1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 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 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 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 texts in English and texts in Vietnamese used as written discourses 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 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 deals with theoretical background of the research with three main sections like: discourse and discourse analysis, cohesion & coherence and lexical cohesion Chapter presents specific features of advertisement in general and corporate advertisements in particular Chapter 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 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 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 Actually, it is not easy to make a clear-cut distinction between “text” and “discourse” The concepts of discourse and text defined by Halliday (1985: 290) maybe the most comprehensive He states that “discourse” itself is a process and the term “text” is usually taken as referring to the product And obviously, cohesion and coherence are typical of text as a language unit 1.3 Spoken and written discourse Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics meanings As stated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contribution” While written discourse comprises complete sentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via adjectives and adverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences Although spoken and written discourses share the communicative functions, they serve various functions The former is concerned with interact ional use and the latter with the transactional use (Brown and Yule, 1983: 13) By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure The writer has time to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make necessary correction which is primarily concerned with the transactional use Spoken language, as stated by Brown and Yule (1983), is the kind of language which is produced under some temporal, spatial pressure with the speaker’s monitoring of what it is that he has just said, determining his current phrase and simultaneously planning his next utterance and which is primarily concerned with the interactional use There are three prominent features that can apply to distinguish written and spoken discourse Density: the density is the information volume presented Evidently, written language is dense while spoken language is sparse Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important, but information For written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather few different verbs, whereas spoken language uses more verbs These above characteristics are inherent in spoken and written language in whatever types of discourse Written texts can be read out and heard such as letters, stories, novels, contracts, reports, speeches Moreover, spoken discourse such as lectures, lessons, interviews, conversations and so on can also be reserved in the form of writing Context in discourse analysis 2.1 The notion of context As premise, we should take a short excursion into the history of the notion of context Halliday and Hasan draw their concept of context from Bronislaw Malinowski's principle of describing the environment and culture along with the text to analyze Malinowski, himself being an anthropologist in the 1920s, added various information to his reports on the language of the Trobriand islanders, which included as much cultural background as possible (context of culture), and the immediate environment in which the text was produced (context of situation) He encountered basic difficulties when translating pragmatic conversations of the Trobrianders into English, but later on realized that even so called "civilized" language, mostly used for abstraction, could not be separated from its cultural and immediate surroundings if it had to be understood and rendered intelligibly Based on this early framework of context, more and more features determining the production and reception of texts were defined and added, from Firth's 'nonverbal actions', 'effects', and 'objects and events' surrounding the text, to Hymes' 'intent', 'key', 'medium' and 'genre', and normative principles of the text According to Halliday then, all these features are indebted to the complexity of modern society and communication itself, but they enable us to predict what is going to happen within "the framework of something that we knew was going to happen" The success of every act of communication thus is based on our predatory interpretation of the cultural and situational context The situational context of our text could be characterized as well organized and highly predictable In general, there are two main types of context 2.2 Context of situation Context of situation is an integral concept of discourse analysis According to Eggins (1994:30), context of situation is usually discussed under three variables: what is talked about, what the relationship between the communicators is; what role the language plays Other linguists have the