Abstract

With the rapid development of global economy, the world’s business transactions are increasingly soaring up, accordingly, the pursuit of high-speed and high-quality has also become the focus of information exchange. Business English is English language especially related to international trade, and a part of English for Specific Purposes. Much of the English communication that takes place within business circles all over the world occurs between non-native speakers, in such case, the object of the exercise is efficient and effective communication. Business English correspondence, one of the major tools of communication, can largely determine the process and result of the foreign trade, therefore, it is of significance for writers to learn the discourse features concerned in business letters to improve their writing quality and organize the text in such letters properly.
This thesis consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction of business English correspondence, explaining the definition, classification and features of business English correspondence. The second part is about the theory of discourse analysis, which is divided into cohesion and coherence analysis as well as contextual analysis. The theories used in this part are mainly from functionalism, which contributes a lot to systemic functional linguistics. The last part analyzes four discourse features, namely, politeness, correctness, conciseness, and situationality, and examples have been presented for studying their discourse features with the purpose of finding some practical writing guidance to improve the quality of business English correspondence.

Key words: discourse; cohesion; coherence; context; business correspondence
 
摘  要

随着全球经济的快速发展，各国的对外贸易也在持续增长。相应地，高速与高质的追求也成为了信息交流的焦点。商务英语是主要涉及国际贸易的英语语言，同时也是特殊用途英语之一。众多此类英语交流都是由非英语母语人士在全球经济范围内进行，所以此种交流都是高效率且起作用的。商务英语信函作为主要的交流工具之一，在很大程度可以决定经济贸易的过程和结果。所以，对写信者而言，为了提高写作质量并恰当地组织商务英语信函的语篇结构，学习此类信函的相关语篇特征是极其重要的。
本论文研究的是商务英语信函的相关语篇特征，目的在于找到决定此类信函质量的基本特征。本篇论文共分为三个部分，第一部分是对商务英语信函的介绍，解释了商务英语信函的定义，分类及特征。第二部分是关于语篇分析的理论，该语篇分析主要分为两个部分，即衔接与连贯分析和语境分析。语篇分析理论主要取自于为系统功能语言学做出了很大贡献功能主义理论。最后一部分分析了四个商务英语信函的主要语篇特征，即礼貌性，准确性，简洁性，情境性。本论文以商务信函的例子做载体来分析他们的语篇特征，并实现研究目的——用理论指导商务英语信函的写作及提高商务英语信函的质量。

关键词：语篇；衔接；连贯；语境；商务信函