A Genre Analysis Of Letters Of Claims

With the rapid development of economic globalization, business transactionsaround the world have increased greatly in recent years and it is inevitable thattroubles and conflicts will appear in high frequency. As an effective way which iscommonly used to solve these problems, letters of claims gradually draw morepeople’s attention. Besides, considering the significant role they played incorporations’ economic interests, it becomes more and more important for us to studyhow to write a proper letter that can have a positive influence on the recipient.In order to fulfill this intention, the present research analyzes the genericstructures of the thirty letters of claims chosen from some published books, trying toexplore the internal structures and language devices used in them. In this thesis, bothquantitative and qualitative methods are adopted to carry on the research. At themacroscopic level, generic structures of these letters are analyzed within thetheoretical framework of genre analysis; at the microscopic level, linguistic features ofletters of claims are explored under the guidance of Interpersonal Function Theory.Through the analysis, the author finds that:(1) Letters of claims obtain theirunique generic structures. Totally ten moves are identified, among which “Salutation”,“Informing the Situation”,“Informing the Problems”,“Lodging Claims” and“Closing” are obligatory moves, while “Expressing Thanks”,“Enclosing Documents”,“Providing Suggestions”,“Adopting Pressure Tactics” and “Soliciting Response” areoptional moves;(2) Mood and modality are usually adopted as the supplementarylinguistic devices to realize communicative purposes of letters of claims;(3) Theresearch findings are also illuminating for writing and teaching letters of claims.