1 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale As the business environment grows in its complexity, the importance of skillful communication becomes essential in the pursuit of institutional goals Without communicating ideas and thoughts it would be impossible to identify common objectives and purposes necessary for successful operations Without communication the chances for a successful outcome of any business endeavor are significantly reduced Communication in business is carried out via oral and written documents These written documents, or business correspondence, cover a wide range of genres including business letters, business contracts, memos, and reports Given the importance of communication, it should come as no surprise that the primary purpose of a business report is to convey factual information regardless of which kind of report it is Whatever the reason and whatever form they may take, reports have become an integrate part of our business society The report plays the great role in the planning and organization of the business house But it is not the planning and organization of the business alone which come under the review of a report; it is the whole of business which benefits by it Business reports are required in disciplines such as accounting, finance, management, marketing and commerce Writing business reports is one of fundamental business writing skills Business reports here are defined as “ documents that present information on a specific topic for specific purpose” ( Boone, 1986: 308) One common kind of business is progress reports which are written to inform the reader what work has been done and what work remains to be done A progress report provides the reader with detailed information regarding ups and downs of business through producing a record of a certain period of time such as a month, a quarter, or a year Progress reports represent not only the writer's work but the writer's organizational and communication skills To acquire these skills, report writers should gain deep insights into the discourse of progress reports Specifically, they must have a good understanding of the common structure and linguistic features pertaining to a progress report Therefore, a thorough study of the discourse of English business progress reports obviously promises a helpful and interesting research It not only helps businessmen in their work but also students and teachers in the course of learning and teaching business reports 1.2 Aims of the study This study aims at analyzing English business progress reports The specific aims of the research are as follows: • To investigate registers of the discourse of business progress reports in terms of parameters of registers, use of grammar, and use of vocabulary • To examine the factors creating coherence of the discourse of business progress reports that is relevance and discourse structure • To provide some suggestions for writing better business progress reports 1.3 Scope of the study Due to the scope of a minor M.A thesis, 10 English business progress reports are selected for the investigation The English language used in these documents is authentic and is named in the Sources of data Within the frame of a minor M.A thesis, the analysis is confined to registers and factors creating coherence in English business progress reports at initial steps only The limitations of this work would be good starting points for further studies on the issue 1.4 Significance of the study The study adopts an integrated approach to investigate the discourse of business progress reports It is an attempt to find out registers, and coherence employed in this kind of official documents It makes a contribution to the study of business documents in general, and that of business reports in particular It not only helps businessmen in their work but also students and teachers in the course of learning and teaching business reports 1.5 Research methods used in the study To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study adopted an integrated approach to discourse analysis Naturally, this is a functional approach regarding discourse as a process of interactive communication among members of the society (Nguyen Hoa, 2003) This approach looks into the concerned discourse in terms of registers and coherence Firstly, all the 10 reports collected were analyzed in terms of registers Then, two variables of coherence including relevance and discourse structure were examined To this, all the reports were examined to find out all the relevant factors And finally, discourse structure was identified 1.6 Organization of the thesis: The thesis is divided into five chapters Chapter is the Introduction which presents the rationale for conducting the study, the scope of the study, its significance, aims as well as research methods Chapter provides a theoretical framework for the study, including the notion of discourse, registers, coherence, and a brief description of English business progress reports Chapter reports the methodology used in the research including the subjects of the study, data collection methods, and data analysis procedure Chapter presents and discusses the results of discourse analysis in terms of registers and relevance Chapter is the last part of the study, “Conclusion”, that summarizes what is addressed in the study, points out the limitations, provides some suggestions for writing business progress reports, and for further study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter aims at establishing the framework of investigation The first section presents briefly the notion of discourse and text, and distinguishes spoken and written discourse In the next section, the concept and parameters of registers are reviewed What comes after that is Coherence which involves the two constituting factors: relevance and discourse structure The last section provides a general description of English progress reports focusing on definition and properties 2.1 Discourse 2.1.1 Discourse and text For some linguists, the two terms “discourse” and “text” are sometimes be used interchangeably According to Crystal (1992), discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language rather than a sentence, often