a disourse analysis of english sales presentations an integrated approach = phân tích diễn ngôn bài thuyết trình bán hàng tiếng anh ứ́ng dụng đường hướng tổng hợp

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HÀ MY

A DISOURSE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES
PRESENTATIONS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN BÀI THUYẾT TRÌNH BÁN HÀNG TIẾNG ANH: ỨNG
DỤNG ĐƯỜNG HƯỚNG TỔNG HỢP
M.A. Combined Programme Thesis
Field
: English Linguistics
Code
: 60.22.15




HANOI – 2012


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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ HÀ MY

A DISOURSE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES
PRESENTATIONS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN BÀI THUYẾT TRÌNH BÁN HÀNG TIẾNG ANH: ỨNG
DỤNG ĐƯỜNG HƯỚNG TỔNG HỢP
M.A. Combined Programme Thesis
Field
: English Linguistics
Code
: 60.22.15
Supervisor
: Prof. Nguyễn Hòa (PhD)


HANOI – 2012


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DACLARATION 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3
ABSTRACT 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………5
LIST OF TABLES 9
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 10
1.1 Rationale of the study 10

1.2 Aims of the Study 10
1.3 Scope of the study 11
1.4 Methods of the study 11
CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 13
2.1 Discourse 13
2.1.1 The notion of discourse 13
2.1.2 Discourse and text 14
2.1.3 Spoken and written discourse 15
2.2 Genre 16


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2.3 Register of discourse 17
2.3.1 The notion of register 17
2.3.2 The parameters of register 18
2.3.2.1 Field of discourse 18
2.3.2.2 Tenor of discourse 18
2.3.2.3 Mode of discourse 19
2.4 Coherence 31
2.4.1 Relevance 31
2.4.2 Discourse structure 33
2.5 English sales presentations 35
2.6 Conclusion 36
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 37
3.1 Literature review 37
3.2 Research methods 37
3.3 Subjects of the study 38
3.4 Data collection methods 38
3.4.1 Data 38

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3.4.2 Discourse recordings 38
3.4.3 Samples selection and samples size 39
3.5 Analysis procedure 39
3.5.1 Transcription 39
3.5.2 Analysis process 40
CHAPTER 4: THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH SALES PRESENTATIONS 41
4.1 Register 41
4.1.1 Field of discourse of English sales presentations 41
4.1.2 Tenor of discourse of English sales presentations 42
4.1.3 Mode of discourse of English sales presentations 43
4.1.3.1 Use of grammar in English sales presentations 44
4.1.3.2 Use of vocabulary in English sales presentations 51
4.2 Coherence 57
4.2.1 Relevance of discourse of English sales presentations 57
4.2.2 Discourse structure of English sales presentations 59
4.2.2.1 The beginning 59
4.2.2.2 The body 60


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4.2.2.3The ending 67
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 74
5.1 Concluding remarks 74
5.2 Implications 75
5.2.1 Implication for business communication 75
5.2.2 Implications for the teaching and learning presentation skill 76
5.3 Limitations 77
5.4 Suggestions for further study 78

REFERENCES 79
APPENDIX 1: I
APPENDIX 2: IX
APPENDIX 3: XVII





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LIST OF TABLES

Chart 1: The frequency of occurrence of modal verbs in English sales
presentations.

Chart 2: The frequency of occurrence of active and passive voices in English
sales presentations.

Chart 3: The frequency of occurrence of four kinds of sentences in English sales
presentations.

Chart 4: The frequency of occurrence of subject and other parts of speech as first
element of sentences in English sales presentations.

Chart 5: The frequency of occurrence of types of adjectives in English sales
presentations.

Chart 6: The frequency of occurrence of types of adverbs in English sales
presentations.

Figure 1: Mode of discourse

Table 1: Register analysis of the article “A back door to war”

