Genre Analysis of English and Persian Sales Promotion Letters

Transcription

1 IN THE NAME OF GOD

2 The University of Kashan Faculty of Humanities Department of English Language Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Genre Analysis of English and Persian Sales Promotion Letters Supervisor: Dr. M. Raouf Moini Advisor: Dr. Gh. Sami By: Fatemeh Heidari June 2010

3 The University of Kashan Faculty of Humanities Department of English Language We hereby approve that this thesis by Fatemeh Heidari Under the title of Genre Analysis of English and Persian Sales Promotion Letters Be accepted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Committee on Oral Examination: Supervisor: Dr. M. Raouf Moini Advisor: Dr. Gh. Sami... Internal Examiner: Dr. R. Shams. External Examiner: Dr. H. Soleimani June 2010

4 To My Dear Family i

5 Acknowledgment It goes without saying that in the production of a study like this a great many debts are owed to a great many people. Although the words cannot express my debt, I hope they convey my sincerity to all those who assisted me throughout completing this study. First of all, I readily acknowledge my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Raouf Moini, my supervisor, for his invaluable recommendation, constant encouragement and meticulous reading of my thesis. Second, my sincere thanks go to Dr. Sami, my advisor, for his careful reading of my thesis and providing me with insightful comments. My special thanks go to Dr. Shams and Dr. Soleimani, the readers of the thesis, for offering constructive criticism and suggestions. I also extend my sincere appreciation toward all those business people who helped me in data collection process. Last but not the least, I would like to thank all my family members, especially my parents, who have always been the source of encouragement and support for me. ii

6 Abstract This thesis is a genre analysis of Persian and English sales promotion letters. It is assumed that cultural differences affect discourse genres. Our goal was to investigate how information is presented and what moves and steps are used across languages in order to achieve the communicative purpose of sales letters i.e. promoting the product or service. To answer this question, the research focused on analyzing contrastively a corpus of 50 authentic Persian and English sales letters. They were collected from a variety of different companies, and then were chosen based on their prototypical discourse features as well as their specific communicative purpose they were meant to achieve. Once collected, they were analyzed based on Swales move structure analysis. The comparison between the move structure of English and Persian sales promotion letters revealed that there were differences in the way in which discourse patterns were organized as well as in the use of language. Although both Persian and English sales letters had 13 moves, there were differences in the kind of moves. Name of God, subject and greeting were typical moves in Persian whereas headline, introduction and postscript were typically English moves. The other 10 common moves included opening salutation, establishing credentials, introducing the offer, referring to previous customers/clients, offering incentives, enclosing documents, using pressure tactics, soliciting response, ending politely, and closing salutation. Of course, not all these 13 moves were present in a certain sales letter or exactly in that order. Opening salutation, establishing credentials, introducing the offer, soliciting response and closing salutation were obligatory moves in both English and Persian. Ending politely was obligatory in English while it was optional in Persian. Greeting was obligatory in Persian letters while it was completely absent in English letters. The 2 formulaic moves in English letters were opening salutation, and closing salutations. The 5 formulaic moves in Persian sales letters were name of God, opening salutation, subject, greeting and closing salutation. The average number of moves in Persian sales letters was less than that of English letters, i.e. 7.9 moves for English letters and 6.7 for Persian letters. Persian letters used very formal tone and some formulaic structures. English letters, on the other hand, used less formal language and exhibited flexible use of language. Key words: Genre, Contrastive Genre Analysis, Move and Step, Sales Promotion Letter iii

7 Table of Contents Title page Abstract iii List of Tables vii List of Figures viii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Introduction Statement of the Problem Objectives of the Study Research Questions Significance of the Study Definition of Key Terms 7 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE Overview Discourse Analysis Surface level linguistic description: register analysis Functional language description: rhetorical analysis Language description as discourse: interactional analysis Language description as explanation: genre analysis Genre and Genre Analysis Linguistic-oriented genre analysis Sociocultural-oriented genre analysis Psychological-oriented genre analysis Business Discourse and Genre ESP and business English Business letters Sales promotion letters Concept of Move and Step Bhatia's Model for Sales Promotion Letters Establishing credentials 21 iv

