a disourse analysis of english sales presentations an integrated approach = phân tích diễn ngôn bài thuyết trình bán hàng tiếng anh ứ́ng dụng đường hướng tổng hợp

Register of discourse is investigated in terms of field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse.. With the limited time, this paper only looks at register of discourse of

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.22.15

HANOI – 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.22.15

Supervisor : Prof Nguyễn Hòa (PhD)

HANOI – 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DACLARATION 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3

ABSTRACT 4

TABLE OF CONTENTS………5

LIST OF TABLES 9

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 10

1.1 Rationale of the study 10

1.2 Aims of the Study 10

1.3 Scope of the study 11

1.4 Methods of the study 11

CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 13

2.1 Discourse 13

2.1.1 The notion of discourse 13

2.1.2 Discourse and text 14

2.1.3 Spoken and written discourse 15

2.2 Genre 16

2.3 Register of discourse 17

2.3.1 The notion of register 17

2.3.2 The parameters of register 18

2.3.2.1 Field of discourse 18

2.3.2.2 Tenor of discourse 18

2.3.2.3 Mode of discourse 19

2.4 Coherence 31

2.4.1 Relevance 31

2.4.2 Discourse structure 33

2.5 English sales presentations 35

2.6 Conclusion 36

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 37

3.1 Literature review 37

3.2 Research methods 37

3.3 Subjects of the study 38

3.4 Data collection methods 38

3.4.1 Data 38

3.4.2 Discourse recordings 38

3.4.3 Samples selection and samples size 39

3.5 Analysis procedure 39

3.5.1 Transcription 39

3.5.2 Analysis process 40

CHAPTER 4: THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES PRESENTATIONS 41 4.1 Register 41

4.1.1 Field of discourse of English sales presentations 41

4.1.2 Tenor of discourse of English sales presentations 42

4.1.3 Mode of discourse of English sales presentations 43

4.1.3.1 Use of grammar in English sales presentations 44

4.1.3.2 Use of vocabulary in English sales presentations 51

4.2 Coherence 57

4.2.1 Relevance of discourse of English sales presentations 57

4.2.2 Discourse structure of English sales presentations 59

4.2.2.1 The beginning 59

4.2.2.2 The body 60

4.2.2.3The ending 67

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 74

5.1 Concluding remarks 74

5.2 Implications 75

5.2.1 Implication for business communication 75

5.2.2 Implications for the teaching and learning presentation skill 76

5.3 Limitations 77

5.4 Suggestions for further study 78

REFERENCES 79 APPENDIX 1: I APPENDIX 2: IX APPENDIX 3: XVII

Chart 4: The frequency of occurrence of subject and other parts of speech as first

element of sentences in English sales presentations

Chart 5: The frequency of occurrence of types of adjectives in English sales

presentations

Chart 6: The frequency of occurrence of types of adverbs in English sales

presentations

Figure 1: Mode of discourse

Table 1: Register analysis of the article “A back door to war”

Table 2: Permission/Possibility/Ability modalities

Table 3: Obligation/Necessity modalities

Table 4: Volition/Prediction modalities

Table 5: Classification of Adjectives in English

Table 6: Classification of Adverbs in English

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study

In theory: Up to now, only few books and researches specialize in presentations,

and most of them are guidance in making presentation in general, for example:

Presentation Skills for Students (Emden, J & Becker, L., 2004) This thesis desires

to investigate this new field and to be as a reliable source for a salesperson before making his sales presentation

In practice: The rapid development of economy has created various challenges to

Vietnamese companies; they are forced to act more effectively in the market One

of their ways to compete with other companies is to make successful presentations

to introduce new products, in which they can provide clients with full information about new products Making an effective sales presentation becomes a challenge for businesses and business training centers when there is mostly no study or research on this field Therefore, the investigation to famous sales presentations will be a good means for enterprises to attract more customers and to get more profits

To make a persuasive sales presentation, it is undeniable to understand the discourse of sales presentation, especially register of discourse and coherence of discourse Register of discourse is investigated in terms of field of discourse, tenor

of discourse and mode of discourse Coherence of a discourse is created by cohesion, relevance and discourse structure With the limited time, this paper only looks at register of discourse of sales presentation and coherence of discourse of sales presentation in terms of relevance and discourse structure

1.2 Aims of the Study

Due to the constraints in time and knowledge in Business English, this thesis will not able to cover all aspects of sales presentations, this study aims at:

- Investigate register of the discourse of English sales presentations with three aspects: field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse

- Examine factors creating coherence of the discourse of English sales presentations: relevance and discourse structure

These aims are to answer the research questions:

- What is the register in terms of field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse, of English sales presentation?