Table 2: Permission/Possibility/Ability modalities

Table 3: Obligation/Necessity modalities

Table 4: Volition/Prediction modalities

Table 5: Classification of Adjectives in English

Table 6: Classification of Adverbs in English




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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the study
In theory: Up to now, only few books and researches specialize in presentations,
and most of them are guidance in making presentation in general, for example:
Presentation Skills for Students (Emden, J. & Becker, L., 2004). This thesis desires
to investigate this new field and to be as a reliable source for a salesperson before
making his sales presentation.
In practice: The rapid development of economy has created various challenges to
Vietnamese companies; they are forced to act more effectively in the market. One
of their ways to compete with other companies is to make successful presentations
to introduce new products, in which they can provide clients with full information
about new products. Making an effective sales presentation becomes a challenge

for businesses and business training centers when there is mostly no study or
research on this field. Therefore, the investigation to famous sales presentations
will be a good means for enterprises to attract more customers and to get more
profits.
To make a persuasive sales presentation, it is undeniable to understand the
discourse of sales presentation, especially register of discourse and coherence of
discourse. Register of discourse is investigated in terms of field of discourse, tenor
of discourse and mode of discourse. Coherence of a discourse is created by
cohesion, relevance and discourse structure. With the limited time, this paper only
looks at register of discourse of sales presentation and coherence of discourse of
sales presentation in terms of relevance and discourse structure
1.2 Aims of the Study


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Due to the constraints in time and knowledge in Business English, this thesis will
not able to cover all aspects of sales presentations, this study aims at:
- Investigate register of the discourse of English sales presentations with three
aspects: field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of discourse.
- Examine factors creating coherence of the discourse of English sales
presentations: relevance and discourse structure.
These aims are to answer the research questions:
- What is the register in terms of field of discourse, tenor of discourse and mode of
discourse, of English sales presentation?
- How coherence of discourse of English sales presentations is created via
relevance and discourse structure?
1.3 Scope of the study
In business, there are various ways for a salesman to seek customers‟ needs
including sales letters, advertisements, or sales presentations, etc. Within the limit
of a M.A. thesis, this research can only deal with one aspect of this broad area, that

is sales presentations made by Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple.
This study is confined to the register of sales presentations with three aspects:
field, mode and tenor of the discourse. Moreover, this thesis will focus on
coherence of discourse of sales presentations with two factors: relevance and
discourse structure.
1.4 Methods of the study


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This study adopts an integrated approach to discourse analysis, which looks into
the concerned discourse in terms of register and coherence.
To do this, descriptive method is used to describe data and characteristics of the
population or phenomenon being studied. The description is used for frequencies,
averages and other statistical calculation of variables of register and coherence‟s
relevant factors of discourse of sales presentations.


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CHAPTER 2: DEFINING THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This chapter aims at providing the framework of investigation. The first section
concerns briefly the notion of discourse, discourse and text, and distinguishes
spoken and written discourse. The second section is the review of genre. The next
section reviews the concept and parameter of register of discourse. What is
discussed in the fourth section is coherence which involves two factors: relevance
and discourse structure. The last section provides a general concept of English
sales presentation.
2.1 Discourse
2.1.1 The notion of discourse
From different points of view, discourse is understood and defined in different
ways. Halliday (1985) defines discourse “is a multidimensional process”. Guy

Cook (1990:6) claims that discourse is the language which has been used to
communicate something and is felt to be coherent, whereas Richard et.al.
(1985:83) defined discourse as “a general term for examples of language use, i.e.,
language which has been produced as the results of an act of communication. It
refers to larger units of language such as paragraphs, conversation and
interviews”.
There is a number of other definitions of discourse, for the purpose of this paper, I
would like to follow Widdowson‟s definition (1984: 4, as cited in Nguyen Hoa,
2000) “Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction”. By this
way, discourse is not simply a representation or a verbal record of the
communicative but it includes many situational factors, that is context of the
situation, the meanings or intentions that the writer/ speaker assigns to a linguistic


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means or expression. Therefore, discourse analysis will be the analysis of language
in use.
2.1.2 Discourse and text
It is said that the confusion of the two terms “discourse” and “text” may result in
the difficulty for the discourse analysts in the long run; therefore, it is important to
make a clear cut between them.
According to Widdowson (1979) (as cited in Nguyễn, Trí Trung, 2007: 4) text is
sentences in combination while discourse is the use of sentences for
communication. According to him, text typically has cohesion whereas discourse
has coherence. This point of view is proved in the following example:
A: The grass is growing fast in the garden.
B: I’m going to have a group study this morning, mother.
Although there is no formal link between A and B, the listeners can still infer that
B refuses the request of A to do the gardening in the morning.
The differences and the interrelationships between discourse and text can be

captured by Widdowson (1984:100) by the following:
Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction. Its
situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed,
intentions made clear, its linguistic is Text.
(as cited in Nguyen Hoa, 2000: 14)


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In the light of this distinction, discourse analysis concerns the functional analysis
of language in use, which involves context of situations, the meanings or intentions
that the writer/speaker assigns to a linguistic means or expression. Text, in the
other hands, deals with the analysis of formal features of text such as cohesion, text
structure and so on.
2.1.3 Spoken and written discourse
Following Nguyen Hoa (2000), this paper will consider the differences between
spoken and written language in terms of two aspects: manner of production and the
representation of discourse.
2.1.3.1 Manner of production
In spoken language, the producer can control and process the production of
communication by varying voice quality, using posture, gesture, or body language,
etc. The speaker also gets a great advantage that he can observe the reactions from
the audiences or the listeners. However, he has to monitor what he said and
determines whether it matches what he wants to say and the response he means to
make. The speaker also has little chance to change what he said.
The writer, on the other hand, can manage what he has just produced, pause and
revise at any points that he wants to. The writer also has time for choices of word
use or phrase use to suit his needs. However, on contrary to spoken language, the
writer cannot observe the reactions from the readers or the person he wants to
communicate with.
2.1.3.2 The representation of discourse: text

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A written text may be represented in many ways using different typefaces, or
different sizes of paper, to serve various purposes of the writer. The spoken text is
rather complicated. The transcription somehow cannot represent all the things that
can hardly be regarded as pertaining to text such as noise and laughter. Therefore,
the perception and interpretation of what constitutes a spoken text is essentially
subjective.
2.2 Genre
The concept of genre has been discussed by some linguists. The Longman
Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt and
Platt 1992) describes “genre as a particular class of events that are considered by
a discourse community to be the same type” (as cited in Paltridge, 2001:11-12).
Genre in linguistics is defined by John M. Swales (1990) as the type of
communicative event. Both these linguists argue that different types of
communicative events result in different types of discourse and each of these will
have its own distinctive characteristics. Swales (1990:46) assumes that the
principal criteria feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a
genre is some shared set of communicative purposes. The communicative purpose
will be reflected in the basic building blocks of discourse, - that is, the words and
grammatical structures themselves. Some examples of different genres are: letter,
chat, song, joke, message, poem sermon note or argument, etc.
Paltridge (2001, 14) provides a useful checklist to distinguish the genres:
- Topic of the text,
- Speaker/author of the text,
- Audience of the text,


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- Relationship between participants,
- Purpose of the text,
- Setting (e.g., in a newspaper, in a classroom, at home),
- Structure of the text,
- Tone of the text (e.g. formal vs. informal, serious vs. amusing),
- Patterns of grammar,
- Key vocabulary items,
- Community expectations,
- Shared understandings,
- Assumed background knowledge,
It is sometimes argued that there is no clear distinction between genre and register-
or functional language variation. And Martin (1985, as cited in Swales 1990:40)
hmakes the following three-way distinction: “genres are realized through
registers, and registers in turn are realized through language”. The following part
2.3 is the discussion of register to make this distinction clear.
2.3 Register of discourse
2.3.1 The notion of register
Register is among the two varieties which determine variation in language use. The
other variety is dialects which is not the matter of this paper. According to Halliday
et. al (1964:87) “the category of register is postulated to account for what people
do with their language when we observe language activity in the various contexts
in which it takes place. We find differences in the type of language selected as
appropriate to different types of situation”. By this way, register is defined in


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terms of differences in grammar, vocabulary, etc. of language activity such as a
sports commentary or a church service.
2.3.2 The parameters of register
Three basis aspects of register can be distinguished as field of discourse, mode of

discourse and tenor of discourse.
2.3.2.1 Field of discourse
Field or the reference to „what is going on‟ is the kind of language use, which
reflects “the purposive role”, or the social function of the text (Hatim & Masan,
1990: 48). However, field is not the same as subject matter; as fields are often
characterized by a variety of subject matters and in certain fields, use of language
is just the additional (e.g. a swimming lesson).
2.3.2.2 Tenor of discourse
Tenor of discourse concerns the relationship between the addresser and the
addressee, which “can be analyzed in terms of basic distinction such as polite-
colloquial-intimate, on a scale of categories which range from formal to informal”
(Hatim & Mason, 1990: 50)
Personal and functional are the two kinds of tenor. Personal tenor covers the
degrees of formality with the social roles of participants together with their status
relationships and personalities such as the social identity: age, sex, power relations.
Whereas functional tenor is the category “used to describe what language is being
used for in the situation. Is the speaker trying to persuade? To exhort? To
discipline?” (Hatim & Mason, 1990: 51). In other words, functional tenor concerns


