An Analysis Of The Interpersonal Meaning In Business English Letters Of Counter-offer

Business correspondence plays an indispensable role in the normalization ofinternational trade today since most of the negotiation and transaction are signedthrough business letters. In recent years, the study on business correspondence is notnew, but the research scope is rather extensive and more specific studies on classifiedbusiness letters are far from enough. Counter-offer, as one of the important phases ininternational trade, plays a prominent role in the finalization of the trade. Businesscorrespondence in this phase serves as a major communication device during theperiod of business negotiation. However, detailed studies on this point have not caughtdue attention from scholars.The present paper attempts to explore how people interact through languagedevices and establish interpersonal relationship in business English letters ofcounter-offer. This thesis is conducted under the framework of interpersonal meaningin Halliday’s SFL and Martin’s Appraisal Theory, and the corpus here consists of50counter-offer letters selected from13newly published books on business Englishletters at home. Then counter-offer letters are analyzed systematically from mood,modality, person system as well as appraisal system. During the process of analysis,qualitative approach is mainly used in analyzing texts whereas quantitative approachserves as a complement to provide related data by using software AntConc3.2.4.It is found that business English letters of counter-offer bear unique languagefeatures when expressing interpersonal meaning. In mood system, declaratives (S^F)are widely used to perform the speech function of statement. In modality,median-value operators are preferred to be used, and the types of modal adjunctsexpressing temporality and intensity appear frequently. Meanwhile, for the sake ofobjectivity, objective metaphors of modality are prone to be adopted in proposition. Inperson system, the first and second person pronouns are employed quite often to showintimacy between the parties concerned. At last, lexical choices bearing the meaningof attitude, engagement and graduation in appraisal system can be used to show feelings, opinions and stance.It is hoped that the study can make a complement to the detailed study on businessEnglish letters. Meanwhile, it is also hoped that this research could provide someguidance on writing standard business letters of counter-offer both for learners and forbusinessmen involved in the international trade.