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What are the lexical cohesive devices used in English Letters of Enquiry?. Assumptions of the study In conducting the research, I have assumed that there are some differences in the use

1 Rationale

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Discourse Analysis was greatly influenced by a number ofstudies Halliday emphasized the social functions of language In Britain, Sinclair andCoulhard developed a model for the description of Teacher-Pupil talk; other similar workshave dealt with Doctor-Patient interaction, interviews, debates and so on Meanwhile, inAmerica, the work of Goffman, Sack and Jefferson is important in the study ofconversation, turn-taking, and other aspects of spoken interactions Thus, DiscourseAnalysis is a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into various aspects of language inuse and therefore of great importance to language teaching Traditionally, languageteaching has dealt with pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary; but now it is DiscourseAnalysis that raises our awareness of how to put this knowledge into action to gainsuccessful communication

Business letters in general and letters of enquiry in particular have long been considered askey documents in the business context due to the fact that Vietnam nowadays is step bystep adhering to the development in the world Consequently, we have joined a lot ofinternational organizations and corporations; we also have signed international documentsparticularly in the business transactions with other countries Among those documents andtexts, business correspondence plays a key role In fact, writing business correspondence isbecoming a more and more important task in many corporations and companies The letter

of enquiry is indeed significant among various kinds of business letters thanks to itsfrequency in use So many factors have to be taken into consideration in the process ofwriting a letter of enquiry; namely the format, the style, the language, so on and so forth.Additionally, the knowledge of cohesion and coherence is greatly essential in discourseconstruction and comprehension for communication Cohesion and coherence are actuallyregarded as the important aspects of language usage

With all the reasons above, the author would like to choose “An Analysis of LexicalCohesive Devices in English Letters of Enquiry” as the topic of this study

2 Aims of the study

The main aims of the thesis are as follows:

1 To identify lexical cohesive devices used in English Letters of Enquiry.

2 To realize the role and contribution of lexical cohesive devices to successfulletters of enquiry

3 The research questions of the study

In order to achieve the aims stated, the study is meant to find out the answer to 2 followingresearch questions:

1 What are the lexical cohesive devices used in English Letters of Enquiry?

2 How do lexical cohesive devices contribute to the success of a letter of enquiry?

4 Assumptions of the study

In conducting the research, I have assumed that there are some differences in the use oflexical cohesive devices in English enquiry letters and in other kinds of text and eachlexical cohesive device plays a different role in terms of importance level in the success of

a letter of enquiry I drew heavily, among many publications, on Brown and Yule’s (1983)

Discourse Analysis and on the classic study of Cohesion in English by Halliday and

Hasan (1976)

5 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying the correctness andsignificance related to linguistic theories in discourse analysis by working on a certain kind

of discourse (Letters of Enquiry)

Practical significance: This thesis helps gaining an insight into the use of lexical cohesivedevices in the Letters of Enquiry

6 Scope of the study

This study focuses on the lexical cohesive devices in only one kind of businesscorrespondence, namely the Letter of Enquiry in English The paper explores theprocess in which coherence is achieved in the formal written genre of letters ofenquiry As explicitness, conciseness and unambiguity are fundamental qualities insuch a discourse, the main emphasis is put on lexical cohesive devices, such as

repetition or careful use of synonymy Data analyzed is taken from 15 English letters

of enquiry chosen randomly

7 Methodology

7.1 The data of the study

The data is taken from 15 English Letters of Enquiry chosen randomly from some foreigncorporations and organizations

7.2 Methods of the study

To attain the aims of the study, the research shall conduct the following activities:

Firstly, set up a framework of lexical cohesive devices in order to find out the definingcharacteristics of Letters of Enquiry as a genre

Secondly, three previous studies on lexical cohesive devices used in other types of genreare reviewed to latter compare with the use of lexical cohesive devices in letters ofenquiry

Thirdly, various letters of enquiry are collected and analyzed in terms of lexical cohesivedevices: reiteration and collocations All the 15 letters are analyzed to identify the lexicalcohesive devices used, their frequencies of occurrence are counted, and it is through thisprocess that the significance level of each device to the letters is made clear