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with the determining the social function or role of utterance, identifying the
purpose for which the language is being used.
2.3.2.3 Mode of discourse
* Macro mode of discourse
Hatim & Mason (1990) defines mode as “the medium of the language activity”, or
the function of the text in the event by means of channel. The extent of mode
variation is illustrated by Gregory & Carroll (1978: 47) by means of a diagram as
follow:

Figure 1: Mode of discourse


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The channel transcends speech vs. writing to include other communicative
occurrences such as the telephone conversation, the essay, the business letter, etc.
In Halliday‟s later writings (e.g. 1978: 144-5) mode even includes rhetorical
concepts such as expository, didactic, persuasive, descriptive and the like.
Hatim & Mason (1990, 52-53) has illustrated the register parameters by analyzing
an article as follow:

(New Statesman 1983)
In terms of register analysis, this piece of article will be described as follow:

I
II
III
IV
Field
Arousing interest
in the topic
American
domestic policy
News reporting
Assessing current
affair (investigative


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and international

current affairs
journalism)

Tenor
Slick, in-the-
know
salesmanship
Emotive,
operative,
manipulative use
of rhetoric
Detached, factual
Authoritative,
evaluative
commentary
Mode
Head-like
abstract, written
to read as if heard
Political speech,
written to be
spoken
Written to be read
Editorializing
through seemingly
detached reporting;
written to be read
reflectively.
Table 1: Register analysis of the article “A back door to war”
* Micro mode of discourse

The mode of register, however, in the micro scale, refers to the use of grammar
involving the use of modality, active and passive voices, kinds of sentences, etc.
and vocabulary including archaic words/phrases and technical terms.
Use of grammar
 Modality
Modal auxiliaries, together with primary auxiliaries are used to build up complex
verb phrases and cannot occur alone unless a lexical verb is recoverable from the
context. The modal auxiliaries express a wide range of meanings, having to do
with concepts such as ability, permission, necessity, and obligation. Although they


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can convey meanings that relate to time differences (e.g. can v. could), the
differences among them related primary to modality rather than tense.
There are nine central modal auxiliaries: can, could, may, might, shall, should,
will, would, must; some marginal auxiliary verbs: need (to), ought to, dare (to),
used to, which behave like modals in taking auxiliary negation and yes-no question
inversion; some semi-modals which are fixed idiomatic phrases, expressions:
(had) better, have to, (have) got to, be supposed to, be going to.
Modals and semi-model can be grouped in to three major categories according to
their main meanings:
 Permission/possibility/ability: can, could, may, might
Modality
Markings
Examples
Might
Logical possibility
It might be the case that it had been settled
long before that

Can
Permission
Can I have a cup of tea?
Ability
I can swim
Logical possibility
These observations can be explained
biochemically

Could
Logical possibility
It could be anything you want
Ability
I couldn’t feel my hand
Permission
She asked if she could sit at the end of my
table
May
Logical possibility
She may not see the it as a joke
Permission
May I go out?


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Table 2: Permission/possibility/ability modalities
 Obligation/ necessity: must, should, (had) better, have (got) to, need to,
ought to, be supposed to
Markings

Modality
Examples


Personal obligation
Have to
I have to get up at five this morning
Should
You should relax
Need to
You need to finish this exercise by ten
Ought to
I ought to go out this morning.
Must
I must now confess something which I
kept back from you in Chapter 3.
Necessity
Must
Your mum must not care
Table 3: Obligation/necessity modalities
 Volition/prediction: will, would, shall, be going to.
Modality
Markings
Examples
Will
Personal volition
I’ll come and show you my paper
Prediction
It won’t be that difficult to do
Would

Personal volition
I would give it back
Prediction
She would just feel better if she went out
Be going to
Personal volition
I’m going to take a rest after the long
business trip
Shall
Personal volition
I shall try to finish this paper before
December
Table 4: Volition/prediction modalities


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 Active and passive voices
English verbs have two voices: active voice and passive voice. Voice of a verb
expresses the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and
the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). In active voice
sentences, the agent or the doer of the action is the subject; the receiver takes the
action of the verb. Active sentences follow the Agent –Verb – Receiver.
On the other hands most passive constructions are formed with the auxiliary be
followed by an ed-participle:
E.g.: She was asked to do the annual report within two days.
In passive voice sentences, the noun phrase in the role of subject in a passive
construction usually corresponds to the noun phrase, which is the direct object in
the associated active constructions.
E.g.: The proposal was approved by the professional (passive voice)
cf. The professional approved the proposal (active voice)