- How coherence of discourse of English sales presentations is created via relevance and discourse structure?

1.3 Scope of the study

In business, there are various ways for a salesman to seek customers‟ needs including sales letters, advertisements, or sales presentations, etc Within the limit

of a M.A thesis, this research can only deal with one aspect of this broad area, that

is sales presentations made by Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple

This study is confined to the register of sales presentations with three aspects: field, mode and tenor of the discourse Moreover, this thesis will focus on coherence of discourse of sales presentations with two factors: relevance and discourse structure

1.4 Methods of the study

This study adopts an integrated approach to discourse analysis, which looks into the concerned discourse in terms of register and coherence

To do this, descriptive method is used to describe data and characteristics of the population or phenomenon being studied The description is used for frequencies, averages and other statistical calculation of variables of register and coherence‟s relevant factors of discourse of sales presentations

CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

This chapter aims at providing the framework of investigation The first section concerns briefly the notion of discourse, discourse and text, and distinguishes spoken and written discourse The second section is the review of genre The next section reviews the concept and parameter of register of discourse What is discussed in the fourth section is coherence which involves two factors: relevance and discourse structure The last section provides a general concept of English sales presentation

2.1 Discourse

2.1.1 The notion of discourse

From different points of view, discourse is understood and defined in different

ways Halliday (1985) defines discourse “is a multidimensional process” Guy

Cook (1990:6) claims that discourse is the language which has been used to communicate something and is felt to be coherent, whereas Richard et.al

(1985:83) defined discourse as “a general term for examples of language use, i.e., language which has been produced as the results of an act of communication It refers to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversation and interviews”

There is a number of other definitions of discourse, for the purpose of this paper, I would like to follow Widdowson‟s definition (1984: 4, as cited in Nguyen Hoa,

2000) “Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction” By this

way, discourse is not simply a representation or a verbal record of the communicative but it includes many situational factors, that is context of the situation, the meanings or intentions that the writer/ speaker assigns to a linguistic

means or expression Therefore, discourse analysis will be the analysis of language

in use

2.1.2 Discourse and text

It is said that the confusion of the two terms “discourse” and “text” may result in the difficulty for the discourse analysts in the long run; therefore, it is important to make a clear cut between them

According to Widdowson (1979) (as cited in Nguyễn, Trí Trung, 2007: 4) text is sentences in combination while discourse is the use of sentences for communication According to him, text typically has cohesion whereas discourse has coherence This point of view is proved in the following example:

A: The grass is growing fast in the garden

B: I’m going to have a group study this morning, mother

Although there is no formal link between A and B, the listeners can still infer that

B refuses the request of A to do the gardening in the morning

The differences and the interrelationships between discourse and text can be 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 is Text

(as cited in Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 14)

In the light of this distinction, discourse analysis concerns the functional analysis

of language in use, which involves context of situations, the meanings or intentions that the writer/speaker assigns to a linguistic means or expression Text, in the other hands, deals with the analysis of formal features of text such as cohesion, text structure and so on

2.1.3 Spoken and written discourse

Following Nguyen Hoa (2000), this paper will consider the differences between spoken and written language in terms of two aspects: manner of production and the representation of discourse

2.1.3.1 Manner of production

In spoken language, the producer can control and process the production of communication by varying voice quality, using posture, gesture, or body language, etc The speaker also gets a great advantage that he can observe the reactions from the audiences or the listeners However, he has to monitor what he said and determines whether it matches what he wants to say and the response he means to make The speaker also has little chance to change what he said

The writer, on the other hand, can manage what he has just produced, pause and revise at any points that he wants to The writer also has time for choices of word use or phrase use to suit his needs However, on contrary to spoken language, the writer cannot observe the reactions from the readers or the person he wants to communicate with

2.1.3.2 The representation of discourse: text

A written text may be represented in many ways using different typefaces, or different sizes of paper, to serve various purposes of the writer The spoken text is rather complicated The transcription somehow cannot represent all the things that can hardly be regarded as pertaining to text such as noise and laughter Therefore, the perception and interpretation of what constitutes a spoken text is essentially subjective