8 Introducing the offer Offering incentives Enclosing documents Soliciting response Using pressure tactics Ending politely Cross-cultural Studies of Genre 24 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY Overview Corpus Codification of the Corpus Development of Coding Schemes for English Sales Promotion Letters Codification of a Sample of English Sales Promotion Letter Development of Coding Schemes for Persian Sales Promotion Letters Codification of a Sample of Persian Sales Promotion Letter Intra- and Inter-Rater Reliability 62 CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS Overview Results of the Move Structure Analysis of English Sales Letters Linguistic Realization of the Moves in English Sales Letters Summary of the Move Structure Analysis of English Sales Letters Results of the Move Structure Analysis of Persian Sales Letters Linguistic Realization of the Moves in Persian Sales Letters Summary of the Move Structure Analysis of Persian Sales Letters Results of the Surface Features of English and Persian Sales Letters Comparison of English and Persian Sales Letters Difference in the Move Structure of English and Persian Sales Letters Difference in the Linguistic Features of English and Persian Sales Letters 96 CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION Overview Summary of the Study 98 v

9 5.3. Discussion of the Results of Move Structure Analysis Pedagogical Implications and Pedagogical Applications of the Study Suggestion for Further Research Conclusion Final Remarks 112 vi

10 List of Tables Table pages Table 3.1. Coding Scheme for Move Structure Analysis of English Sales Letters 43 Table 3.2. Coding Scheme for Move Structure Analysis of Persian Sales Letters 59 Table 4.1. Linguistic Realization of Moves in English Sales Promotion Letters 74 Table 4.2. Results of the Frequency and Percentage of Moves in English Sales Letters 75 Table 4.3. Order of English Moves Based on Their Frequencies 77 Table 4.4. Pattern of Move Structure of English Sales Letters 78 Table 4.5. Linguistic Realization of Moves in Persian Sales Letters 88 Table 4.6. Results of the Frequency and Percentage of Moves in Persian Sales Letters 89 Table 4.7. Order of Persian Moves Based on Their Frequencies 91 Table 4.8. Pattern of Move Structure of Persian Sales Letters 92 Table 4.9. Comparison of the Move Structure of English and Persian Sales Letters 94 vii

11 List of Figures Figure page Figure 4.1. Bar graph for Results of Percentage of Moves in English Sales Letters 76 Figure 4.2. Bar graph for Results of Percentage of Moves in Persian Sales Letters 90 Figure 4.3. Results of Comparison of the Percentage of Moves in English and Persian 95 viii

12 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1. Introduction There has been an increasing interest in the study of rhetorical patterns across languages since the early 1980s. This kind of study has been carried out to investigate the different rhetorical systems that are employed by different groups for organizing and presenting their ideas. This approach to the analysis of discourse began from register analysis and grammatical rhetorical analysis to interactional analysis and finally to genre analysis. Interest in genre analysis has been motivated by the tendency to extract the rhetoricalfunctional structure of discourse, especially of written discourse, in order to obtain the consistent patterns of producing texts of different types. During the last few decades, research on teaching writing in a second language has paid more attention to the nature of writing in various situations. This then brought popularity to the genre approach, which focuses on models and key features of texts written for a particular purpose. One way to learn about the local socio-cultural constraints in order to achieve cross-cultural understanding is through contrastive analysis of each selected genre in a particular context. Business English is one branch of English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) which itself is a subdivision of English for specific Purposes (ESP). There are four major communicative genres within Business English: negotiations, meetings, and business letters, although this is not an exhaustive list. In spite of widespread developments in communication technology, business letters are still widely used as a main channel of business correspondence. Within the genre 'business letter' it is possible to distinguish some universal sub-genres such as chasing money, requesting, offering, promoting sales, etc. Analysis of different genres, including sales letters, provides a framework for learners to write in an effective way since genre analysis is concerned with investigating 1

