| The objective of this study is to empirically describe a corpus of American and Greek business letters for the purpose of defining their respective registers. Lexical and grammatical structures are associated with their semantic potential in a given cultural/situational context. Using a multidimensional approach to text variation, I interpret the corpus-based register as a composite of clusters of linguistic features, i.e., as factors which represent culture and situation-bound textual dimensions. The data consists of 156 American and 74 Greek business letters.; The study is an operationalization of the major principles of functional linguistics. The functional model shapes the critical investigation of business letters, i.e., the interpretation of the interdependency of text and institutional context. The specific linguistic mechanisms used to reflect and create corporate social structures are identified and then projected on to the cultural/situational context that surrounds text production and comprehension.; Based on the identification of co-occurring linguistic features in analyses of text variation, I define the persuasive potential of the corpus-based business register. Business letters are produced and interpreted by means of schematic knowledge which establishes categorical and, thus, persuasive language. In the corpus, the common features are related to cross-national business culture and the differences are explained by national cultural variation, that is, by a differential mapping of linguistic dimensions onto cultural dimensions. Probing the notion of cultural relativity, I claim that with respect to the American data persuasive strategies are predominately developed on the basis of the factual presentation of information. Relational models prevail and participants tend to code the results of an activity. Persuasive strategies manifested in the Greek data are of a different nature. Speakers are more frequently identified in the interactive event and the relationships between the participants are foregrounded. |