2.2 Genre

The concept of genre has been discussed by some linguists The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt and Platt 1992) describes “genre as a particular class of events that are considered by

a discourse community to be the same type” (as cited in Paltridge, 2001:11-12)

Genre in linguistics is defined by John M Swales (1990) as the type of communicative event Both these linguists argue that different types of communicative events result in different types of discourse and each of these will have its own distinctive characteristics Swales (1990:46) assumes that the principal criteria feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre is some shared set of communicative purposes The communicative purpose will be reflected in the basic building blocks of discourse, - that is, the words and grammatical structures themselves Some examples of different genres are: letter, chat, song, joke, message, poem sermon note or argument, etc

Paltridge (2001, 14) provides a useful checklist to distinguish the genres:

- Topic of the text,

- Speaker/author of the text,

- Audience of the text,

- Relationship between participants,

- Purpose of the text,

- Setting (e.g., in a newspaper, in a classroom, at home),

- Structure of the text,

- Tone of the text (e.g formal vs informal, serious vs amusing),

- Patterns of grammar,

- Key vocabulary items,

- Community expectations,

- Shared understandings,

- Assumed background knowledge,

It is sometimes argued that there is no clear distinction between genre and

register-or functional language variation And Martin (1985, as cited in Swales 1990:40)

hmakes the following three-way distinction: “genres are realized through registers, and registers in turn are realized through language” The following part

2.3 is the discussion of register to make this distinction clear

2.3 Register of discourse

2.3.1 The notion of register

Register is among the two varieties which determine variation in language use The other variety is dialects which is not the matter of this paper According to Halliday

et al (1964:87) “the category of register is postulated to account for what people

do with their language when we observe language activity in the various contexts

in which it takes place We find differences in the type of language selected as appropriate to different types of situation” By this way, register is defined in

terms of differences in grammar, vocabulary, etc of language activity such as a sports commentary or a church service

2.3.2 The parameters of register

Three basis aspects of register can be distinguished as field of discourse, mode of discourse and tenor of discourse

2.3.2.1 Field of discourse

Field or the reference to „what is going on‟ is the kind of language use, which reflects “the purposive role”, or the social function of the text (Hatim & Masan, 1990: 48) However, field is not the same as subject matter; as fields are often characterized by a variety of subject matters and in certain fields, use of language

is just the additional (e.g a swimming lesson)

2.3.2.2 Tenor of discourse

Tenor of discourse concerns the relationship between the addresser and the

addressee, which “can be analyzed in terms of basic distinction such as colloquial-intimate, on a scale of categories which range from formal to informal”

polite-(Hatim & Mason, 1990: 50)

Personal and functional are the two kinds of tenor Personal tenor covers the degrees of formality with the social roles of participants together with their status relationships and personalities such as the social identity: age, sex, power relations

Whereas functional tenor is the category “used to describe what language is being used for in the situation Is the speaker trying to persuade? To exhort? To discipline?” (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 51) In other words, functional tenor concerns

with the determining the social function or role of utterance, identifying the

purpose for which the language is being used

2.3.2.3 Mode of discourse

* Macro mode of discourse

Hatim & Mason (1990) defines mode as “the medium of the language activity”, or

the function of the text in the event by means of channel The extent of mode

variation is illustrated by Gregory & Carroll (1978: 47) by means of a diagram as

follow:

Figure 1: Mode of discourse

The channel transcends speech vs writing to include other communicative occurrences such as the telephone conversation, the essay, the business letter, etc

In Halliday‟s later writings (e.g 1978: 144-5) mode even includes rhetorical concepts such as expository, didactic, persuasive, descriptive and the like

Hatim & Mason (1990, 52-53) has illustrated the register parameters by analyzing

News reporting Assessing current

affair (investigative

and international current affairs

of rhetoric

Detached, factual Authoritative,

evaluative commentary

Mode Head-like

abstract, written

to read as if heard

Political speech, written to be spoken

Written to be read Editorializing

through seemingly detached reporting; written to be read reflectively

Table 1: Register analysis of the article “A back door to war”

* Micro mode of discourse

The mode of register, however, in the micro scale, refers to the use of grammar involving the use of modality, active and passive voices, kinds of sentences, etc and vocabulary including archaic words/phrases and technical terms