same opinion that in order to understand thoroughly what someone says or writes It is necessary to know the context of situation like Nunan (1983) 2.3 Context of culture Besides the language and context of situation we need to pay attention to the context of culture As stated by Malinowski (1923) “if you are not a member of the culture, you cannot understand what is meant” To recognize the text as meaningful, the readers or hearers need to refer the text to a cultural context It is important to know the culture of the given language in interpreting and understanding the given messages Cohesion & Coherence 3.1 Cohesion vs Coherence The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that defines it as a text Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse dependent on that of another Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link various parts of a text These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs Cohesion is a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear Halliday and Hasan (1986) identify five main cohesive devices in English: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion E.g American Life Inc pays the mortgage on each property from its own funds until the mortgage is paid in full The Company’s principals have made personal guarantees covering all debt and no debt is cross-collateralized among the properties and partnerships Reading this example, we can understand that there is a link between ‘American Life Inc.’ and ‘the Company’’ Coherence, on the other hand, is defined as the relationships of various ideas in a text that are linked together to create a meaningful discourse According to Nunan (1993) coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seems to hang together and make sense In short, coherence means the relationships that link the meanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text These links may be based on the speakers’ shared knowledge E.g The aviation business includes handling aircrafts and passengers, offering security check, services of security guard, fire fighting and other ground services In the above example, there is a conceptual relationship among the aviation business and other terms in the text Though cohesion and coherence, in essence, is different from each other, they are closely linked together They represent the very essential elements that make a text or discourse coherent and that make coherent text or discourse different from random sentences or utterances Cohesion is mainly used to embody coherence by a system of cohesive devices Accordingly, cohesion and coherence help consolidate the text as a complete and unified linguistics unit beyond the largest syntactic unit of sentence 3.2 Main principles of cohesion Halliday & Hasan (1976) as well as other linguists assume that cohesion is expressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary These cohesive devices are closely connected to create a coherent text Grammatical cohesion Reference Lexical cohesion Reiteration Exophoric reference Endophoric reference Repetition Synonym/near-synonym Antonym Super-ordinate General words Substitution Nominal substitution Verbal substitution Collocatio Clausal substitution Ellipsis Nominal ellipsis Verbal ellipsis Clausal ellipsis Conjunction Additive Adversative Clausal Temporal Others n Adjective + noun Quantifier + noun Verb + noun Noun + verb Noun + noun Preposition + noun Noun + preposition Adverb + verb Verb + verb Verb + preposition Verb + adverb Adverb + adjective Adjective + preposition 3.2.1 Grammatical Cohesion We can see that a coherent text is a sequence of sentences or utterances which seem “to be linked” together containing words or phrases that enable the writer or speaker to establish boundaries across sentence or utterance and help sentences to be tied together They are considered as cohesive devices 10 Structure in text is provided by grammar therefore cohesion is considered to be outside of the structure Cohesion refers to the “non-structural text-forming relations” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 7) The concept of cohesion in text is related to semantic ties or “relations of meanings that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” (ibid: 4) within text, if a previously mentioned item is referred to again and is dependent upon another element, it is considered a tie Without semantic ties, sentences or utterances would seem to lack any type of relationship to each other and might not be considered text Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 4) refer to this interstitial link as “the presupposing” and “the presupposed” Using the authors’ example, “Wash and core six cooking apples Put them into a reproof dish.” The word “them” presupposes “apples” and provides a semantic tie between the two sentences, thus creating cohesion Cohesion creates interdependency in text a Referencing Referencing functions to retrieve presupposed information in text and must be identifiable for it to be considered as cohesive In written text, referencing indicates how the writer introduces participants and keeps track of them throughout the text (Eggins 1994: 95) There are three general types of referencing: homophonic referencing, which refers to shared information through the context of culture, exophoric referencing, which refers to information from the immediate context of situation, and endophoric referencing, which refers to information that can be “retrieved” from within the text It is this endophoric referencing which is the focus of cohesion theory Endophoric referencing can be divided into three areas: anaphoric, cataphoric, and esphoric Anaphoric refers to any reference that “points backwards” to previously mentioned information in text Cataphoric refers to any reference that “points forward” to information that will be presented later in the text Esphoric refers to any reference within the same nominal group or phrase which follows the presupposed item For cohesion purposes, anaphoric referencing is the most relevant as it “provides a link with a preceding portion of the text” (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 51); hence its most common usage 10 27 foremost thing for writers in general and corporate advertisement copywriters in particular is to know how to combine lexical repetition with other lexical devices As in English in Vietnamese corporate advertisements, repetition also accounts for a lot among lexical cohesive devices in forming coherence, precision, clarity and unambiguity Eg 2: Công ty Nghiên cứu Tư vấn Đầu tư APT thành lập nhóm luật sư, luật gia có nhiều kinh nghiệm lĩnh vực nghiên cứu pháp luật tư vấn đầu tư Có thể khằng định APT số cơng ty tư vấn Việt Nam thực trọng tới hoạt động nghiên cứu pháp luật bên cạnh hoạt động tư vấn Hoạt động APT kết hợp hài hòa hiệu nghiên cứu pháp luật với việc ứng dụng thực tiến thông qua dịch vụ tư vấn pháp luật Những kết nghiên cứu khoa học APT ứng dụng thực tiễn thông qua hoạt động tư vấn cho cá nhân, doanh nghiệp; đồng thời vấn đề bất cập nảy sinh hoạt động tư vấn APT phản ánh vào cơng trình nghiên cứu khoa học nhằm đưa kiến nghị góp phần hồn thiện hệ thống pháp luật Việt Nam It is clear that cohesion is achieved by the repetition of some words, phrases and company names like “APT”, “tư vấn”, “nghiên cứu pháp luật” These lexical items just help readers to focus on the main content Name of the company is normally repeated for many times in the corporate advertisements Times of repetition of company names depends on the length of the corporate advertisement Some long names are abbreviated in short ones The purpose is to draw the reader attention on the company name Let us consider some additional examples: Frequently repeated company names English Times Vietnamese Times Ascribe plc 22 Công ty TNHH phân phối FPT Innovation First Notice Công ty Nghiên cứu Tư vấn 37 27 28 American Life Inc., 12 Đầu tư APT (APT) Công ty TNHH Omron Healthcare According to the survey result as shown in the Table 3.1, repetition takes up the highest portion compared with other lexical cohesive devices in both English and Vietnamese corporate advertisements Copywriters use it to help building the image of the company, avoid any possible confusion in giving informative details and services However, the reader might feel uncomfortable and inconcentrated in the reading corporate advertisements Thus, it is the matter of necessity to be flexible in integrating repetition with other cohesive devices b Repetition of important words One thing that makes the Corporate Advertisements coherent is repeating important words Besides words frequently used to make the text coherent, sometimes called as FUNCTION WORDS, CAs contain certain words which are used less often than these but occur more than once: these are called CONTENT WORDS These are important words With these words, we are able to give a summary of what is the main information that the text carries Let us look at the following example: (3.1) In American Life Inc CAs: the occurrence times of word ‘property’ are 4, of word ‘debt’ are 5, of word ‘fund’ are 3, of word ‘mortgage’ are (3.2) In Ascribe plc CAs: the word ‘healthcare’ is repeated 12 times, the word ‘patient’ gets 26 times of occurrence (3.3) In Innovation First Notice CAs: the word ‘insurance’ is times 2.1.2 Synonymy Throughout English and Vietnamese corporate advertisements, it is easy to notice that synonymy is used here and there to make the text coherent Its aim is to avoid overusing a word or a phrase Tran Ngoc Them (31.1:137) defines synonymy as a cohesive device realized by different words or phrases conveying the same meaning Synonyms can be nouns, adverbs or adjectives as both members of the pair are the same part of speech 28 29 Table 3.2: Synonym – Absolute count Part of speech Nouns Verbs Adjectives Total Synonym English 9 21 Vietnam 13 14% 43% Nouns Verbs Adjectives 43% Figure: 3.3 Frequency of Occurrence of synonyms in English CAs Figure 3.3 illustrates parts of speech and frequency of occurrence of synonyms While synonym is most found with nouns and verbs of (43%), synonyms of adjectives accounts for only14% This can be explained that nouns and verbs normally function as subjects and predicates Parts of speech and Frequency of Occurrence of synonyms in