A contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese resignation letters in terms of discourse structure

A contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese resignation letters in terms of discourse structure Nguyễn Thùy Dương Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS.. style of English and Viet

A contrastive analysis of English and

Vietnamese resignation letters in terms of

discourse structure Nguyễn Thùy Dương

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha

Năm bảo vệ: 2013

Keywords: Phân tích diễn ngôn; Đơn thư từ chức; Tiếng Anh; Tiếng Việt; Ngôn ngữ

Content

PART A – INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale:

A Business Letter, the most popular and the most widely written type of letter, is used to

serve as a means of communication written for various commercial purposes These purposes can be a business deal, complaint, warning, notice, invitation, declaration, information, apology and various other corporate matters There are many types of business letters such as Application Letter, Acceptance Letter, Demand Letter, Letter of Complaint, Resignation Letter, Sales Letters, etc Among these types of letters, the Letter of Resignation may receive the least notice because people often think that when they leave their jobs they have nothing to do with their old company and old employer However, a good resignation letter can help the employee maintain a positive relationship with his/ her old boss, and pave the way for him or her to move on In addition, the employee might need a reference from the previous employer These show that knowing how to write a good resignation letter is very important Nevertheless, it seems that no researchers concern this kind of letter in English and Vietnamese Hence, in order to help people have better understanding of resignation letters and see the similarities and differences in writing

style of English and Vietnamese resignation letters, this study focuses on comparing and contrasting discourse structure of English and Vietnamese resignation letters

2 Aims of the Study:

The aims of the study are:

 To review the background knowledge of discourse analysis and resignation letters

 To point out the similarities and differences between discourse structures of English and Vietnamese resignation letters

 To give some suggestions for writing resignation letters in English and Vietnamese

3 Scope of the Study:

Conducting this study, I do not have the ambition to cover everything about discourse analysis of English and Vietnamese resignation letters I only concentrate on analyzing English

and Vietnamese resignation letters in terms of discourse structures

4 Research Question:

What are the similarities and differences between discourse structures of English and Vietnamese resignation letters?

5 Methodology of the Study:

„Move analysis‟ approach is applied in this research to analyze the discourse structure of resignation letters in English and Vietnamese Besides, in order to find out the similarities and differences between discourse structure of English and Vietnamese resignation letters, the author uses comparison and contrast method

6 Organization of the Thesis: the study is divided into five main parts as follows:

Part A – Introduction

This part consists of rationale for choosing the topic, aims and scope of the study, research question, research methodology, and organization of the study

Part B – Development

Chapter 1 – Literature Review and Theoretical Background

This chapter includes general description of discourse analysis, discourse structure,

„Move analysis‟, and general information about English and Vietnamese resignation letters

Chapter 2 – Methodology

This chapter describes the participants and methods which are applied to collect and analyze the data

Chapter 3 – Analysis of Discourse Structure in English and Vietnamese Resignation Letters

In this chapter, the author analyzes discourse structures in English and Vietnamese resignation letters in detail

Chapter 4 – Comparing and Contrasting Discourse Structure of English and Vietnamese Resignation Letters

The similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese resignation letters in terms of discourse structures are pointed out in this chapter

Part C – Conclusion

In this part, the author gives some recommendations for writing a good resignation letters, points out some limitations of the study, and gives suggestions for further study

References

Appendixes

REFERENCES Vietnamese:

1 Diệp Quang Ban (1999), Văn bản và liên kết trong tiếng Việt, NXB GD, Hà Nội

2 Nguyễn Hòa (2003), Phân tích diễn ngôn: Một số vấn đề lý luận và phương pháp NXB Đại

học Quốc gia Hà Nội, Hà Nội

3 Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985), Hệ thống liên kết văn bản tiếng Việt, NXB ĐH và THCN, Hà Nội

English:

1 Austin, J H (1962), How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press

2 Bhatia, V (1993), Analyzing genre: Language use in professional settings, London: Longman

3 Biber, D., Connor, U and Upton, T (2007), Discourse on the Move: Using Corpus Analysis to

Describe Discourse Structure, Amsterdam: John Benjamins

4 Brett, P (1994), “A genre analysis of the results section of sociology articles”, English for

Specific Purposes, 13(1), 47–59

5 Brown, G and Yule, G (1983), Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

6 Brown, R (2004), “Self-composed: rhetoric in psychology personal statements”, Written

Communication, 21(3), 242–260

7 Cook, G (1989), Discourse, Oxford: Oxford University Press

8 Crystal, D (1992), Introducing Linguistics, London: Penguin

9 Ding, H (2007), “Genre analysis of personal statements: Analysis of moves in application

essays to medical and dental schools”, English for Specific Purposes, 26 (3), 368-392

10 Duszak, A (1994), “Academic discourse and intellectual style”, Journal of Pragmatics,

21(3), 291-313

11 Halliday, M A K and R Hasan (1976), Cohesion in English, London: Longman

12 Harris, Zellig S (1952), “Discourse Analysis”, Language, 28 (1),1-30

13 Holmes, R (1997), “Genre analysis and social sciences: an investigation of the structure of

research article discussion sections in three disciplines”, English for Specific Purposes, 16(4), 321-337

14 Hyland, K (2003), “Graduates‟ gratitude: the generic structure of dissertation

acknowledgements”, English for Specific Purposes, 22(3), 303–324

15 Hatim, Basil & Ian Mason (1990), Discourse and the Translator, London: Longman

16 Nunan, D (1993), Introducing Discourse Analysis, London: Penguin

17 Nwogu, K N (1991), “Discourse variation in medical texts: Schema, theme and cohesion in

professional and journalistic accounts”, Monographs in Systemic Linguistics, Vol 2

Nottingham: Department of English Studies, University of Nottingham

18 Ross, R.N (1975), “Ellipsis and the structure of expectation”, San Jose State Occasional

Papers in Linguistics1, 183-191

19 Santos, M F A (2006), “Economy, Business & Finance”, The Philippine Daily Inquirer,

June 5th , B2-1

20 Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D and Hamilton, H (eds) (2001), The Handbook of Discourse

Analysis, Oxford: Blackwell

21 Swales, J (1981), Aspects of Article Introductions, Birmingham: University of Aston

22 Swales, J (1990), Genre Analysis: English for Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

23 Widdowson, H G (1979), Pragmatics, Oxford: Oxford University Press

24 Widdowson, H G (1984), Exploration in Applied Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford University

Press

Websites:

1 http://ayya.vn/mau-don-xin-nghi-viec-mau-don-xin-nghi-viec-viet-tay-hay/

2 http://jobsearch.about.com/od/sampleresignationletters/a/resignsamples.htm

3 http://luatminhgia.vn/Mau-don-xin-nghi-viec-newsview-237-701.aspx

4 http://www.hrlink.vn/diendan/index.php?showtopic=1797

5 http://www.thefreedictionary.com/paragraph