Use of grammar

 Modality

Modal auxiliaries, together with primary auxiliaries are used to build up complex verb phrases and cannot occur alone unless a lexical verb is recoverable from the context The modal auxiliaries express a wide range of meanings, having to do with concepts such as ability, permission, necessity, and obligation Although they

can convey meanings that relate to time differences (e.g can v could), the differences among them related primary to modality rather than tense

There are nine central modal auxiliaries: can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must; some marginal auxiliary verbs: need (to), ought to, dare (to),

used to, which behave like modals in taking auxiliary negation and yes-no question

inversion; some semi-modals which are fixed idiomatic phrases, expressions:

(had) better, have to, (have) got to, be supposed to, be going to

Modals and semi-model can be grouped in to three major categories according to their main meanings:

 Permission/possibility/ability: can, could, may, might

Might Logical possibility It might be the case that it had been settled

long before that

Can

Permission Can I have a cup of tea?

Ability I can swim

Logical possibility These observations can be explained

biochemically

Could

Logical possibility It could be anything you want

Ability I couldn’t feel my hand

Permission She asked if she could sit at the end of my

table May Logical possibility She may not see the it as a joke

Permission May I go out?

Table 2: Permission/possibility/ability modalities

 Obligation/ necessity: must, should, (had) better, have (got) to, need to,

ought to, be supposed to

Personal obligation

Have to I have to get up at five this morning

Should You should relax Need to You need to finish this exercise by ten Ought to I ought to go out this morning

Must I must now confess something which I

kept back from you in Chapter 3

Necessity Must Your mum must not care

Table 3: Obligation/necessity modalities

 Volition/prediction: will, would, shall, be going to

Will Personal volition I’ll come and show you my paper

Prediction It won’t be that difficult to do

Would Personal volition I would give it back

Prediction She would just feel better if she went out

Be going to Personal volition I’m going to take a rest after the long

business trip Shall Personal volition I shall try to finish this paper before

December

Table 4: Volition/prediction modalities

 Active and passive voices

English verbs have two voices: active voice and passive voice Voice of a verb expresses 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 the doer of the action is the subject; the receiver takes the action of the verb Active sentences follow the Agent –Verb – Receiver

On the other hands most passive constructions are formed with the auxiliary be followed by an ed-participle:

E.g.: She was asked to do the annual report within two days

In passive voice sentences, the noun phrase in the role of subject in a passive construction usually corresponds to the noun phrase, which is the direct object in the associated active constructions

E.g.: The proposal was approved by the professional (passive voice)

cf The professional approved the proposal (active voice)

The noun phrase in the by-phrase is commonly referred to the agent, although it

could also serve other semantic roles such as recipient or affected subjects The

passive construction with a by-phrase is called the long passive; in contrast, the short passive, where the agent is left unexpressed, does not have a by-phrase The

short passive is in fact far more common than the long passive, and it is widely used in academic writing to omit mention of the specific researcher(s) (Biber et al, 1999: 477)

Passive construction are also commonly found with two-object prepositional verbs

E.g.: Dormancy is associated with short duration (Passive voice)

cf Researchers associate dormancy with short duration (Active voice)

The major function of passive voice is to demote the agent of the verb (often the person doing the action of the verb, while giving topic status to the affected patient (the entity being acted on)

 Kinds of sentences

There are three basic types of sentence structure: simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences

- Simple sentence: A simple sentence is formed by a subject and a verb

By this way, the verbs in simple sentences are often intransitive verbs

An important requirement of simple sentence is that it must express the complete thought

- Compound sentence: is formed when two simple sentences are joined

together with a conjunction The most common conjunctions are and, but and or, which respectively show addition, contrast and choice

- Complex sentence: is the most complicated type among the three types

of sentence structure Complex sentence contains clauses with subordinate relation, i.e one clause is a constituent or a part of the other

I will not come to the party if John comes

(1) (2)

(1): superordicate/independent/main clause

(2): subordinate/dependent clause

The main clause is the simple sentence, and the subordinate clause functionally can

be Nominal clause (E.g.: You can call me whenever you like), Adverbial clause

(E.g.: If he had been more careful, he would not have made such stupid mistake), Comparative clause (E.g.: She works harder than me) or Comment clause (E.g.: The Smiths, as you probably know, have been our neighbor for twenty years) The

clauses in complex sentences can be linked by subordinating conjunction: simple

subordinators (after, though, although, as, because, before, if, once, since, that, until, when, where, while, etc.), compound subordinators (ending with „that‟ like so that, such that, or ending with „as‟ like so far as, as long as, etc.), or correlative subordinators (E.g.: if…then, although…yet, so…that, no sooner … than, etc.)

