2015-08-21
327
Read the following excerpt from the business letter and analyse this type of discourse in the space provided
| Letter Head Addressee Date Dear … …Following our telephone call I confirm that we will meet at the Munich Fair on Thursday 24 sometime during the morning. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss some of our products and services with you and am confident that there will be plenty to interest you. I enclose some information which you may like to look at before you come to Munich. It would be very nice if we could meet socially while in Munich. I wonder if you would be free to join me and some colleagues for a meal in the city on the Thursday evening? We are planning to meet at around 8.30 for dinner at the Hilton Hotel. Do let me know if you can join us and of course we would be pleased if you were able to bring a colleague or partner. We look forward to … Very best wishes, John Calmat (Adapted from Sweeney, S. 1997. English for Business Communication. CUP. P. 12) |
| Cohesion devices (prepositions, conjunctions, topical words) |
| Coherence devices (background situation, logic, reader’s available reality) |
| Register (field-related vocabulary) |
An important field of the research into discourse matters is the conversation analysis. Among others it includes the following points of analysis: opening and closing of the conversation (how people start and close their talk, e.g. the closing of the telephone talk is usually something like "I'd better go. - Ok - Yeah, OK - Talk to you later. - Ok. So … See you … - Yeah, OK. Bye for now. - Bye"); turn-taking (taking turns with signals that the speaker either wants to continue or is ready to listen); interruptions (the ways humans join in the conversation or interrupt to change the subject, to correct etc) (Nunan. D., 1993. Introducing Discourse Analysis. Penguin Books. P. 84-90). Other features of analysis can include accepting and refusing (how people accept the offers and refuse them), reacting to accepting and refusing offers (how people in the natural setting react to their offers being accepted or refused etc.