continuing a coherent unit, such as a sermon, argument, joke or narrative” and text is defined as “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed language identified for purposes of analysis It is often a language unit with a definable communicative function, such as a conversation, a poster.” However, it is important to make clear the difference between the two terms “discourse” and “text” Basically, there are two approaches to text (Nguyen, H, 1998: 10) The first approach regards text as: “the verbal record of a communicative act” (Brown and Yule, 1983:6) Sharing this view Widdowson, 1984: 100 considers text as the linguistic product of a communicative process In the second approach, text is seen as a semantic or communicative category Following this approach are Halliday and Hasan , and De Beaugrande and Dressler Text is viewed by Halliday and hasan, 1976 as a “semantic unit” characterized by cohesion or a framework that is logical and general Meanwhile, De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981:3) defines text as follows: communicative occurrence which posses seven constitutive conditions of textual communication, viz., cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality The difference and the interrelationships between the two terms is captured by Widdowson (1984: 100) by the following: “Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction Its situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is text.” From the discussion of discourse and text above, in this thesis, I shall take the view that is clearly stated by Brown and Yule (1983: 1) “The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use.” As such, discourse is the communicative process while text is the verbal or physical record of this process, and discourse analysis is concerned with the functional analysis of language in use 2.1.2 Spoken and written discourse According to Brown and Yule (1983), spoken language and written language are different in terms of their various functions The first is used for the establishment and maintenance of human relationships (interactional use) and the latter for the working out and transferring of information (transactional use) Halliday (1985a) stated that “speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraph boundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out the prosodic and paralinguistic contributions” Cook (1989: 50) also insisted: “Spoken discourse is often considered to be less planned, more open to intervention by the receiver There are some kinds of spoken discourse, however, like lessons, lectures, interviews and trials, which have significant features in common with typical written discourse etc Conversely, there are times when readers have rights to affect written discourse Writers respond to the marker” To sum up, spoken and written, despite some of their minor similarities, represent different modes for expressing linguistic meaning 2.2 Registers 2.2.1 The concept of registers Register, or context of situation as it is formally termed, "is the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns that are typically drawn upon under the specific conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings" (Halliday, 1978:23) They also point out that “the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features- with particular values of the field, mode and tenor- constitute a Register” According to Celce- Mercia & Olshtain, 2000, discourse registers usually reflect the level of formality or informality of an instance of a discourse or its degree of technical specificity versus general usage Actually, register reflects degree of formality of the particular discourse by using a characteristic set of lexical and grammatical features that are compatible with the particular register To put it another way, register can be seen as speech variety used by a particular group of people, usually sharing the same occupation or the same interests The term "register" first came into general currency in the 1960s (Leckie-Tarry, 1993:28) Halliday et al (1964:77) describe register as "a variety according to use, in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and chooses between them at different times." This use-related framework for the description of language variation (as contrasted with the user-related varieties called dialects) (Hatim and Mason, 1990:39) aims to "uncover the general principles which govern [the variation in situation types], so that we can begin to understand what situational factors determine what linguistic features" (Halliday, 1978:32) For Halliday, register is "the clustering of semantic features according to situation type", and "can be defined as a configuration of semantic resources that the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type" (Halliday, 1978:111) Seen this way, "the notion of register is at once very simple and very powerful" and "provides a means of investigating the linguistic foundations of everyday social interaction from an angle that is complementary to the ethnomethodological one" (ibid.:31, 62) The theory of register thus derived "attempts to uncover the general principles which govern" how "the language we speak or write varies according to the type of situation" (ibid.:32) Galperin (1981: 33) suggests five functional styles which appear mainly in the literary written language: the belle- letters, the publicity literature, the newspaper (press), the scientific prose, and the official document 2.2.2 The parameters of registers Halliday (1978:64) finds the concept of register "a useful abstraction linking variations of language to variations of social context" and suggests "that there are three aspects in any situation that have linguistic consequences: field, mode, and tenor" (Eggins, 1994:52) According to him, field refers to "what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place," mode concerns "what it is that the participants [of a transaction] are expecting language to for them in that situation," and tenor has to with who are taking part in the transaction as well as the "nature of the participants, their status and roles (Hasan and Halliday, 1985:12) These three register variables, or