Finally, necessary comments and conclusions are made according to the data analyzed.The approach to the study is both inductive and deductive, based on a collection of sampleletters of enquiry

8 Design of the study

Within the scope mentioned above, the study consists of three main parts: introduction,development, and conclusion

Part B (Development) is divided into four chapters In the first chapter, Literature Review,theoretical knowledge of cohesive devices and Letters of Enquiry is presented The secondchapter deals with the literature review of some previous studies on the similar issue Thethird chapter, also the main one of the study, focuses on the analysis of the lexical cohesive

devices employed in the English letters of enquiry In the last chapter, we attempt topresent some findings and implications.

Chapter I Theoretical Background 1.1 Discourse and Discourse Analysis

1.1.1 Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language andthe context in which it is used This has been developed from the works of differentdisciplines in the 1960s and early 1970s, including linguistics, semiotics, psychology,anthropology, and sociology Discourse analysts study language in use: written texts andspoken data of all kinds under the approach different from those old grammarians Therehave been numerous interpretations to what is meant by Discourse Analysis

British discourse analysis was mainly influenced by M.A.K Halliday’s functionalapproach to language Halliday’s framework emphasized the social function of languageand the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing De Beaugrande (1980),Halliday and Hasan (1976) as well as Prague School of linguists have made theirsignificant contribution to this branch of linguistics in pointing out the link betweengrammar and discourse

Yule (1996: 139) states: “In the study of language, some of the most interesting questionsarise in connection with the way language is ‘used’, rather than what its components are.(…) We were, in effect, asking how it is that language-users interpret what other language-users intend to convey When we carry this investigation further and ask how it is that we,

as language-users, make sense of what we read in texts, understand what speakers meandespite what they say, recognize connected as opposed to jumbled or incoherent discourse,and successfully take part in that complex activity called conversation, we are undertakingwhat is known as discourse analysis.”

As can be noticed clearly, the term “discourse analysis” is very ambiguous For the sake of

research, we would like to take the definition from Hoa’s (2000) An Introducition to Discourse Analysis as the base of our study: Discourse analysis is considered “as a study

of how and for what purposes language is used in a certain context of situation and thelinguistic means to carry out these purposes”

1.1.2 Discourse and Text

The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1998) definesdiscourse as follows: “Discourse is a general term for example of language use, i.e.language has been produced as the result of an act of communication.” Sharing the sameconcern, many other linguists have so far given definitions of discourse Widdowson(1979) states: “Discourse is a use of sentences to perform acts of communication whichcohere into larger communicative units, ultimately establishing a rhetorical pattern whichcharacterizes the pieces of language as a whole as a kind of communication.” WhereasCrystal (1992: 25) says: “Discourse is a continuous stretch of language larger than asentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke or anarrative.” Quite differently from the others, Halliday and Hasan (1976) give a simpledefinition: “We can define text (discourse) in the simplest way perhaps by saying that it islanguage that is functional.”

Linguists have paid much attention to the distinction between a discourse and a text sinceconfusion of these two terms may result in the failures of discourse analysis Even thoughthat the distinction is not always clear and the two terms are used interchangeably by somelinguists As in the above-mentioned definition of discourse by Halliday and Hasan, “text”

is employed to refer to “discourse”; they see “text” as a “semantic unit” characterized bycohesion The two authors state: “A text is a passage of discourse which coherent in thesetwo regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent

in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive” (1976: 23) Forsome other linguists, “text” is used for writing and “discourse” for speech The third group

of linguists like Brown & Yule, Nunan, Widdowson, and Cook see discourse as a processand text as a product Brown & Yule argue that text is the representation of discourse andthe verbal record of a communicative act

In this study, we would like to take Widdowson’s viewpoint of the difference and theinterrelationship between the two as the base: “Discourse is a communicative process bymeans of interaction Its situational outcome is a change in state of affairs: information isconveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is Text.” (1984: 100)