13 the generic structure of a given text and describing what moves and steps they consist of. The findings of genre analysis can be incorporated into the syllabus as a basis for instruction, especially for writing instruction. The importance of linguistic analysis in the practice of language teaching is now beyond dispute. Discourse analysis is viewed not simply as an act of linguistic description but more as linguistic explanation, attempting to answer the question why members of specific discourse communities use the language the way they do. Along with extensive research on genre analysis (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990), comparing genres (Amirian, et.al., 2008; Zhu, 2005; Vergaro, 2002, 2004), and ESL genre teaching and writing (Freedman, 1999; Connor, 1996), cross-cultural genre learning and teaching began to draw researchers attention to intercultural communication as well. Understanding differences in cross-cultural genre writing is becoming increasingly important for effective business communication as more and more countries are doing business internationally. This study aims to conceptualize cross-cultural genre study and analyze and compare English and Persian specific business genre of sales promotion letters. Dudley-Evans (2006) argues that the imparting of genre knowledge involves investigating awareness of the conventions of writing, and teaching students to produce texts that, by following the conventions, appear well-formed and suitably structured to native-speaker readers. This sort of awareness is highly emphasized in the literature (Bhatia, 1997; Kay & Dudley-Evans, 1998; Swales, 1990). A detailed comparison of linguistic and rhetorical realizations of business sales promotion letters across different cultures presents itself as a researchable area. The failure to understand these differences could have detrimental consequences in the business world, from the possible formation of unfavorable impressions of one another to even the failure of a lucrative business deal. It is generally agreed that the more conventional a genre is that is, the more constrained its communicative purposes are the more predictable its schematic structure will be. As a genre with a clearly defined purpose - persuading the potential customer to buy a product or service business sales promotion letters are highly amenable to schematic structure analysis. One of the purposes of the present study is to examine to 2

14 what extent the letters in the corpus correspond to the prototype and to what extent there is variation. The present study is a cross-cultural study investigating the contrastive properties of the move-structure of sales promotion letters in English and Persian language. According to Vergaro (2004), cultural differences affect discourse genres which were traditionally considered as standardized, ritual or even formulaic, written business communication. So there are two sets of authentic data: English business sales promotion letters written by native English speakers and Persian business sales promotion letters written by Iranians. The letters came from a variety of companies in order to make the results of the study generalizable Statement of the Problem Writing is one of the activities through which we construct social reality. According to Bazerman and Paradis (1991), Once established, professions maintain their organization, power and activity in large part through networks of texts. By understanding texts within the professions, we understand how the professions constitute themselves and carry out their work through texts. (p. 3-4) Different cultures use different rhetorical strategies for writing letters. Therefore, being aware of similarities and differences in the writing practices of particular cultures, i.e. adapting a contrastive stance, will help business letter writers learn to write effectively for an intended audience. In the words of Hopkins and Dudley Evans (1988): There is an urgent need for a fairly delicate system that enables us to convey to learners the features of a particular text that makes it a good text in the sense that it performs the function for which it was intended and that it is acceptable by the community for whom/which it was introduced. (p. 116) It is difficult for non-native people involved in business to present their ideas in a business letter. Business people often have difficulty in meeting the demands of the kind of writing required of them. In order to communicate effectively in business world, on one 3

