English and Vietnamese business complaint letters - a comparative study from systemic functional perspectives

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English and Vietnamese business complaint letters - a comparative study from systemic functional perspectives

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English and Vietnamese business complaint letters - a comparative study from systemic functional perspectives Lại Thị Thanh Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Nguyễn Huyền Minh Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract. This thesis is an attempt to deal with business complaint letters as one of the most popular kinds of business correspondence. The research is concerned with the four aspects of Systemic Functional Grammar namely transitivity, mood, theme and cohesion reflected in both English and Vietnamese letters. In the study, an analysis is made on fifteen business complaint letters written in English language and fifteen others written in Vietnamese by Vietnamese people. From the analysis, similarities and differences are identified and explained in the light of Systemic Functional Theories. Basing on the findings, the thesis provides some suggestions for writing and teaching writing effective business complaint letters in English to Vietnamese learners and teachers. Keywords. Tiếng Anh; Ngữ pháp chức năng; Tiếng Việt; Kinh doanh; Thư Content 1. General introduction and rationale of the study It is generally accepted that in the last few decades of the 20 th century, there has been a great source of research on language; however, their attentions were only paid to the form of the language systems, which are studied and explained apart from their functions in relation to social situations. Besides, their concern was basically with structural theories, which show that small units were arranged and combined into larger ones. The recent research, on the other hand, has fallen into the tendency toward discourse analysis, which focuses on factors affecting the communication and also the functioning of syntactic, pragmatic and social aspects. Unlike the former studies, these ones pay attention to the meaning of not only the sentences but also utterances and discourses. The preference of the study is inspired from the fact that the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar has been widely accepted as an essential tool in language comprehension for communication. According to Eggins (1994: 1 cited in Thao, Phuong 2003: 2), „Systemic Functional Linguistics is increasingly being recognized as providing a very useful descriptive and interpretive framework for viewing language as a strategic, meaning-making resource‟. Hallidayan linguists used the functional model of grammar to interpret how people use language and how language is structured for use. This theory, in fact, has been proved as a great model of language for analysts when analyzing texts especially at discourse level. In Vietnam, there have been a great number of studies in the area of discourse analysis these days. However, the number of those works based on Systemic Functional Perspectives does not seem to reflect the potential variety. Especially in the last few decades, Vietnam has been seen its expanding relationship with many other nations in economics, scientific and technical fields; English language as an international language, therefore, has been widely used in every field, especially in business communication in general and business transaction in particular. The issues of business communication as well as business transaction thus should be unsurprisingly a rich source for linguists in analyzing discourse. An inspirational source that helps me to prompt the choice of the analysis of business correspondence is the fact that this kind of letter is truly suitable and essential in Vietnamese background recently. It cannot be denied that business correspondence plays an important role in business communication. Besides, it is a fact that defects seem to be unavoidable in carrying out business transactions; even for the best-managed organizations this seems to be in the same case. Letters of complaint, therefore, can be made and understood as customers‟ inevitable reaction. In Vietnam, customers have gradually had the tendency to write complaint letters; however, this has not become their habit and a number of customers, in fact, still hesitate to do this although they know they have the right to do. In addition, knowing how to write an effective business complaint letter is really a challenge for many people. My own observation shows that even the students of business have limited knowledge and experience in writing complaint letters not only in English but also in Vietnamese. In the hope of working out some solutions to help Vietnamese people as well as Vietnamese students, to some extent, overcome their difficulties in writing business complaint letters, the study is an attempt to analyze some basic discourse features of business complaint letters from Systemic Functional Perspectives. Based on this, similarities and differences between English letters and Vietnamese ones will be identified. After that, some suggestions will be drawn out to improve the studying and teaching writing business complaint letters in English. 