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:
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 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 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”