1.1.3 Discourse Context

1.1.3.1 Context

David Nunan (1993: 7) defines: “Context refers to the situation giving use to the discourse,and within which the discourse is embedded.” According to him, context consists of twotypes: linguistic and non-linguistic Linguistic context is in fact referred to as co-text Itsurrounds or accompanies the piece of discourse under analysis Non-linguistic contextwas first noticed by the anthropologist Malinowski who created the terms “context ofsituation” and “context of culture” His idea was later taken up by Firth (1957) who placedgreat emphasis on the “social context” Firth saw the context of situation as crucialdeterminants of utterance meaning However, like Malinowski, Firth did not provide atheoretical account of the effect of context on utterance meaning

Lately, Halliday and Hasan (1976) focus on context of situation when they report the study

of Malinowski (1923) The three headings field, mode, and tenor which had been proposedfor these are considered highly general concepts for describing how the context of situationdetermines the kinds of meaning that are expressed Yet, according to Halliday and Hasan,the linguistic features, which are typically associated with a configuration of situationalfeatures – with particular values of the field, mode, and tenor - constitute a register

1.1.3.2 Register

Generally speaking, there are different ways to define register Halliday and Hasan (1976:23) defines: “The register is the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns,that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words andstructures that are used in the realization of these meanings.” They acknowledge that theconcept of cohesion needs to be supplemented by that of register since the two togethereffectively define a text

Register is the linguistic feature of the text that reflects the social context in which it isproduced It reflects the degree of formality of the particular text by using a characteristicset of lexical and grammatical features that are compatible with the particular register Alower register is represented by the use of more colloquial and everyday-type vocabularyand fewer complex grammatical forms while a higher register requires the use of lexical

items that are professional or academic in nature along with denser grammatical structure,resulting in a more literate spoken or written text Register is theorized by Halliday andHasan (1985) in terms of the contextual variables of field, mode, and tenor.

Field: In the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976: 22), the field of discourse is “the total

event, in which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of speaker orwriter.” Therefore, they argue that field includes the subject-matter as one element in it.Field is also considered to refer to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that

is taking place Hatim and Mason share the same idea in that field is different from subjectmatter because one field maybe characterized by a variety of subject matters

Mode: The mode of discourse refers to the medium of the language activity including

channel Channel is an important aspect of mode Hatim and Mason (1990) show theirview of mode as follows: “The mode of discourse refers to what part the language isplaying, what is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in thatsituation, the symbolic organization of the text, the status that it has, and its function in thecontext, including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two?)and also rhetorical mode, what is being achieved by the text in terms of such categories aspersuasive, expository, didactic, and the like.”

Tenor: As for Halliday and Hasan, “the tenor refers to the type of role interaction, the set

of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved.” It

is the tenor that relays the relationship between the addresser and the addressee In moredetailed, the tenor of discourse is considered to refer to who is taking part, their statusesand roles This also points out what kinds of role relationship got among the participants

In summary, field, mode, and tenor of discourse are in a dialectical relationship Hatim andMason (1990: 51) affirm this: “These three variables are independent: a given level offormality (tenor) influences and is influenced by a particular level of technicality (field) in

an appropriate channel of communication (mode).”

procedural discourse, etc In recent years, genre has been a controversial topic for a largenumber of linguists who form the two main trends

For the systematic linguists, texts have their specific linguistic form to correspond to theirsocial purposes Text is the realization of social practices and this relationship is mutuallypredictive This group of scholars put social context into two communication planes, one

of which is genre or context of culture, the other is register of context of situation

The other linguists see the relationship between context and language in quite oppositedirection They classify genre as smaller parts of registers For instance, Couture (1986,quoted in Swales, 1990:41) states: “Unlike register, genre can only be realized incompleted texts or texts that can be projected as complete, for a genre does more thanspecify kinds of code extant in a group of related texts; it specifies conditions forbeginning, continuing, and ending a text.” According to Swales (1990) and Bhatia(1993:13), “a genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set ofcommunicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of theprofessional and academic community in which it regularly occurs.”