Vietnamese CAs Nouns Figure 3.4 Frequencyof Occurrence of synonyms in Vietnamese CAs Verbs Adjectives Let us examine the following examples: c For the safety and security of the investors, American Life Inc does not attempt to increase yield to investors by maintaining debt To the contrary, American Life Inc strives to reduce existing mortgage balances to zero American Life Inc applies the proceeds of sales of limited partnership interests to investors to pay down debt on the 29 30 related property American Life Inc closes off further investment in a partnership once the debt on that property had been fully repaid and a reasonable reserve fund established It can be said that synonymy is used for avoiding repetition In the above example, it is easy to realize that the following words (nouns and verbs) are synonyms: “Attempt to” and “strive to” “Investor” and “partnership” “Safety” and “Security” “Maintain” and “reserve” By means of synonym, the author wants to avoid overuse of repetition and monotony in word choice However, the coherence, precision and clarity are not affected and not making the ad boring to read Here are some more examples of synonyms: “Yield, earning and income” “Healthcare professional and “Grow and increase” clinician” “establish and found” “Internationally and overseas” “Growth and development” “Paperless “Requirement and need” report” “Convert and transfrom” “Administer, monitor and manage” “Real estate and property” “data and information” “offer, deliver and provide” “Personal and private” “Support and enhance” “ease and reduce” report and electronic “Customer and client” In addition, it is easy to find out synonyms that are popularly used in Vietnamese CAs Let have a look in the following examples tiếp cận = tiếp xúc nỗ lực = phấn đấu thuê = vay không ngừng = liên tục chuẩn= xác cao quý = cao đẹp tăng= đẩy mạnh= phát triển thích ứng = phù hợp hỗ trợ= giúp lâu dài = bền vững 30 31 hữu ích = thiết thực nhà quản lý = nhà lãnh đạo luật sư = luật gia Some words may be misconceived to be synonymous in meaning Look at this example: E.g This division provides a range of comprehensive hospital administrative systems that monitor patients and medical resources Although the two italic words are similar in meaning, it is unacceptable to call them synonyms because ‘administrative’ is an adjective while ‘monitor’ is a verb However, it is clear that the two words are linked in the same kind of way as the repeated words 2.1.3 Antonymy Some of meaning relations among words can be created by using another means of lexical cohesive devices that is antonymy Antonyms are words that opposite in meaning Like synonyms, antonyms are sometimes found in English CAs E.g This represents approximately 9% of the limited portion of SODO land available for private development, making American Life Inc one of the largest private holders of SODO real estate The opposition between limited and available can be thought of as antonyms Other antonyms pairs are “Low” and “High”, “minimize” and “maximize”, “grow and reduce” We can sometimes see the use of antonym in Vietnamese CAs: nhà nước, tư nhân nhanh chóng, chậm chễ nước ngồi, nước vật chất, tinh thần 2.1.4 Super-ordinate 31 32 It is commonly accepted that super-ordinate is for class and subclass relation, a group of words may relate to one another in this way or that way In general, a word that present the previously mentioned ones with high generality is called super-ordinate The division of super-ordinate into two categories made by Mc Carthy (1990:25) are immediate super-ordinate and general super-ordinate These types appear less in English written discourse, especially in CAs texts than other lexical cohesive devices a Immediate super-ordinate E.g The management of American Life Inc began investing in the Seattle area in 1974 Since its formation in 1996, the Company or persons closely related to it purchased or leased 20 prime warehouse properties in or nearby SODO and added significant value by converting what were low yielding warehouses into higher return, flexible office, hi-tech, shop and storage space The Company and its principals now control approximately 20 acres within SODO This represents approximately 9% of the limited portion of SODO land available for private development, making American Life Inc one of the largest private holders of SODO real estate Though it is hard to find out immediate super-ordinate in the English CAs, we implicitly understand that real estate presents the words office, shop and storage space We express this sense relation by saying that real estate is an immediate super-ordinate for office, shop and storage space Using the immediate super-ordinate technique is a way of subgroup that helps to make the text more coherent The author thinks that the readers share the same knowledge with him on the thing and person he mentions b General super-ordinate 32 33 E.g Our integration technology allows us to deliver the modern requirements in Healthcare IT without the need to replace the current Patient Administration Systems This allows us to deliver immediate benefit for our customers with tried and tested software