15 hand they need instruction on how to write business letters and, on the other hand, they need to know the differences in writing style of different cultures. Cadman (1997) suggests that a significant cause of difficulty may lie in the different epistemologies in which these students have been trained and in which their identities as learners are rooted (p. 4). In other words, Cadman (1997) argues that students identity, self-perception, and perceptions about their writing experiences are in relation with the English texts they produce. Therefore, their English language identity, which differs from that of native English students, brings about challenges in writing texts which belong to different genres. When writing internationally in English, Iranian students and business people s writing may be influenced by their previous background in the Persian language. They may deviate from the standard move structures proposed by experts in English; that is, their writing could be more similar to Persian in terms of move structure or other rhetorical strategies. Such differences in rhetorical strategies and move structures should first be identified precisely so that to make the students become aware of such differences. Then, they may be taught to students and people involved in business to enable them to write effective business letters. Investigation is needed to further determine how and how much language and cultural differences influence non-native people s business writing. According to Vergaro (2002), business communication is a purposeful social activity. By Purposeful she means that it serves to manifest a goal or an intent which, however ritual it might be, expresses a given community s way of making things happen through language. She believes that the common pragmatic function of a business letter is persuasion. So it is important to know how persuasion is achieved in different cultures through the medium of a business letter. According to Zhu and Hildebrandt (2003), the difference in persuasive orientations is the root of cultural differences in the communication styles identified by intercultural researchers. One kind of such persuasive letters is sales promotion letter. According to Bhatia (1993), a sales promotion letter is an unsolicited letter addressed to a selected group of prospective customers (they may be individuals or companies) in order to persuade them to buy a product or service. Since most of these prospective customers may not be interested in the product or service that one is trying to promote, the writers of these sales 4

16 promotion letters have a difficult task not only in capturing their attention but also in sustaining their interest, and eventually convincing them of the benefits of the product or service being promoted. Considering the above-mentioned points, business sales letters, despite their importance and extensive use in daily business transactions, have received no attention by discourse analysts in Iran. Iranian people are not aware of the move structure of sales letters, whether in English or in Persian. They may manage successfully with producing grammatically accurate sentences, but they usually cannot produce larger units. Therefore they cannot write effectively for a given audience. This study aims at helping Iranians involved in business transactions to be aware of similarities and differences in the move structure of English and Persian business sales promotion letters and to know how to write more effectively in the world of commerce Objectives of the Study This study is going to investigate the schematic structure of English and Persian sales promotion letters in order to find out about their moves and steps to see if there are any differences between the kind of move and steps of the two languages and the order of them. This study also intends to investigate the rhetorical strategies that American and Iranian business letter writers use in order to achieve their goals in promoting their products or services Research Questions In order to achieve our objectives, the present research seeks to find answers to the following questions: 1. What is the schematic structure of moves and steps for English sales promotion letters? 2. What is the schematic structure of moves and steps for Persian sales promotion letters? 3. What are the differences and similarities between the schematic structure of English and Persian sales promotion letters? 5

17 4. What rhetorical strategies do English sales promotion letter writers employ in order to achieve their goals? 5. What rhetorical strategies do Persian sales promotion letter writers employ in order to achieve their goals? 1.5. Significance of the Study The free market economy is now a dominant feature in the world. It is an economic system in which individuals, rather than the government, make the majority of decisions regarding economic activities and business transactions. According to Zhu (2005), the free market economy, which is characterized by competition, helps nurture an individualistic cultural environment and encourages individual achievements. The individuals are therefore encouraged to maximize their contribution to society by meeting customers' needs or the economic demands of the society. This phenomenon, she believes, also leads to the specific interpersonal context or one-to-one reader-writer relationships, in which the writer or the sales managers writes to an individual as a targeted reader. For example, sales letters are often sent to targeted readers by means of selecting the addressees from the names listed in the local telephone directory. In this way, Zhu (2005) suggests, both the sociocultural and interpersonal environments set the tone for product promotion in which appeals to potential customers and immediate sales are stressed. All these, according to Guffey (2001), have been employed as major promotional strategies by business-writing textbooks, in which sales letters are designed to achieve marketing purposes and remain a most effective sales tool to reach customers as part of the direct mail marketing effort. The dominance of English as a lingua franca in international business interactions is now beyond dispute. Studies around the world, for instance, by Charles and Marschan- Piekkari (2002) in Finland, Akar (2002) in Turkey and Bilbow (2002) in Hong Kong, all confirm that English is an intrinsic part of communication in multinational settings. Considering the above mentioned points, it is important for Iranian people involved in business to be able to write appropriate business sales promotion letters in English if they want to survive in the competitive world economy. 6