In short, the study follows the latter point of view in which genre is understood as a type of register as one register may include different genres For example, a story can be amyth, a legend, or a tale The relationship among these elements is that language isrealized through registers, and registers are in turn realized through genres and texts

sub-1.1.4 Spoken and Written Discourse

Spoken and written discourses represent different modes for expressing linguistic meaning.Despite some similarities, these two forms of discourse are basically different from eachother The major difference between them is taken from the fact that spoken discourse ischangeable and written is permanent

Spoken discourse is often less planned and orderly, more open to intervention by thereceiver while the written one is well structured and the possibilities for subordinateparticipants are very limited Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that spoken and writtendiscourse serve various functions: the first is used for the establishment and maintenance

of human relationship (interactional use); and the second for the working out of andtransference of information (transactional use)

This study focuses on cohesion in written discourse of letters of enquiries, regarded as theproduct of a communicative process Therefore, disciplines of discourse analysis must befollowed carefully.

1.2 Cohesion

1.2.1 The Concept of Cohesion

The concept of cohesion is closely connected with text It is defined as the grammaticaland lexical relationship between different elements of a text According to Yule (1996), atext is usually considered to have a certain structure which depends on factors quitedifferent from those required in the structure of a single sentence Some among thosefactors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties and connections which exist within atext

Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) also define cohesion in a similar way: “The concept ofcohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, andthat define it as a text.” They also point out that cohesion often occurs where theinterpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another

To summarize, cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discoursesemantically coherent; or as Hoa (2000: 23) indicated “cohesion refers to the formalrelationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together”

1.2.2 Cohesion vs Coherence

The distinction between cohesion and coherence has not always been clarified partly

because both terms come from the same verb cohere which means sticking together In

fact, cohesion is the network of different kinds of formal relations that provide linksbetween or among various parts of a text, and is expressed partly through the grammar andpartly through the vocabulary Coherence, on the other hand, is understood as the quality

of being meaningful and unified As for Nunan (1993), coherence is “the feeling thatsequences of sentences or utterances seem to hang together” Coherence refers to the type

of semantic and rhetorical relationship that underlines texts

If cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent, then coherence involves with what makes a text semantically meaningful

Cohesion is the realization of coherence, and coherence is something created by thereaders in the act of reading the text The two categories represent the interrelated aspectsthat make a text or discourse coherent and different from random ones In short, coherence

is embodied by a system of cohesive devices and cohesion is mainly used to ensurecoherence

1.2.3 Cohesion and Discourse Structure

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 10), discourse structure is a type of structure – thestructure of some postulated unit higher than a sentence such as a paragraph, or somelarger entity such as episode or topic unit The concept of cohesion is set up to account forrelations in discourse without the implication that there are some structural units that areabove the sentence Cohesion, in this view, refers to the range of possibilities that exist forlinking something with what has been previously mentioned

They also affirm the possibility of setting up discourse structure, including some entity asparagraph or topic unit The structure is considered to truly exist in these cases, at least incertain genres or registers of discourse Though we cannot show whether there is afunctional relation between two sentences, or a similar unit, we can specify a limitednumber of possible structures, such as types of modification or subordination, transitivity

or modal expressions and the like Instead, the two authors assure: “We have to show howsentences, which are structurally independent of one another, may be linked togetherthrough particular features of their interpretation; and it is for this that the concept ofcohesion is required.”

1.2.4 Types of Cohesion

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the classification of cohesion is based on thelinguistic form The type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguisticsystem or on lexico-grammatical relations In other words, the cohesive relation can beinterpreted as being either lexicogrammatical in nature or semantic It can be made clearer

in the following description:

Nature of cohesive relation Type of cohesion

Relatedness of form Substitution and ellipsis; lexical collocation

Relatedness of reference

Semantic connection

Reference; lexical reiterationConjunction

Table 1.1 : Type of Cohesion

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976:304)

Reference, substitution and ellipsis are clearly grammatical; lexical cohesion, as the nameimplies, lexical Conjunction is on the borderline of the grammatical and the lexical; the set

of conjunctive element can probably be interpreted grammatically in terms of systems, andsome conjunctive expressions involve lexical selection However, it is better to put it in thegroup of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical componentinside Consequently, we can refer to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion asfollows:

or cataphoric

Substitution

Substitution is a relation in the wording rather than in the meaning and within the text It isthe use of substitute word or phrase to avoid repetition Most of the substitutes are pro-forms within sentences, which can be used across sentences There are three types ofsubstitution: norminal, verbal, and clausal substitution