Generally speaking, general super-ordinate appears more frequently than immediate super-ordinate It is noticed from the above example that the general super-ordinates replace nominal words preceding them According to Halliday and Hasan, general words are cohesive only when they have the same reference as what they are presupposing and when they are accompanied by a reference item “the” or one of the demonstratives ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’ 2.2 Collocation Within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often than would be expected by chance Collocation refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example which prepositions are used with particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are used together Collocations should not be confused with idioms McCarthy (1990) defines collocation as a word that keeps a family of words collocated with each other This leads to the notion of lexical phrases, certain phrases that always appear in the same form, such as by pure coincidence According to Nation (1990:32) collocations are words that often occur together and the collocation of a word is the company it keeps For Richards (1992:62), collocation refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together Moreover, Hill and Lewis (1997:i) come up with the definition of collocation that is special pairs of words which occur together so often In general, Collocation is the relationship between two words or groups of words that often go together and form a common expression Thus, remembering and 33 34 applying collocation words in written discourse precisely helps to create coherent text Below is a collection of collocation words that are found in the English CAs These will be catagorized in major grammatical features, providing the reader with a thorough understanding of their usages A Noun + noun: It is undeniable that collocational bond of noun + noun is the most frequently used Child care Healthcare market Care program Health examination Healthcare IT Care setting Healthcare professionals Care management Healthcare products Patient care Healthcare solutions Care plan Healthcare process Income stream Healthcare providers Reserve fund Healthcare goals Insurance carrier Healthcare program B Verb + Noun Provide solution Save life Provide data Establish reputation Provide clicians Make guarantee Provide decision support Make decision Provide Information Make acquisition Provide knowledge Cover debt Provide services Pay debt Offer solution Earn income Reduce risk Improve health C Adjective + noun Mental health Steady growth 34 35 Medical risk Organic growth Domestic care Medical equipment Holistic view D Verb + preposition Rely on Come from Suffer from Integrate with Close off Access to Lead to Attempt to Adapt to Strive to Contact with Transform to E Adverb + verb Directly improve, successfully deliver F Adverb + participal adjective Centrally located, closely related, well-done G Adjective + preposition Dedicated to, related to, capable of We will look at some collocated words and phrases that are found in Vietnamese CAs These expressions are so familiar with the readers that they are not too difficult to be realized and normally positive the reader Here are a classification of these collocations Adjective + Adjective Hài hoà hiệu Phong phú & đa dạng Chuyên nghiệp, hoàn hảo, hiệu Head Noun + Noun 35 36 Trình độ chun mơn Hợp đồng kinh tế Ứng dụng thực tiễn Xây dựng phát triển Cơ hội tiếp cận Quyền lợi ích Khả tài Cơng ty trách nhiệm hữu hạn Quy chế hoạt động Trình độ học vấn Hoạt động sản xuất kinh doanh Giấy phép hoạt động Sở hữu trí tuệ Phong cách kinh doanh Văn phòng đại diện Chiến lược phát triển Head Noun + Adjective Quan hệ chặt chẽ Chỗ dựa tin cậy Chuyên gia hàng đầu Đối tác tin cậy Kết hợp hài hoà Đối tác chiến lược Giá trị gia tăng In general, we can come to conclusion of the lexical cohesive devices used in the corporate advertisements as follows: - The high proportion of repetition in the written discourse normally contributes to the coherent and cohesive texts The copywritters repeat important words aiming at giving the reader a comprehensive understanding of the main information Coming across the repeated words or phrases will remind the reader of what they are reading - Collocation accounts for the second proportion among all lexical cohesive devices in Corporate Advertisements With low frequency of occurrence synonym, antonym and super-ordinate also make a valuable contribution to the coherence and cohesion of the corporate advertisements Therefore it is essential for the copywriters to focus on using repetition and collocation as powerful means of lexical cohesive devices to create coherent corporate advertisements 36 37 PART C: CONCLUSION The study gives an overall look into the systematic features of language at the discourse level The coherence of the academic discourse, and lexical cohesive devices used to create coherence of a discourse, that is useful for copywriters of corporate advertisements 37 38 The industry of production and services in Vietnam has recently been developing, especially after Vietnam officially