 Sentence order

The sentence order, which is determined by which part of sentence coming first, is related to thought patterns and affects the making of text One sentence can start with the subject, which shows the direct thought of the speaker/writer This order is the most common sentence pattern in English (Nguyễn, Thị Bích Ngọc, 2008: 20)

For example: Tom is going to have a long business trip to Asia

One sentence can also begin with a part of speech other than the subject These sentence patterns may be used to delay revealing what the sentence is about and sometimes to create tension or suspense; some other times, these patterns can be used to make the ideas between sentences more clearly (Nguyễn, Thị Bích Ngọc 2008: 21)

For example: A few weeks ago, we sold out 250,000,000 iPod

Use of vocabulary

 Technical words:

Technical word terms define typical words or phrases on specific fields These terms build the technicality – a particular feature of a type of documents For

example, some law terms are: Adjudication (giving or pronouncing a judgment),

court (a place where justice is administered.), etc

occurring as constituents of noun phrase and typically preceding the head noun

e.g.: Yesterday Jack wore a colorful jacket

Adjectives in a predicative role, on the other hand, characterize a noun phrase that

is a separated clause element They occur as subject predicatives following a verb

E.g.: That‟ll be quite interesting

Semantically, adjectives are divided into two broad groups: descriptors and classifiers Descriptors are prototypical adjectives denoting such features as color,

time, size and weight, chronology and age, emotion, and a wide range of other characteristics They are typically gradable, i.e they allow comparison, whether

inflectional or not, and degree modification: shorter, very strong, extremely serious In contrast, classifiers are used to delimit or restrict a noun‟s referent, by

placing it in a category in relation to other referents They are normally gradable and non-predicating (i.e they do not occur as predicatives in clauses

non-Classifiers can be grouped into subclasses including relational, affiliative, and a miscellaneous topical class

Semantic

domains

Descriptors Color Denoting color,

Big, deep, heavy, huge, long, large, little, short, small, thin, wide, etc

Time Denoting

chronology, age, frequency

Annual, daily, early, late, new, old, recent, young

Evaluative/

Emotive

Denoting judgements, affect, emphasis

Bad, beautiful, best, fine, good, great, lovely, nice, poor

Miscellaneous descriptive

Appropriate, cold, complex, dead, empty, free, hard, hot, open, positive, practical, private, serious, strange, strong, sudden, etc

Classifers Relational/

classificational/

restrictive

Delimiting the referent of a noun, particularly in relation to other referents

Additional, average, chief, complete, different, direct, entire, external, final, following, general, initial, internal, left, main, maximum, single, standard, top, various,

same, etc

Affiliative Designating the

national or religious group to which a referent belongs

American, Chinese, Christian, English, French, German, Irish, United, etc

Miscellaneous topical

Chemical, commercial, environmental, human, industrial, legal, medical, mental, official, oral, phonetic, political, sexual, social, ventral, visual, etc

Table 5: Classification of Adjectives in English

 Adverbs

In a clause, adverbs can either be integrated into an element of a clause (modifiers)

or function themselves as an element of the clause (adverbials)

Most commonly, adverbs that are integrated into another element of a clause modify an adjective or another adverb

- Adverbs modify adjectives: Joes is slightly better than John in studying

Maths

- Adverbs modify another adverbs: They’ll figure it out really fast

- Adverbs modify noun phrases: It came as quite a surprise

- Adverbs modify predeterminer: I have done about half a side

- Adverbs modify numeral: There are still approximately 250 people in the

Now, then, again, always, still, today, never, ago, ever, just, yesterday, already, sometimes, yet, later, often, usually

Manner adverbs How an action is

performed

Together, significantly, well, happily, automatically, fast, abreast, carefully, etc