Ellipsis

Ellipsis is an omission of certain elements from a sentence or a clause and can only berecovered by referring to an element in the proceeding text The former is non-cohesive,and the latter is cohesive Elliptical cohesion always appears anaphoric Ellipsis can berepetition This is quite similar to substitution in terms of three types: norminal ellipsis,verbal ellipsis, and clausal ellipsis

Conjunction

Conjunction differs from substitution, ellipsis and reference in the fact that it is not adevice for reminding the readers of previously-mentioned entities, actions, and states ofaffairs It is not in the kind of anaphoric relation It is, however, a truly cohesive devicebecause it signals relationship that can only be understood through reference to other parts

of the text There are four types of conjunction: temporal, causal, additive and adversative

1.2.4.2 Lexical Cohesion

Lexical cohesion was first advanced in terms of collocation by Firth (1957) and laterdeveloped by Halliday (1961, 1966) Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in adiscourse are semantically related in some way Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify lexicalcohesion into two main categories: reiteration and collocation

Reiteration

Reiteration, according to Halliday and Hasan (1976: 318) is “the repetition of a lexicalitem, or the occurrence of a synonym of some kind, in the context of reference; that is,where the two occurrences have the same referent.” Reiteration involves repetition,synonyms and near synonyms, superordinates, and general words

“ambassador” of an enterprise A great deal of business in the world is conducted by thismeans Thus, it is extremely important to be able to write good business letters thatrepresent one’s self and one’s firm to take the best advantages

No intelligent, forward-thinking businessman would tolerate a rude, careless or untidysalesman or representatives Yet thousands of letters go out everyday that reflect discreditupon the firm they represent, letters that antagonize as surely as an offensive or bad-mannered individuals Such letters could do more harm than good, for often they destroy

the very confidence and goodwill they seek to establish and maintain Therefore, the form

of the letter with good quality paper and attractive letterhead plays its significant role, butwhat is more important to decide its success or failure is the message it carries Thebusiness correspondence requires the writer to express himself or herself accurately in alanguage that is plain, clear, courteous and readily understood The entire success of goodbusiness letter writing is to write simply and in an easy and natural style

1.3.1.2 Why to use the business letter

When comparing oral and written communication, a variety of reasons for putting things inwriting are found out as follows:

 Written documents serve as permanent records Clearly, while talks and memoriescan fade away, written documents allow people to store data

 Written channels are more effective than oral ones for presenting numerical dataand complex information

 Written channels are more convenient for the recipient than oral ones This remarkseems more obvious in international business as talking on the phone requiresimmediate comprehension while a fax or a letter enables the receiver to process theinformation more accurately

 Written channels may enable the sender to convey his/her message moreeffectively Writers can present their ideas in the most efficient way, even indifficult situations

 Written channels are less expensive than oral ones for reaching large group ofpeople or transmitting information over long distances

Among written means of correspondence, business letters nowadays seem not asconvenient as some other electronic ones like e-mails, telexes, faxes, cables, which can betransmitted in just a few seconds Letters; however, may be the best means ofcommunication in many cases – when the corresponding context is highly formal or when

an important, reliable document with signs and stamps is needed

1.3.2 General Description of Letters of Enquiries

1.3.2.1 What is a Letter of Enquiry?

Actually, the letter of enquiry can be referred to as request letter or inquiry letter or letter

of inquiry Among various kinds of business letters, letters of enquiry seems to occupy aconsiderable proportion As the name states, a letter or enquiry is one type of businessletters which is written to enquire something The letter of enquiry is useful when you need

information, advice, names, or directions There are two types of inquiry letters: solicited and unsolicited

You write a solicited letter of inquiry when a business or agency advertises its products orservices For example, if a software manufacturer advertises some new package it hasdeveloped and you can't inspect it locally, write a solicited letter to that manufacturerasking specific questions If you cannot find any information on a technical subject, aninquiry letter to a company involved in that subject may put you on the right track In fact,that company may supply much more help than you had expected (provided of course thatyou write a good inquiry letter)