18 The identification of models for sales promotion letters in different cultures provide people involved in business with extremely valuable information about the rhetorical strategies of different cultures for achieving their goals. It is extremely important for people involved in business to observe the appropriate generic format of sales promotion letters. Therefore, presenting an awareness of the generic structure of sales promotion letters is an inevitable need for business people. Business people do not achieve success unless they are able to produce letters, in appropriate generic structure, in such a way that the members of discourse community accept it as something standard and worthy of attention. For this reason, the present study seeks to discover the moves associated with sales promotion letters in English and Persian. The teaching of these moves allows students to be more aware of the various propositions expected within genres and helps them avoid mistakes that might come from not fulfilling the expectations of a genre. The findings of this study may be helpful for understanding rhetorical strategies employed by American and Iranian people in writing sales promotion letters in their own language. This awareness will help Iranian business letter writers and business students to foster in themselves the development of a metacognitive awareness about their own culture s writing conventions and thus help them observe and experience other cultures conventions Definition of Key Terms Some of the key terms used in this study are: genre, genre analysis, contrastive genre analysis, move and step, and business sales promotion letter Genre: According to Swales (1990) genre is a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the expert members of the parent discourse community, and thereby constitute the rational for the genre (p. 58) Genre analysis: According to Conner and Mauranen (1999), genre analysis means the study of structure and behaviors into comprehensible and effective forms. The aim of 7

19 genre analysis is to identify the organizations of moves and linguistic features expert users of genres choose to use to achieve their communicative purposes and to explain these choices in terms of social and psychological contexts (p. 94) Contrastive genre analysis: detecting the similarities and differences between the types, frequencies, and sequence of moves and steps that comprise a particular genre Move and Step: According to Vergaro (2004), a move is a meaningful unit represented in linguistic (lexical-grammatical) forms and related to the communicative purposes of the activity in which members of the community are engaged. Analyzing the move structure of a text thus means assigning a pragmatic function to a stretch of language and building the schematic structure through which its communicative purpose is achieved (p. 184). The term strategy is used by Bhatia (1993) to refer to the way in which the writer or speaker realizes or executes a move. According to Swales (1990), if the move can only be realized through a series of strategies in a particular order, the strategies can be considered as steps Business sales promotion letter: According to Bhatia (1993), a sales promotion letter is an unsolicited letter addressed to a selected group of prospective customers in order to persuade them to buy a product or service. Vergaro (2004) believes that sales promotion letter is part of a business communication sequence which appears typically at the initial stage of business dealing. Its social role is finding a buyer for a commodity or service the seller wants to sell. 8

20 CAPTER TWO REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE 2.1. Overview The concept of genre has been discussed from different aspects regarding the existing theories in the field of applied linguistics. This chapter discusses genre as a framework of discourse and tries to show its importance in academic and professional discourse community. As its main objectives, this chapter tries to use this concept to examine business sales promotion letters as a genre in professional community. In this chapter, first, different levels of discourse analysis will be discussed and it is explained why genre analysis has been used for the analysis of sales letters. Next, definition of genre and different approaches of genre will be presented. Then, the concept of ESP, business English, business letters, and business sales promotion letter will be presented. After that, Bhatia's model for sales promotion letters will be provided. Finally, cross-cultural variation of a genre will be discussed by presenting some cross-cultural studies in academic and business genres Discourse Analysis Discourse analysis, as a study of language use beyond the sentence boundaries, has become an established discipline. It started attracting multidisciplinary attention in the early seventies and has developed into a variety of approaches motivated by a wide range of interests and orientations. According to Bhatia (1993), it has been given several names in linguistics, such as text-linguistics, text analysis, rhetorical analysis, functional analysis, and clause-relational analysis. The main objectives of all these studies have been to understand the structure and function of language use to communicate meaning. If we look at the history and development of applied discourse analysis in the last forty years, we notice that it has progressed through at least four levels of linguistic 9