joined the biggest organization of the world “World Trade Organization” Vietnam has implemented an open-door policy to lure foreign investors to come to Vietnam Many provinces and cities have issued incentive policies such as: rolling out red carpet, tax reduction on land rental, infrastructure building to invite the local and foreign investors to Vietnam Corporate advertisement is an important device of introducing the image of a company or an organization to readers, potential partners, investors or clients Business and operational models should be specified clearly and in details However, in Vietnamese corporate advertisements, the copywriters hardly notice the equivalent lexical items that are rendered from Vietnamese into English or vice versus It makes the readers confused The main reason can be the shortage of language as well as cultural differences, causing the ineffectiveness in writing corporate advertisements in English Not being aware of these factors, the texts will fail to draw attention of the readers and the writers will produce inefficient texts without coherence and cohesion In order to draw attention of the investors, each company and organization must set up their own prestige to the public by advertising their business on public media, mainly on website or newspaper The readers mainly foreigners who wish to cooperate with Vietnamese companies then can access to the company information to have an overview of the operation and organizational structure As a matter of fact, the advertisements are almost in English that is regarded as an international language How to produce an effective corporate advertisement is a matter for thinking among the copywriters and translators Their mission is to deliver enough and exact information of the company operation as well as its business strategies Actually, there is no specific rules for corporate advertising It depends on the length and purpose of the text However, in this study, I would like to give some 38 39 suggestions for Vietnamese copywriters with the hope that they can create better quality corporate advertisements First of all, the copywriters are supposed to have a profound understanding of the corporate culture as well as its operational organization In addition, knowledge of lexical cohesive devices is also of great importance In order to have a cohesive and coherent writtings, the following points should be remembered Replace long words with shorter ones Make sure paragraphs are focused Do not over claim or use flowery language If the product is new, tell the reader what is new about it Do not use capital letters, it looks as if you are SHOUTING! and not as important information Write facts not opinion – you must be able to back uop statements such as ‘largest’, ‘best’, and so on Then, in order to avoid missing information and small details, after finishing draft writing, the copywriter should spend time looking at the following checklist to assure that all information has been displayed The year the company was established: simply state the year The location of the company: mention the city/town The products/services that the company offers The membership of a group company Any foreign investment project that the company may have Machinery and technology used Production experience Number of staff and foreign language speakers if available The organization of the company 10 Any achievements that the company gains 11 Quality certifications 39 40 The author personally believes that this study might contribute significantly to the writing skills as well as lexical cohesive devices knowledge of the copywriter They can avoid mistakes arising at the time of creating and concluding the corporate advertisements SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY Since the limited time and scope os this minor thesis, the we cannot cover all issues related to the study If we have more time to continue our research, we hope to focus on the following areas of cohesion: - Other devices of cohesion will be examined with more examples and data - Contrastive analysis of lexical cohesive devices in written discourse of other genres in bilingual types - Equivalence of collocational structure in English and Vietnamese will be mentioned for practical application in writing corporate advertisements Due to the constraint in time, the framework of a minor M.A thesis as well as limited knowledge of the author, mistakes are inevitable Hopefully, the study will make a contribution to the quality of writing corporate advertisement 40 41 41 ... precision and clarity are not affected and not making the ad boring to read Here are some more examples of synonyms: “Yield, earning and income” “Healthcare professional and “Grow and increase” clinician”... care Healthcare market Care program Health examination Healthcare IT Care setting Healthcare professionals Care management Healthcare products Patient care Healthcare solutions Care plan Healthcare... written language, it is important to maintain enough information, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization of sentences Grammatical metaphor: Written language presents rather