The letter of inquiry is unsolicited if the recipient has done nothing to prompt your inquiry.For example, if you read an article by an expert, you may have further questions or wantmore information You seek help from these people in a slightly different form of inquiryletter As the steps and guidelines for both types of inquiry letters show, you mustconstruct the unsolicited type more carefully, because recipients of unsolicited letters ofinquiry are not ordinarily prepared to handle such inquiries

A businessperson will inevitably have to write many letters of enquiry The need forinformation or special favours, services, or products arises daily in almost every type ofbusiness The reasons for writing a request letter are diverse They can be to obtaininformation (such as prices or technical data), to receive printed materials (such asbooklets, catalogues, price lists, and reports), to receive sample products, to ordermerchandise, to engage services (including repair or maintenance services), to makereservations (at hotels, restaurants, theaters, etc.), or to seek special favours (such aspermission, assistance, or advices), so on and so forth

While certain requests, such as ordering merchandise, are routine matter, the generalguidelines for business letter writing are especially important when writing any request.Tact and courtesy are essential when the writer want the recipient to act And if we want

him to act promptly, our letter must encourage him to do so Therefore, all letters ofenquiry should

- be specific and brief

- be reasonable

- provide complete, accurate information

1.3.2.2 Genre and Register of Letters of Enquiry

Genre: a genre is a culturally and linguistically distinct form of discourse As mentioned

previously, communicative purpose, audience, and conventionalized style and format ofthe text are features related to genre, but it is communicative purpose that shapes the genreand gives it internal structure A letter of enquiry belongs to business correspondencegenre, and therefore it attempts to sound “businesslike”

Register: Enquiry letters are registered by a mixture of language: official, formal and

expressive All of these make it a unique kind of text

Field: The field of enquiry letters is nothing than the field of business For this, the

language used in enquiry letters tends to be standard, regular but flexible

Tenor: The tenor of enquiry letters is interpersonal relationship which is the relationship

between writers and readers because we are working on written discourse

Mode: The mode of letters of enquiry is in the form of formal written discourse.

Under “Mode”, we would like to discuss the following parts:

a Length of discourse

In this study, we would like to concentrate on “neutral” letters of enquiry, i.e not too shortand not too rhetorical The right length includes the right amount of information If sendersleave out vital information, they may loose the opportunity to be answered and acted ontheir enquiries

Totally, enquiry letters are rather short and simple, mostly presented in only one page If

we take sentence unit to measure the length of discourse of this kind of business letters,then they have the average length of only around 4 sentences

Among 15 selected letters for this study, the shortest one consists of 3 sentences and thelongest is of 5 sentences

We look forward to hearing from you soon [EL 2]

We thank you in advance for your trouble [EL 8]

We would be very grateful if you let us know whether this enquiry is still valid and if

so, would you let us have the above-mentioned samples and your specification, upon receipt of which we will be able to prepare a detailed quotation for you [EL 10]

From the description in your catalogue, we feel that your Lotus range is the one most suitable for our demand, and should be glad if you would send us your quotation for men’s and women’s coats, in both small and medium size, to be delivered C.I.F Alexandria [EL 11]

d Paragraphs

In order to help the reader to comprehend the letters, it is very common for the writer toput each separate idea in a separate paragraph The majority of letters of enquiry consists

of three or more paragraphs divided as follows:

(1) First paragraph: mentions of which firm the writer is on behalf and how he/she

knows about the reader’s firm

(2) Middle paragraphs: consists of one or more than one paragraphs clarifying the

exact request(s)

(3) Final paragraph: expresses gratitude to the recipient’s attention and anticipated

response to the request

The survey shows that 8/15 discourses of enquiry letters, equal to over 50%, consists of 3paragraphs, 4 letters have 4 paragraphs each, 2 letters have 2 paragraphs each, and onlyone is of 5 paragraphs

e Mood and Voice

Mood: Through working on 15 chosen letters, it is realized that imperative sentences are

used seldom in comparison with the declarative ones, which are the main occurrences inletters of enquiry The imperatives can be counted for totally only 5 times (in EL 3, 4, 9,

