in the above-mentioned definition of discourse by Halliday and Hasan, “text”

is employed to refer to “discourse”; they see “text” as a “semantic unit” characterized by

cohesion. The two authors state: “A text is a passage of discourse which coherent in these

two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent

in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive” (1976: 23). For

some other linguists, “text” is used for writing and “discourse” for speech. The third group

of linguists like Brown & Yule, Nunan, Widdowson, and Cook see discourse as a process

and text as a product. Brown & Yule argue that text is the representation of discourse and

the verbal record of a communicative act.

In this study, we would like to take Widdowson’s viewpoint of the difference and the

interrelationship between the two as the base: “Discourse is a communicative process by

means of interaction. Its situational outcome is a change in state of affairs: information is

conveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is Text.” (1984: 100)

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