A Corpus-based Study On Nominalization In English Business Correspondence

Nominalization is a common phenomenon in English, especially in written English. The large amount of nominalizations makes a discourse more formal and objective. According to the preliminary observation, the frequency of nominalization in English business correspondence is relatively high and nominalization is widely used in business activities and communication. Therefore, the present study discusses the phenomenon of nominalization in English business correspondence, analyzes the constructing characteristics and discourse functions of nominalization, and acquires some enlightenment.In this thesis, a corpus is established by selecting a large amount of English business correspondences, and a contrastive corpus is established by selecting international financial and economic news from several popular English newspapers and periodicals. Through the contractive quantitative analysis of nominalization in the two corpora, the result that nominalization is more widely used in English business correspondence can be reached. In the present study, not only are the overall frequencies and functions of nominalizations in the two corpora investigated, but also the distributions and functions of nominalization endings are explored thoroughly based on the theory of GM in functional grammar. According to the research, the frequent employment of nominalization in English business correspondence shapes the features of compactness, formality, and coherence.It is found that nominalization is a distinguished feature in English business correspondence in the present study. In the process of analyzing, teaching and translating English business correspondence, nominalization should be emphasized. The present study on nominalization is of great importance for English learners to have a better study of the discourse features of English business correspondence to comprehend, translate, and write English business correspondence accurately.