parameters, delineate the relationships between language function and language form In other words, a register is constituted by "the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features—with particular values of the field, mode and tenor" (Halliday, 1976:22) 2.2.2.1 Field According to Halliday (1978) “field is the total event, which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or the writer, it thus includes the subject matter as one element in it” It is clear that field is concerned with the purpose and subject matter of the communication 2.2.2.2 Tenor The tenor of a text, which concerns the relationship between the addresser and the addressee, can "be analyzed in terms of basic distinctions such as polite-colloquialintimate, on a scale of categories which range from formal to informal" (Hatim and Mason, 1990:50) Tenor is divided into personal tenor and functional tenor Personal tenor covers the degree of formality, and technicality of linguistic exchanges It is concerned with the social roles of participants together with their status relationship and personalities such as the characteristics of the social relationships of participants; formality or informality; social identity; age; sex; power relations Meanwhile, functional tenor is concerned with determining the social function or role of utterance, identifying the purpose for which the language is being used 2.2.2.3 Mode Halliday and Hasan (1976) defines mode as “ the function of the text in the event, including therefore both the channel taken by the language spoken or written, extempore or prepared and its genre, or rhetorical mode, as narrative, didatic, pursuasive, “ phatic communication” and so on” In other words, mode is concerned with the means of transmission The two basic modes are spoken (monologue, conversation) or written (newspapers, reference books and so on) As such, the mode of an interaction which manifests the nature of the language code being used can be distinguished in terms of, among other things, spoken and written On the micro scale, mode refers to the use of grammar involving the use of modality, active and passive voices, kinds of sentences, etc and vocabulary innvolving archaic words/ phrases and technical terms Use of grammar * Modality: A modal form is a provision of syntax that indicates the predication of an action, attitude, condition, or state other than that of a simple declaration of fact The modality of a grammatical form is the quality or state in question These include the assertion or denial of any degree or manner of affect, belief, certainty, desire, obligation, possibility, or probability on the part of the utterer Modal verbs, like “can”, “could”, “will”, “would”, “should”, and “ought to”, express distinctions of mood, such as that between possibility and actuality * Active and Passive voices: English verbs have two voices: active voice and passive voice In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.) In active voice sentences, the agent or doer of the action is the subject The receiver takes the action of the verb Active sentences follow the Agent- Verb- Receiver format In sentences written in active voice, the subject performs the action expressed in the verb; the subject acts In active voice, the person acting is clear: "The manager wrote the report yesterday" The person acting is the manager In sentences written in passive voice, the subject receives the action expressed in the verb; the subject is acted upon The agent performing the action may appear in a "by the " phrase or may be omitted In passive voice, the writer does not specify who is acting: "The report was written yesterday" It could have been written by the secretary, George Bush, or the manager- we don't know The sentence is still in passive voice if the writer specifies the actor later in the sentence: "The report was written yesterday by the manager" Sometimes the use of passive voice can create awkward sentences, as in the last example above While active voice helps to create clear and direct sentences, sometimes writers find that using an indirect expression is rhetorically effective in a given situation, so they choose passive voice Most handbooks recommend using active voice, which they describe as more natural, direct, lively, and succinct * Kinds of sentences: There are three basic kinds of sentence structure: simple, compound, and complex The simple sentence forms the building block for the other two A simple sentence has two requirements It must have a subject and a verb, and it must express a complete thought A compound sentence is formed when two simple sentences are joined together with a conjunction The most common conjunctions are and, but, and or We use and to show addition, but to show contrast, and or to suggest a choice The following example is a "traditional compound sentence": The plane was an hour late leaving, and many of the passengers appeared upset Of the three types of sentence structures, the complex sentence is the most sophisticated It allows you to use clauses to change the ordinary pattern of "subject-verb-predicate." A complex sentence contains a clause, which is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought There are three kinds of clauses: adverb, adjective, and noun Of the three types of clauses, the business writer uses adverb clauses the most Adverb clauses answer questions such as "when, where, how, why, and under what condition" something is done Two examples of adverb clauses are as follows: Since I joined this company…and Because I was promoted…Both word groups have a subject and a verb, but neither expresses a complete thought Use of vocabulary: * Archaic words and phrases Archaic words/ phrases are the ones no longer in dictionary use, though retained for special purposes This type of words often appears in the works of formal style such as legal and business documents Some examples are in accordance with, pursuant to, hereby * Technical words: 10 Technical words terms define typical words or phrases on specific fields These terms build the technicality- a particular feature of a type of documents For example, in legal documents, these technical terms serve as linguistic means contributing to the clarity and