Degree adverbs The extent to which a

characteristic holds

Very, really, too, quite, exactly, right, pretty, real, more, relatively, etc

Linking adverbs Semantic connections Then, so, anyway, though, however,

between spans of discourse of varying length

e.g., i.e., therefore, thus, etc

Others Angiographicaly, symbolically, etc

Table 6: Classification of Adverbs in English 2.4 Coherence

Coherence is an essential matter in the course of discourse analysis “Coherence refers to the type of semantic or rhetorical relationships that underline texts”

(Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 23) According to Nunan (1993), coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seems to hang together and make sense”

In the past, coherence is really a combination of many variables, three of which are cohesion, relevance, and discourse structure This paper concerns the two variables, which are relevance and discourse structure

2.4.1 Relevance

In this part, we will clarify the notion of “relevance” The technical use of the term

“relevance” is derived from the conversational maxims proposed by Grice (1975)

As Grice suggests, there is the co-operation between participants in the conversation, in which the participants need to follow the four maxims, i.e maxim

of quantity (or informativeness), maxim of quality (truthfulness), maxim of manner (clearness) and maxim of relation Although discusses and exemplifies the

other maxims, Grice only gives a simple instruction to maxim of relation „Be relevant‟ The discourse analysts mostly confront the problem of deciding „relevant

to what?‟ To solve this problem, Brown & Yule suggest interpreting the maxim

„Be relevant‟ into a more practical useful form as “make your contribution relevant

in terms of the existing topic framework” (1983:84) Topic framework as suggested by Nguyen Hoa (2000:82) “should comprise all the activated features of context because they are the aspects of contexts directly reflected in the text, and need to be called upon to interpret it” While communicating, the speaker or writer

tends to operate within the topic framework to produce language to help reader or listener have a sense that the sentences are connected topically This convention of conversational discourse could be captured more concisely in the expression

speaking topically, in which there is no fixed direction for the conversation to go,

or speaking on a topic in which the participants concentrate their talk on one

particular entity, individual or issue (Brown & Yule, 1983: 84) A discourse participant is said to be „speaking topically‟ when he makes his contribution fit closely to the most recent elements incorporated in the topic framework In the following fragment, each participant „picks up‟ elements from the preceding speaker‟s contribution and incorporates them in his contribution:

E: I went to Yosemite National Park

F: did you?

E: Yeah – it‟s beautiful there right throughout the year +

F: I have relations in California and that‟s their favourite Park because they + enjoy camping a lot

E: oh yeah

F: they go around camping +

E: I must admit I hate camping +

(Brown & Yule, 1983:84)

2.4.2 Discourse structure

The last mentioned factor creating coherence is the discourse structure or the organization of the discourse There have been a number of studies about this issue including Halliday & Hasan (1976), Van Dijk (1977), or Grosz, Sidner (1986)

These authors used different terms for discourse structure, which are structure (Halliday & Hasan, 1976:324, as cited in Nguyễn Hòa 2003), or schematic superstructure (Van Dijk, 1977: 124, as cited in Nguyễn Hòa 2003)

macro-This paper applies the Mann and Thompson‟s Rhetorical Structure Theory macro-This theory describes the relations between text parts in functional terms, identifying both the transition point of a relation and the extent of the items related According

to them, there is an exist of relations between Nuclear (N) and Satellite (S) of the text, and the reason for the writer/speaker to choose those nuclear and satellite is called Effect Mann & Thompson also provided the relation types: Circumstance, Solutionhood, Elaboration, Background, Enablement, Motivation, Evidence, Justify, Volitional Cause, Non-volitional Cause, Volitional result, Purpose, Antithesis, Concession, Condition, Otherwise, Interpretation, Evaluation, Restatement, Summary, Sequence and Contrast The full definition of these relations consists of four fields:

- Constraints on the Nuclear

- Constraints on the Satellite

- Constraints on the combination of Nuclear and Satellite

- The Effect

For example the Evidence relation:

Relation name : EVIDENCE

Constraints in the N +

S combination

: R’s comprehending S increases R’s belief of N

N: Nuclear R: Reader

S: Satellite W: Writer

The following example illustrates how this definition is applied:

1 The program as published for calendar year 1980 really works

2 In only a few minutes, I entered all the figures from my 1980 tax return

3 and got a result which agreed with my hand calculations to the penny

In this example, units 2-3 are in an Evidence relation with unit 1 They are provided to increase the reader‟s belief in the claim expressed in unit 1