15, 11) and are often related to the inquiry or request For instance:

Please quote your latest price and state the time of delivery and the most favourable terms of payment,… [EL 4]

When quoting, kindly send us a range of samples of the goods [EL 9]

Voice: Style of letters of enquiry should not be so simple that it becomes discourteous It is

normally suggested that the passive voice should be one of stylistic devices for formalstyle documents However, the study among selected letters shows completely contrary

results The body part of most letters is often written in active voice with the repeated use

Delivery would be required within three months of the order [EL 14]

The prices are preferred to be CIF London including packing [EL 15]

Chapter II Literature Review

Thanks to the open-door policy renovation process, Vietnam is now expanding itsrelationship with the other nations in economic, scientific and technical field English hasbeen widely used in almost every field, particularly in business As a popular means ofcommunication, English is considered a key to success in international business ventures Regarding a variety of tasks facing the Vietnamese in business area, we cannot helpmentioning business letters writing Business letters are becoming more and more popular

in the country today Therefore, the question “how to write effective business letters” hasbecome a challenging issue for both experienced businessmen, i.e the people who areactually involving in the business activities, and inexperienced people, i.e those who arelearning business correspondence writing Considerable researches have been carried outwith attempt to satisfactorily answer the above-stated question by looking inside variousaspects of business letters, and the usage of lexical cohesive devices is a significant one.The author has consulted a number of such studies and would like to review here someamong them due to the sake of later comparing and analyzing the data of lexical cohesivedevices in Letters of Enquiry The data analysis of these papers is presented in order tomake a distinction between the use of lexical cohesive devices in Enquiry Letters and othertypes of business letters Unfortunately, the first two papers do not give the statistics ofcollocation We, therefore, can present the findings of reiteration only.

The first researched was an M.A thesis named “A Contrastive Analysis of English andVietnamese Sales Letters” by Tran Thi Thanh Hai (2001) After examining thirty Englishsales letters, Hai comes to the conclusion of the frequency of occurrence of reiteration asfollows

Table 2.1 The frequency of occurrence of reiteration in English sales letters

Types of reiteration Frequency of occurrence (%)

Graph 2.1 Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices in

English sales letters

The data found shows that in English sales letters, repetition takes up the highest portion(69.4%); Synonyms come next with the percentage of 14.7% Superordinates are of a littlehigher percentage than synonyms with 11% and antonyms (4.9%) ranks the fourth.Antonyms are of the smallest proportion in English sales letters These figures can lead us

to the conclusion that repetition is by far the most frequently used lexical cohesive device,

so it is considered the most effective one in sales letters to create cohesion and cohesion Inaddition, it is undeniable that the other lexical cohesive devices also play an indispensablerole in the creation of cohesion and cohesion in sales letter writing

The second study is also an M.A thesis written by Le Thi Mai Hien which is “An Analysis

of Cohesive Devices in English Application Letter” (2004) The process of researching ontwenty English application letters has enables her to reach the following results

Table 2.2 The frequency of occurrence of reiteration in English application letters

Types of reiteration Frequency of occurrence (%)

Graph 2.2 Frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesive devices in English application

letters

Repetition in English application letter also occupies the first position among the fourkinds of reiteration with up to 53.4% Differently from English sales letters, superordiatesrank the second with a considerably higher percentage, 24.9% compared with 11%.Synonyms and Near-synonyms account for nearly the same portion, which is respectively10.4% and 11.3% However, unlike in sales letters, near-synonyms in application lettersseem to play a more important part, with 11.3% compared with 4.9%.