2. Aims of the study The object of the study focuses on only one kind of business letters, namely, the letters of business complaint in both English and Vietnamese. Due to the constraints in time and limited knowledge in Business English, this thesis will not deal with all aspects of complaint letters but concentrate on analyzing transitivity pattern, mood, thematic pattern, and cohesion of letters in the light of Systemic Functional Grammar. The study aims at: - Presenting and describing transitivity pattern, mood pattern, thematic pattern and cohesion in both English and Vietnamese business complaint letters; - Identifying the similarities and differences in both English and Vietnamese business complaint letters in terms of transitivity pattern, mood pattern, thematic pattern and cohesion; 3. Scope of the study Business letters are the primary and useful tools of exchanging ideas, facts, recommendations, proposals and so on within a business or between a business and other businesses and individuals, which give chances to businesses to operate efficiently and productively. Effective letter writing involves the use of grammar and vocabulary, discourse cohesive devices and the communicative strategies. As mentioned above, due to the constrain in time and knowledge and the limitation of a minor thesis, the research cannot explore all the aspects of this broad area but only the transitivity pattern, mood pattern, thematic pattern and cohesion of the letters. The investigation and analyses have been based on the data in 30 business complaint letters written by both English and Vietnamese native speakers (15 in English and 15 in Vietnamese; both types of letters are numbered from 1 to 15 for more convenient reference) which I presume to be sufficient data. These data are collected from textbooks, internet, and authentic English and Vietnamese business complaint letters written by businesses and customers as well as other business associates. 4. Method of the study The study is confined to the description, analysis and comparison in terms of transitivity, mood, thematic pattern and cohesion. In order to achieve the goal, the approach is inductive, which is based on the data as well as authentic business complaint letters. Firstly, a large number of business complaint letters will be carefully selected from textbooks, internet and authentic sources. Because of the fact that there seems to be no fixed format for this kind of correspondence, the letters were randomly chosen as data, providing they are of business complaints. In addition, the authenticity is highly appreciated by the authors; most of the letters are, therefore, mainly chosen from authentic sources as mentioned above. Secondly, a certain number of the selected letters will be described and analyzed in terms of transitivity, mood, thematic pattern and cohesion. Thirdly, the data obtained will be analyzed and compared in order to find out the similarities and differences in both English and Vietnamese business complaints. Finally, the research results will be discussed to figure out some suggested ideas to help Vietnamese people write effective business complaints in English. Besides, discourse analysis in the light of Systemic Functional Grammar helps to establish the framework of the theoretical background. 5. Design of the study This study is comprised of three parts: Part One of this study is an introduction presenting some background information and the rationale of the study. The aims, the scope and method of the study are also dealt with in this chapter. Part Two consist of three chapters. Chapter One is aimed to present the theoretical background of the work. Some essential concepts closely related to the study are carefully discussed one by one. Firstly, some theories of discourse including the concept of discourse, functions of language, and discourse context. Next, in terms of Systemic Functional Grammar, some concepts such as transitivity, mood, theme- rheme, and cohesion consisting of reference, substitution, ellipsis, lexical cohesion, and conjunctive cohesion are presented. Finally, the definition, purpose, three contextual parameters and structure of business complaint letters are also discussed in the chapter. Chapter Two attempts to analyze business complaint letters in both English and Vietnamese in the light of Systemic Functional Grammar. In this chapter, the four chosen terms of transitivity, mood, theme-rheme and cohesion which consists of reference, substitution, ellipsis, lexical cohesion and conjunctive cohesion are carefully analyzed to help figure out the differences and similarities of business complaint letters in the two languages in the next chapter. Chapter Three is concerned with the discussion of the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese business complaint letters in terms of transitivity, mood, theme-rheme and cohesion. The last part is set up to summarize the whole research. Some useful implications for studying and teaching writing effective business complaint letters are also drawn out in this chapter. References English source 1. Bertha J.Naterop, Erich Weis & Eva Haberfellner, (1977), Business letters for all, OUP. 2. Bloor, T. & M. Bloor, (1995), The Functional analysis of English, Arnold. 