According to Mann & Thompson, there is no fix position for Nuclear and Satellite

in the previous relations, i.e Nuclear can go before or after Satellite and vice versa These authors pointed out that when Satellite comes before Nuclear, the relation can be:

Antithesis Conditional

Background Justify

2.5 English sales presentations

According to Oxford Learner Pocket Dictionary (2008:347), presentation is the

“meeting at which something is presented”; By this way, presentation can be the

talk to one or more people; that is the speaking in the public situation

Sales, on the other hands, is “the act of selling something or being sold” (Oxford

Learner Pocket Dictionary, 2008:389)

From the definition of presentation and sales, the sales presentation is understood

as “Formal and pre-arranged meeting, usually at a customer's place (or at a neutral premise, such as a hotel) where a salesperson or a sales team presents detailed information (often including live demonstration) about a product or product-line” ( www.businessdictionary.com )

From the genre point of view, sales presentation shares the same characteristics of advertisement, in which it presents new products with outstanding features The main purposes of sales presentation are to let the customers have full image of new products, to let them know the benefits of using new products, etc And all of these purposes are to reach the goal of getting more sales

According to the CBS news ( www.cbsnews.com) , the presenter should have a checklist before the performance:

 Determine the points you want to make, tailored to the specific customer

 Write out your goals for the meeting

 Take your insights into your customers‟ needs and turn them into a story with a solid beginning, middle, and end

 Create the visual aids that best illustrate the story

 Eliminate jargon and confusing slides from the presentation

 Practice, practice, practice

 Get feedback from at least one other source, like your sales coach or a trusted colleague, before the presentation

2.6 Conclusion

To sum up, this study looks at discourse of English sales presentation in terms of register and coherence The register of discourse is investigated in terms of field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse Field of discourse is the reference to “what is going on”, while tenor of discourse concerns the relationship between addresser and the addressee Mode of discourse from the micro point of view is the use of grammar (including modality, active and passive voices, kinds of sentences and sentence order) and the use of vocabulary (technical words, adjectives and adverbs)

Sales presentation is also investigated in terms of coherence with the constitution

of relevance factors and discourse structure Relevance provides ideas about the subject matters of English sales presentation under a topic framework Discourse structure of English sales presentation is examined with the relations defined by Mann & Thompson

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Literature review

Discourse analysis is not a new subject at University of Languages and International studies; therefore, there have been some theses of discourse analysis However, most of these theses concern the cohesive devices of discourse, which is only a small aspect of discourse analysis These theses can be named as: Mai, Thị Loan (2006) or Nguyễn, Thị Bích Liên (2004) Besides, some theses investigate discourse under the light of pragmatics such as Đoàn, Trần Thúy Trang (2008) Only one thesis is found to apply the integrated approach into the discourse analysis that is Nguyễn, Thị Bích Ngọc (2008) Furthermore, in terms of genre, no research investigates English sales presentation – a very effective means of business communication Therefore, this study is hoped to contribute to a better image of business communication with the new research method and the new genre investigated

3.2 Research methods

There has been a wide range of approaches to discourse analysis discussed by numerous linguists, i.e.: Pragmatics, Language Variation, Interactional Socio- Linguistics, Ethnography of Communication, Conversational Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, or Cross – Cultural Communication, etc Though these approaches have contributed great results to discourse analysis, they have not discussed fully the core factor of discourse, i.e coherence (Nguyễn Hòa, 2003: 144) Therefore, Nguyễn Hòa (2003) introduced the Integrated approach to discourse analysis with the focus on coherence and register of the discourse This

is a functional approach regarding discourse as a process of interactive

communication among members of the society (Nguyễn Hòa, 2003:144) As

Halliday (1994: xvi) argues “it is sometime assumed that this (discourse analysis) can be carried out grammar – or even that it is somehow an alternative to grammar But this is an illusion A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text”

(As cited in Nguyễn Hòa, 2003: 144)

3.3 Subjects of the study

The subjects of the study are sales presentations from Apple Company to introduce their famous products: iPod, iPhone and iPad

3.4 Data collection methods

3.4.1 Data

Sales presentation in this situation is the spoken discourse, so we need to have a reproduction of that discourse that can be examined repeatedly “That reproduction must be a recording but not a recollection or report by researchers or observers of what was said” (Wood & Kroger, 2000:55)

3.4.2 Discourse recordings

The samples of this study are achieved from Internet at

activities, it is only necessary to get the audio recordings of the presentations, no need for video-tapes

