This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by YUNXIA, Z. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Structural Moves Reflected in English and Chinese Sales Letters

UNITEC, AUCKLAND

Understanding differences in communication styles is becoming increasingly important in intercultural business communication as more and more countries are involved in doing business internationally and more and more people are doing business with mainland China. This article aims to compare the structural moves used in English and Chinese sales letters from social, intercultural and pragmatic perspectives. It has been argued that the study of text styles such as linearity and circularity in comparative rhetoric may not be sufficient to reflect the overall features of the genres involved. Therefore a holistic approach based on genre study and schema theory has been employed to explore the communicative purposes and various levels of the text. Hall's high- and low-context cultures and cross-cultural pragmatics have also been incorporated to enrich the genre approach. A corpus of 40 sales letters (20 in Chinese and 20 in English) was examined and it was found that Chinese sales letters share similar marketing strategies with English letters as the Chinese economy is becoming increasingly decentralized and privatized. Differences in communication patterns between these letters were identified, however, and shown to be largely due to a number of factors such as the specific values and beliefs of each culture and the different business practice in mainland China.

Key Words: communicative purposes • cross-cultural comparative study • sales genres • structural moves

Discourse Studies, Vol. 2, No. 4, 473-496 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/1461445600002004004


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				M. Cheung `Click here': the impact of new media on the encoding of persuasive messages in direct marketing Discourse Studies, April 1, 2008; 10(2): 161 - 189. [Abstract] [PDF]