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Chapter One Introduction

This chapter is considered as a general introduction of this research. It clarifiesthe research background, explains the research significance and provides theorganization of this thesis so as to offer a general outline of this research.

1.1 Research Background
Along with the rapid globalization of the world economy, an increasinglynumber of companies all over the world take part in world’s market for economicinterest. With China’s entering WTO, international cooperation becomes morefrequent, which provides numerous Chinese enterprises a good opportunity toparticipate foreign trade and develop themselves in the global economy. Under thiscircumstance, the international business communication plays a vital role incooperation and further development in trade. There’s no doubt that communication isof great importance in establishing or maintaining business relationship between bothparties. Therefore, those who want to represent themselves positively to theiremployers, customers and competitors are doomed to failure by their inability (CaoLing, 2000). Generally speaking, effective business communication is usually realizedin two forms – oral or written. However, in terms of geographic matters, it’simpossible for all the parties engaged in business activities to convey their thoughtand information through face-to-face communication. In addition, compared with oralcommunication, written communication can better provide records and legal defense.Thus, business letters, as a typical mean in business communication, play a principalrole in business transactions and information exchange. In order to establish ormaintain harmonious business relations during the transactions, business lettersshould be written promptly and decently. They may not only affect the trade activities,but also represent the image of the company or even of the country. According to theircommunicative purposes, business letters can be divided into the following categories:notification letters, inquiry letters, refusal letters, collection letters, claims letters, andadjustment letters, etc. Based on his illocutionary act theory, Leech’s (1983:104)classifies business letters into four categories: collaborative letters, competitive letters,convivial letters, and conflictive letters.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
As economic and society developed, business letters are essential to trade activities. With the help of this dissertation, readers can better understandinterpersonal meaning in English and Chinese letters of claims. In addition, thisresearch adopts business correspondences as analysis corpus, which enriches thelinguistic research scale of Systemic-Functional Grammar. Therefore, this thesis is ofcertain theoretical and practical significance.Up to now, many scholars have study English business letters from variousaspects such as stylistics and pragmatics, but few of them pay attention to thecontrastive study of claim letters from the perspective of Systemic-FunctionalGrammar. Thus, this study may broaden the scopes of the contrastive discourseanalysis in terms of interpersonal function. Furthermore, this research also providesreasonable Reference for farther research of interpersonal meaning and enriches theapplication of business correspondences.From the practical perspective, this study will help both Chinese companies andwestern companies better deal with international trade