The recording of spoken discourse must be of high “fidelity” (Wood & Kroger,

2000:56), that is, it must correspond as closely as possible to the discourse

Although the requirement for fidelity is high, it is noticeable that there are always some sorts of intervention, interpretation, or transformation of the discourse by the researcher before the stage of analysis

The recording of spoken discourse should be natural as well (Wood & Kroger, 2000:57) The natural discourse refers to the circumstance under which the discourse is produced The concern is for discourse that is “naturally occurring”, that is discourse is not produced through the investigation of the researcher (Psathas, 1995, as cited in Wood & Kroger, 2000: 57)

3.4.3 Samples selection and samples size

In discourse analysis “bigger is not necessarily better” (Wood & Kroger, 2000:81),

so this research focuses on three most famous products of Apple: iPod, iPhone and iPad, which can represent Steve Jobs‟ style in sales presentation

3.5 Analysis procedure

3.5.1 Transcription

Transcription refers to the transformation of spoken discourse into a written form that is fully amenable to analysis and available for inclusion in the report of the research Transcription is essential because it is not possible to keep the features of discourse so that details can be identified Transcription is also required so that a record of the data can be made available to others for checking the analysis and also for reanalysis (Hutchby & Wooffitt, p.92 as cited in Wood & Kroger, 2000:82)

There are two main approaches to transcription, i.e the standard approach and the phonological approach The standard or thographic approach uses conventional

spelling for words and tends to use a verbal description for other signs (e.g

„laugh‟) A phonological approach modified the standard or thography by presenting words and other signs through a combination of words, quasi-words and

other symbols (e.g.: heh heh heh for laughter) (Schegloff 1980, as cited in Wood &

Kroger, 2000:83) Although the standard or thography does not reproduce the sound of discourse very well, it seems to be more appropriate with this research which concentrates on the verbal communication of the sales presentation

3.5.2 Analysis process

First, all sales presentations were numbered sentence by sentence, paragraph by

paragraph

Second, each sentence is analyzed carefully to find out:

- The use of grammar

- The use of vocabulary

Next, grammar and vocabulary were classified into different groups according to

the aims of the study

Fourth, each paragraph was analyzed to draw out topic of each one

After that, descriptive and analytic methods are utilized to describe and analyze the

database so as to find out the grammar, vocabulary, field and tenor of discourse, relevance and discourse structure of sales presentations

CHAPTER 4: THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES

PRESENTATIONS 4.1 Register

4.1.1 Field of discourse of English sales presentations

These sales presentations are made with the main aim to announce new products of

a company To reach this aim, the presenter has experienced different fields During the presentations, Steve Jobs provides reasons for the being of new products, for example:

“Is there really a third category of device that can be better at these kinds of tasks? Than laptop and smartphone Otherwise, it has no reason for being.”

As the presentation is to announce new products, the presenter takes a lot of time

to introduce remarkable new features of these products

“Ok, next, go to the photos This is how Photos look likes I can look at everything like this Look at the photos again in portrait or landscape”

Or:

“there are, well, over hundred new features that we don't have time to cover them all today So I got to cover 8 of them with you 8 new features of the iPhone 4 The 1st one, the all new design If anyone of you have seen it? Believe me, this is one of the most beautiful design that you've ever seen”

Besides, the presenter also introduces the applications built-in the new products Price of products is also provided clearly in the presentation together with the

shipment condition and shipment time In addition to that, these conferences also mentions the updates of other products and applications of other companies built for the new products As the presentations are made in front of a great number of audience, there cannot be absent of greetings and goodbye

“Thank you a lot for coming this morning”

“So thank you so much for coming this morning, and we hope you’d love the iPad as much as we do Thank you very much”

With these fields, the audiences, or the users, the customers can have a very deep understanding about new products, their features, their applications and other updates of companies

4.1.2 Tenor of discourse of English sales presentations

As mentioned in Chapter 2, tenor is divided into personal and functional tenor Sales presentations belong to a subcategory of business communication, so obviously the language used in sales presentations is the language of business communication The presentations are made to announce new products to a wide range of listener, the end users of the products, the representatives, the retailers or even the competitors of the company The attendance of the conference may come from different countries, different classes with different cultures Therefore, in terms of personal tenor, the presenter employs informal, friendly and simple language

For example: