Written Communication Across Cultures: A Sociocognitive Perspective on Business Genres

Front Cover
John Benjamins Publishing, Jan 1, 2005 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 215 pages

Winner of ABC's award for Distinguished Publication for 2006
This book explores effective written communication across cultures both theoretically and practically. Specifically it conceptualizes cross-cultural genre study and compares English and Chinese business writing collected from Australia, New Zealand and China. It is also one of those inspired by contrastive rhetoric but has contributed innovatively and uniquely by incorporating research findings from genre analysis, in particular, the sociocognitive genre perspective into this cross-cultural study.

On the one hand, the endeavor represents an in-depth theoretical exploration by considering not only discourse community and cognitive structuring, but also the deep semantics of genre and intertextuality, while broadening genre study by integrating insights from cross-cultural communication as well as the Chinese perspectives. On the other hand, the book also addresses pragmatic issues. As a particular feature, it solicits professional members' intercultural viewpoints; thus confirming the shared social "stock of knowledge" employed in the culturally defined writing conventions.
Last but not least, this book explores the implications for genre education and training, and develops an appropriate model for cross-cultural genre learning, which encourages learning through legitimate peripheral participation and intercultural learning in business organizations.
 

Contents

CHAPTER
6
Communication across cultures
9
CHAPTER 3
25
The Chinese genre approach
45
Modern Chinese genre study
51
Proposing the model for crosscultural genre study
57
CHAPTER 5
72
Comparing texts of sales letters
78
Conclusion
98
Comparing English and Chinese sales invitations
101
CHAPTER 7
123
CHAPTER 8
154
CHAPTER 9
177
References
189
Appendix
203
Copyright

The most effective English and Chinese sales letters
92

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Page 191 - Connor, U. & Lauer, J. (1985). Understanding persuasive essay writing: Linguistic/rhetorical approach. Text, 5, 309-326.

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