The next study we would like to review is another M.A thesis by Phuong To Tam (2003)

“An analysis of Coherence and Cohesion and a Contrastive Analysis of Lexical CohesiveDevices in English and Vietnamese”

Unlike the two other mentioned papers, the data for this study is not from businesscorrespondence but from a chapter (chapter 5) on International Trade in the textbook

“International Business – An Integrated Approach” by John J Wild, Kenneth L Wild, andJerry C Y Han (1998) The attention of the study is paid to considering contrastiveanalysis of lexical cohesive devices (including reiteration and collocation) in English(source language) in the original textbook and their equivalents in Vietnamese (targetlanguage) in the translation version The author attempts to collect data in both Englishversion and Vietnamese one to see the frequencies as well as similarities and differences ofeach device and sub-device of lexical cohesive devices in the discourse of both languages.Here, we would like to review the results found in the English language only for the sake

of relevance of statistics to this minor thesis The data analysis is presented as follows

Table 2.3 Repetition – Categories and Frequencies of Occurrence

Types of repetition Frequency of occurrence (%)

Other content words

Tittles

Graph 2.3 Repetition – Categories and Frequencies of Occurrence

The table and graph above shows the categories and frequencies of occurrence of repetition

in English in a chapter from a business textbook It is clearly seen that repetition is mostoften seen with nouns and noun phrases All the other types of repetition (proper names,other content words and titles) range from 9.6% to 15% accounting for a quite smallportion in the total

Table 2.4 Synonyms – Categories and Frequencies of Occurrence

Types of synonyms Frequency of occurrence (%)

Graph 2.4 Synonyms – Categories and Frequencies of Occurrence

Graph 2.4 illustrates the categories and frequencies of occurrence of synonyms Whilesynonyms is most found with nouns (47%) and then verbs (42%), synonyms of adjectivesaccounts for more than 10% and none with adverbs This can be explained by the fact thatnouns and verbs act as subjects and predicates, sometimes, these parts in sentences should

be emphasized by using synonyms with different shapes of meaning

Table 2.5 Antonyms – Frequencies of Occurrence

Types of synonyms Frequency of occurrence (%)

Graph 2.5 Antonyms – Frequencies of Occurrence

Table 2.5 reveals the frequencies of occurrence of antonyms of different parts of speech It

is clearly seen that unlike synonyms, antonyms happen mostly with adjectives, of 48%,next comes to the verbs of nearly 30% and the least in nouns

The paper by Phuong To Tam then focus on different types of collocations in English inwhich she classified collocations (in terms of structure) into two main types: Noun-collocations with noun as one element and the others without the appearance of nouns

Table 2.6 Percentage of Noun-collocations and other types

Types of collocations Frequency of occurrence (%)

Noun-Graph 2.6 Percentage of Noun-collocations and other types

As can be seen from the graph, noun-collocations dominate all other types of collocationswith up to three quarters of the whole pool The other types occupy for only 25% of all thecases

In summary, it is noticeable that many researches on cohesive devices and particularlylexical cohesive devices have been carried out in many discourses and genres However,none has been done to English letters of enquiry Thanks to the results gained from thesestudies, we can see more clearly the distinction in the use of lexical cohesive devices inletters of enquiry and in other kinds of texts

Chapter III Lexical Cohesive Devices in

English Letters of Enquiries

In this chapter, we attempt to study the lexical cohesion in English letters of enquiry inorder to work out the cohesive effects gained through the selection of vocabulary Besidesthe two main areas of lexical cohesion, namely reiteration and collocation, we also mentionthe class of “general nouns” as an important cohesive agent

The class of “General Nouns”

This group of words is usually considered as the borderline between grammatical andlexical cohesion, which has cohesive function “General nouns” can be defined as smallsets of nouns having generalized reference within the major noun classes Though they areneglected sometimes in descriptions of English, they play a significant part in verbal

interaction Therefore, it is believed that this source of cohesion cannot be ignored whenanalyzing cohesive relations of discourses.

When looking through all 15 letters of enquiry selected for the research, we can easilyrealize that some general nouns are used repeatedly The list is as below

Table 3.1 The class of “General Nouns” in Letters of Enquiry

Following are some examples of the occurrence of general nouns in the letters of enquiry

As we usually place very large orders, we would expect a quantity discount in addition to a 20% trade discount off net list price, and our terms of payment are

normally 30-day bill of exchange, documents against acceptance.

The prices are preferred to be CIF London including packing.

When replying, please state (1) discounts allowable (2) terms of payment and (3) earliest possible of delivery.

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