airtightness of legal documents In business documents, these technical terms are business terms that are used in the documents 2.3 Coherence Coherence is an essential matter in the course of discourse analysis According to Nguyen Thien Giap (2000: 192) “It is coherence that makes a product of language a discourse or a text” Coherence is really a combination of many variables, two of which are relevance and discourse structure 2.3.1 Relevance The notion “relevance” is a concerning aspect in the theory of discourse analysis According to Brown & Yule (1983), relevance is an important factor helping to achieve discourse coherence Relevance is realized by relevant factors, and these factors often exist together to form relevant structure which in turns makes coherence for discourse Brown and Yule (1983: 84) puts it: A discourse participant is speaking topically when he makes his contribution fit closely to the most recent elements incorporated in the topic framework 2.3.2 Discourse structure There have been a number of studies on discourse structuring In this study, the author presents Mann and Thompson’s (1987) Their Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is a theory of text organization which provides a framework developed to account for text structure above the clause level, by hierarchically positing relations between spans of text The theory is based on the understanding that a text is not merely a string of clauses, but consists instead of hierarchically organized groups of clauses that stand in various relations to one another These rhetorical relations can be described functionally in terms of the purposes of the writer and the writer's assumptions about the reader They hold between two adjacent parts of a text, where, typically, one part is nuclear and one a satellite In this respect, they resemble Grosz and Sidner's relations As well as representing the relationship between two text spans, rhetorical relations also convey information about 26 Future Activities Following activities will be planned for the future: o Prepare final editing and distribute the 2003 TDM Resource Guide and Strategic Marketing Plan document o Attend Initial Bike to Work Day 2004 meeting on October 3rd o Regional TDM Marketing Group meeting on October 7th o Meet with Dudnyk on October 7th regarding staff changes at agency to determine impact on contractual obligations The last part of a progress report is the ending serving as a conclusion This part is aimed at restating the purpose of the report or business activities and providing some evaluation of the encountered problems and changes in the project (schedule shifts, new requirements, etc.) and overall assessment of the business activities Obviously, the relation that helps to serve these purposes are Summary, Restatement, and Evaluation For example: Everything is working out nicely There have not been any problems that would throw off our plans The conclusion in the example above evaluates briefly the business activity in concern The relation employed is Evaluation The relation Summary can be illustrated in the following example: The Performance Tracking Directorate concludes that there has been a significant, measurable improvement in the overall program management and administration of grants and contributions since the 1999 IAB Audit During the course of this review, the Performance Tracking Directorate observed: • Improved management and administration of grant and contribution programs • A high level of compliance with the directives and guidelines that HRDC issued between January 20 and April 30, 2000 • Supporting financial documentation from sponsors was available to substantiate claims made to HRDC 4.2.2 Discourse structure In business, the information provided in reports needs to be easy to find, and written in such a way that the client can understand it This is one reason why reports are divided into sections clearly labelled with headings and sub-headings Structurally, an English business progress report consists of main parts: the beginning, the body, and the ending 27 4.2.2.1 The beginning The Title of the progress reports is in the top middle and is in capital letters and in bold type, which is considered as the standard form in English business progress reports Under the Title is the heading providing report readers with the following information: - The name of the company and the name of the business activity: are in capital letters and in bold type For example: CAMPANY : GLENBRIAR TECHNOLOGIES Inc BUSINESS ACTIVITY: MICRO- AID COMPUTER SERVICES - The reporting period: defines the time period covered in the report In case of monthly progress reports, the time period is a whole month in a year from the first day of the month to the last day of the same month In case of quarterly progress reports, the time period is a quarter of a year Since progress reports have significant time value, this piece of information is of great importance For example: Reporting period: 1st Sep 2007- 30th Sep 2007 or Period Covered: 1st August 2007- 31st August 2007 or Covering Period: July - September 30, 2007 - The recipient: often includes the name and position of the person who the report is sent to Sometimes, the receiver may not be a person but an organization or a department in a company This piece of information is important in the sense that it helps decide the tone of the report This particularly holds true when the reader is the writer's supervisor In such case, the tone should be serious and respectful For example: Staff Contact: Or D Franklin - Marketing manager Recipient Organization: Robert Matheson - President - The report writer: this piece of information has its own value in identifying the person who is in charge of all the information presented in the report As mentioned above in chapter II, a progress report not only details the work one has performed and the work 28 you has yet to perform, but it also addresses the report readers' concerns about the schedule, quality, and components of the project For example: Edited By: Or N Ramfos Prepared by: Danette Campbell - Date of report: is the date when the report is written For example, in a monthly progress report, this date is normally one day