3. Cook, G. (1989), Discourse, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 4. Eggins, S., (1994), An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, London/New York: Continuum. 5. G. Brown and G. Yule, (1983), Discourse analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6. Giang, Hoàng Thu, (2003), An Analysis of English and Vietnamese Claim Letters in terms of Speech acts and Politeness strategies, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 7. Hải, Trần Thị Thanh, (2001), A Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Sales Letters, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 8. Halliday, M.A.K & R. Hasan, (1989), Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective, Victoria: Deakin University Press. 9. Halliday, M.A.K, & J.K. Martin, (1993), Writing Science: Literary and Discursive Power, London: Falmer. 10. Halliday, M.A.K, (1994), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold. 11. Halliday, M.A.K, (2004), The Language of Science, Continuum Intl Pub Group. 12. Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, K.R., (1976), Cohesion in English, London: Longman Group Ltd. 13. Halliday, M.A.K., (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Arnold. 14. Hatim and Mason (1990), Discourse and the translator, Longman (London and New York) 15. Lộc, Dương Văn , (2001), Research Paper as a Genre in English and Vietnamese: A Systemic Functional Comparison, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 16. Mai, Đặng Phương, (2007), English and Vietnamese Job Application Letters in terms of Discourse Cohesive Devices – A Contrastive Analysis, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 17. Nunan, D. (1993). Introducing discourse analysis . London: Penguin. 18. Phương Thảo, (2003), Abstracts of Scientific Papers in English and in Vietnamese: A Systemic Functional Comparison, Unpublished M.A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 19. Thompson, G., (1996), Introducing Functional Grammar, New York: OUP. 20. Vân, Hoàng Văn , (2006), Introducing Discourse Analysis, NXBGD. Vietnamese source 1. Ban, Diệp Quang, (chủ biên), (2000), Ngữ pháp Tiếng Việt, NXBGD. 2. Hạo, Cao Xuân , (1991), Sơ thảo Ngữ pháp Chức Năng, Quyển 1, Hà Nội: KHXH. 3. Hạo, Cao Xuân, (chủ biên), (1999), Ngữ pháp Chức Năng Tiếng Việt, Quyển 1: Câu trong Tiếng Việt, NXBGD. 4. Triết, Lê Minh & Thanh, Lê Ngọc, (2004), Hướng dẫn viết thư Tiếng Anh trong Khoa học và Kinh doanh, NXB Cà Mau. 5. Vân, Hoàng Văn , (1998), “Những ứng dụng cơ bản của Ngôn ngữ Chức năng Hệ thống”, Tạp chí Khoa học ĐHQG Hà Nội, KHXH, Tập XIV, Số (5), trang 22-24 6. Vân, Hoàng Văn , (2002), Ngữ pháp kinh nghiệm của cú Tiếng Việt mô tả theo quan điểm Chức năng Hệ thống, Hanoi: KHXH. Internet sources 1. http://doangia.vn/index.php?mod=article&cat=m%E1%BA%ABu%C4%91%C6%A1nkhi %E1%BA%BFun%E1%BA%A1it%E1%BB%91c%C3%A1o&article=532 [accessed on 28/02/10] 2. http://www.consumeradvice.net/pages/letters/allow_repair.txt [accessed on 28/02/10] 3. http://www.consumeradvice.net/pages/letters/faulty.txt [accessed on 28/02/10] 4. http://www.consumeradvice.net/pages/letters/not_fit.txt [accessed on 28/02/10] 5. http://www.dost- dongnai.gov.vn/CSDLKHCN/Hosogiaiquyetkhieunai/tabid/103/language/vi- VN/Default.aspx [accessed on 28/02/10] 6. http://www.letterwritingguide.com/samplecomplaint.htm [accessed on 28/02/10] 7. http://www.sampleletters.in/business-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 8. http://www.sampleletters.in/complaint-letter-to-bank.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 9. http://www.sampleletters.in/consumer-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 10. http://www.sampleletters.in/customer-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 11. http://www.sampleletters.in/employee-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 12. http://www.sampleletters.in/formal-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 13. http://www.sampleletters.in/formal-letter-template.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 14. http://www.sampleletters.in/holiday-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 15. http://www.sampleletters.in/product-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] 16. http://www.sampleletters.in/tenant-complaint-letter.html/ [accessed on 28/02/10] . data. These data are collected from textbooks, internet, and authentic English and Vietnamese business complaint letters written by businesses and customers as well as other business associates both English and Vietnamese business complaint letters; - Identifying the similarities and differences in both English and Vietnamese business complaint letters in terms of transitivity pattern,. Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Sales Letters, Unpublished M .A. Dissertation, College of Foreign Languages, VNU- Hanoi. 8. Halliday, M .A. K & R. Hasan, (1989), Language, Context,

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