0 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HÀ MY A DISOURSE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES PRESENTATIONS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN BÀI THUYẾT TRÌNH BÁN HÀNG TIẾNG ANH: ỨNG DỤNG ĐƯỜNG HƯỚNG TỔNG HỢP M. Combined Programme Thesis Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.15 HANOI – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ HÀ MY A DISOURSE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES PRESENTATIONS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN BÀI THUYẾT TRÌNH BÁN HÀNG TIẾNG ANH: ỨNG DỤNG ĐƯỜNG HƯỚNG TỔNG HỢP M. Combined Programme Thesis Field : English Linguistics Code : 60. Nguyễn Hòa (PhD) HANOI – 2012 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS DACLARATION .4 TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………5 LIST OF TABLES .1 Rationale of the study.2 Aims of the Study .3 Scope of the study.4 Methods of the study .11 CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .1 The notion of discourse .2 Discourse and text .3 Spoken and written discourse .16 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Register of discourse .1 The notion of register .2 The parameters of register .1 Field of discourse .2 Tenor of discourse .3 Mode of discourse .5 English sales presentations .3 Subjects of the study .4 Data collection methods .38 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.3 Samples selection and samples size .40 CHAPTER 4: THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES PRESENTATIONS 41 4.1 Field of discourse of English sales presentations .2 Tenor of discourse of English sales presentations .3 Mode of discourse of English sales presentations .1 Use of grammar in English sales presentations .2 Use of vocabulary in English sales presentations .1 Relevance of discourse of English sales presentations .2 Discourse structure of English sales presentations .60 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.1 Implication for business communication .2 Implications for the teaching and learning presentation skill .4 Suggestions for further study .XVII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 9 LIST OF TABLES Chart 1: The frequency of occurrence of modal verbs in English sales presentations.
Chart 2: The frequency of occurrence of active and passive voices in English sales presentations. Chart 3: The frequency of occurrence of four kinds of sentences in English sales presentations. 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 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 10 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. 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 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 11 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. 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.4 Methods of the study LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 12 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. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 13 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.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. (1985:83) defined discourse as “a general term for examples of language use, i., 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 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 14 means or expression. Therefore, discourse analysis will be the analysis of language in use.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) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 15 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.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.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 The representation of discourse: text LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 16 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 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.