of the month right after the month covered in the report If the month covered in the report is September, then the report is written in a day in November For example: Today's Date: Or November 27, 2007 Date of Report: October 15, 2005 To sum up, according to the survey result, the standard form involving all the relevant factors of the beginning of a progress report may be described as follows: PROGRESS REPORT COMPANY: BUSINESS ACTIVITY: Reporting period: Staff Contact: Edited By: Date of report: Following is a specific example taken from a progress report to make this point clearer: MONTHLY PROGRESS REPORT COMPANY : D.C TECNOLOGY CO., Ltd BUSINESS ACTIVITY: COMMUTER OPERATIONS CENTER Reporting period: 1st September 2003 – 31st Sep 2007 Staff Contact: C Arabia Edited By: N Ramfos Today's Date: October 27, 2007 Another example of a quarterly progress report is as follow: 29 QUARTERLY PROGRESS REPORT COMPANY : GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION BUSINESS ACTIVITY: MOTOR DECISION TOOLS Covering Period: July - September 30, 2007 Date of Report: October 15, 2007 Recipient Organization: Advanced Energy Edited By: Daniel Welch 4.2.2.2 The body The body section expands and develops the material in a logical and coherent manner, containing the most important information of the report This section is usually the longest part of the report The material must be presented logically under different informative headings and sub-headings In general, the type of headings used to organize the information in the body of a report depends on the purpose of the report you are preparing As mentioned in chapter II, the purpose of a progress report is to inform report readers who may be supervisor, colleague, business partner, or clients of what work has been done and what work has not been done It also addresses the readers' concerns about the schedule, quality, and components of the project To serve this purpose, the body of a progress report is often divided under main headings: - Background activities ( or Work Completed) - Problems encountered - Future activities ( or Plans for next reporting period) As mentioned above, the name of each heading contains the information presented in that section - Background activities: The background activities present all activities that have been performed during the reporting time, so they should form their own section A progress report that clearly spells out your achievements will be useful in persuading the client that you will achieve the intended goals by the specified deadline This section presents a complete picture of the individual's/team's activities including what work has been completed and what work is yet to come These activities can be presented in a number of different ways This would be a project-tasks approach Other approaches are time-periods or a combined approach As the name itself suggests, a project- task approach focuses on 30 the tasks This approach works well for projects with a series of different tasks or milestones The second approach is time- periods approach with focus on time This approach is often adopted when timeline is more important than milestones The two above approaches could be combined if, for example, under previous work, one breaks down what one has done by individual tasks Or, under the tasks, one focuses on what part is complete, what part is in progress, and what part is yet to come It was found in the data upon which this study is based that the analysis of 10 monthly progress reports shows that out of 10 reports adopt this approach Next is project- tasks approach in reports, and only one report adopts the combined approach An explanation for the common use of time- periods approach by most report writers may lies in the fact that monthly progress reports cover a short period of time As a result, it is easy for report readers to follow the reports in the sense that they can have a look into activities performed in the month from the beginning to the end of the month Below are some examples to illustrate the use of the discussed approaches that are in the data • Project-tasks approach: For example: Activity is reported by major task Task 1: 100 Motor Study – The 100 motor study is the task with the longest lead time and thus we are concentrating our efforts on this task We are making good progress We have identified and ordered all the motors we need for the project in North Carolina and have only remaining to place in New York and 11 in California Task 2: Economics of Motor Reliability Study – To date we have found no industrial plant data that tracks mean time between failure (MTBF) for repaired motors Only one plant has been found that tracks MTBF at all, and that was for new motor installations only Observations made during the course of our field efforts taking load measurements from motors for the 100 motor study will also be included Task 3: Horsepower Breakpoint Curve Update – We finalized the specification for the online tool and determined that out sourcing the development to a vendor was the best option AE provided examples of the tool and how the breakpoint curves should be designed The specification for this tool is under development with a proven software vendor 31 Task 4: Dissemination of Results for Maximum Impact – In July we presented our preliminary findings to date on the 100 motor study at the ACEEE conference and discussed our project status with the Motor Resource Center (MRC) Advisory Group in a special session at this meeting The MRC Advisory Group is a diverse group of organizations that impact the motor market both directly and indirectly • Time-periods approach: For example: On August 7, 2003, GM met with the Lawrence County Road Commission to discuss county road usage during the remediation project; On August 8, 2003, General Motors (GM), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S EPA), and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) met separately with the residents of 112 Bailey Scales Road GM received IDEM's certification on August 13, 2003, for the use of Rumpke’s Medora Landfill located in Jackson County, Indiana or Republic’s Sycamore Ridge Landfill located in Vigo County, Indiana for the non-RCRA-hazardous,