The noun phrase in the by-phrase is commonly referred to the agent, although it
could also serve other semantic roles such as recipient or affected subjects. The
passive construction with a by-phrase is called the long passive; in contrast, the
short passive, where the agent is left unexpressed, does not have a by-phrase. The
short passive is in fact far more common than the long passive, and it is widely
used in academic writing to omit mention of the specific researcher(s) (Biber et. al,
1999: 477)
Passive construction are also commonly found with two-object prepositional verbs


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E.g.: Dormancy is associated with short duration. (Passive voice)
cf. Researchers associate dormancy with short duration. (Active voice)
The major function of passive voice is to demote the agent of the verb (often the
person doing the action of the verb, while giving topic status to the affected patient
(the entity being acted on).
 Kinds of sentences
There are three basic types of sentence structure: simple sentences,
compound sentences and complex sentences.
- Simple sentence: A simple sentence is formed by a subject and a verb.
By this way, the verbs in simple sentences are often intransitive verbs.
An important requirement of simple sentence is that it must express the
complete thought.
- Compound sentence: is formed when two simple sentences are joined
together with a conjunction. The most common conjunctions are and, but
and or, which respectively show addition, contrast and choice.
- Complex sentence: is the most complicated type among the three types
of sentence structure. Complex sentence contains clauses with
subordinate relation, i.e. one clause is a constituent or a part of the other.
I will not come to the party if John comes

(1) (2)
(1): superordicate/independent/main clause
(2): subordinate/dependent clause
The main clause is the simple sentence, and the subordinate clause functionally can
be Nominal clause (E.g.: You can call me whenever you like), Adverbial clause


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(E.g.: If he had been more careful, he would not have made such stupid mistake),
Comparative clause (E.g.: She works harder than me) or Comment clause (E.g.:
The Smiths, as you probably know, have been our neighbor for twenty years). The
clauses in complex sentences can be linked by subordinating conjunction: simple
subordinators (after, though, although, as, because, before, if, once, since, that,
until, when, where, while, etc.), compound subordinators (ending with „that‟ like so
that, such that, or ending with „as‟ like so far as, as long as, etc.), or correlative
subordinators (E.g.: if…then, although…yet, so…that, no sooner … than, etc.)
 Sentence order
The sentence order, which is determined by which part of sentence coming first, is
related to thought patterns and affects the making of text. One sentence can start
with the subject, which shows the direct thought of the speaker/writer. This order is
the most common sentence pattern in English (Nguyễn, Thị Bích Ngọc, 2008: 20).
For example: Tom is going to have a long business trip to Asia.
One sentence can also begin with a part of speech other than the subject. These
sentence patterns may be used to delay revealing what the sentence is about and
sometimes to create tension or suspense; some other times, these patterns can be
used to make the ideas between sentences more clearly. (Nguyễn, Thị Bích Ngọc
2008: 21)
For example: A few weeks ago, we sold out 250,000,000 iPod.

Use of vocabulary

 Technical words:



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Technical word terms define typical words or phrases on specific fields. These
terms build the technicality – a particular feature of a type of documents. For
example, some law terms are: Adjudication (giving or pronouncing a judgment),
court (a place where justice is administered.), etc.
 Adjectives

The most common use of adjectives is to modify nouns, thus adding to the
informational density of expository registers such as news and academic prose
(Biber, 1999: 504). Syntactically, adjectives can serve both attributive and
predicative roles. Adjectives in an attributive role modify nominal expressions,
occurring as constituents of noun phrase and typically preceding the head noun.
e.g.: Yesterday Jack wore a colorful jacket.
Adjectives in a predicative role, on the other hand, characterize a noun phrase that
is a separated clause element. They occur as subject predicatives following a verb.
E.g.: That‟ll be quite interesting.
Semantically, adjectives are divided into two broad groups: descriptors and
classifiers. Descriptors are prototypical adjectives denoting such features as color,
time, size and weight, chronology and age, emotion, and a wide range of other
characteristics. They are typically gradable, i.e. they allow comparison, whether
inflectional or not, and degree modification: shorter, very strong, extremely
serious. In contrast, classifiers are used to delimit or restrict a noun‟s referent, by
placing it in a category in relation to other referents. They are normally non-
gradable and non-predicating (i.e. they do not occur as predicatives in clauses.