A contrastive analysis of syntactic structures employed in describing trends in English and Vietnamese business articles

A contrastive analysis of syntactic structures
employed in describing trends in English and
Vietnamese business articles



Phạm Thị Hà Trang



Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Đinh Hải Yến
Năm bảo vệ: 2010


Abstract. This research aims at finding out the distinctive features of syntactic structures
in English and Vietnamese grammar and contrasting the syntactic structures used in describing
trends in English and Vietnamese business articles. The contrastive analysis focuses on two
categories of syntactic structures, i.e. clause and phrase employed to describe trends in up-to-date
issues of four English and four Vietnamese business newspapers. The tables and figures play an
important role in highlighting the similarities and differences in the two news languages. The
distinction among each newspaper group (English and Vietnamese) is also enclosed to enhance
the specification of the thesis.
Keywords. Phân tích đối chiếu; Cấu trúc ngữ pháp; Thương mại; Tiếng Anh

Content
1. Rationale for the study
As Heraclitus (540 BC – 480 BC), a Greek philosopher, once said „nothing endures but change‟,
the world we live in today is the world of changes and development – the world of trends. It is
therefore necessary to keep pace with the flow of life everyday by gathering changeable

information about that world. Here comes the indispensable role of mass media in general and
newspapers in particular. As Tom E. Rolnicki, C. Dow Tate and Sherri Taylor (2001) remark in
their book Scholastic Journalism “Immediacy or timeliness is the most essential element of most
news” (p.8), thus we are updated, thanks to newspapers, with latest news about stock markets,
unemployment rate, trends of consumer spending or cases of bankruptcy somewhere in the world
etc.
Given that English is an international language, there are a vast number of newspapers printed in
English regardless of the countries of origin. Together with famous newspapers in America or
Britain like International Herald Tribute, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The Guardian etc., we
also have Business Standard from India, China Daily from China, Vietnam News from Vietnam,
Business Day from South Africa and so on. The domination of English as a common language of
newspapers is greater and greater, which has gradually been eradicating our knowledge barriers.
As a teacher of Business English, it is compulsory for me to read English newspapers, magazines
or journals regularly, especially business ones in order to keep me updated and help me
understand more about journalistic register. What is more, I can enrich my Business English
vocabulary and expressions as well as exploit a potential source of teaching materials.
Consequently, my lessons can be more informative and lively. In fact, one of my concerns while
meditating English business articles is the structures used in describing trends. The upward and
downward movements appear to be more and more interesting as I take further steps into
investigating them. The syntactic structures seem to be varied with a great deal of significant
organizations. The flexible semantic features in English trend descriptions are worth being paid
attention to as well. There is a variety of words and expressions to denote the movements, which
adds much color into a piece of news.
In addition, the syntactic structures used in describing trends play an integral part during the
course of my Business English teaching at Vietnam National University, College of Economics.
Course books like Business English, Market Leader or English for Business Communication
contains activities such as writing reports, making presentations or describing charts or graphs,
which requires my students a considerable knowledge in using such structures to produce correct
and appropriate texts or utterances. English business articles, to my mind, can serve as a fertile
land to be cultivated for the sake of describing trends. Teachers can employ business articles to

design a lot of activities and exercises relating to describing changes for students as the way
Peter Grundy (1993) does in his resource book Newspapers.
Finally, it is my curiosity to explore the differences and similarities between syntactic structures
used in describing trends in English and Vietnamese business articles. For one thing, I could
diagnose the difficulties my students may encounter when using such structures due to language
transference. Thus, remedies would be prescribed timely and properly. For the other, I hope to
apply some of the findings into improving the accuracy and appropriateness in translation works.

2. Aims of the study
This research is directed to accomplish three goals:
- To investigate the syntactic structures used in describing trends in English and in Vietnamese
from the perspective of traditional grammar
- To make a contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese syntactic structures used in
describing trends in business articles to deduce their differences and similarities
- To propose some pedagogical implications for better teaching and learning of describing charts
or graphs and some recommendations for more effective translation works

3. Scope of the study
Due to the constraint of time and effort, the study only investigates the English and Vietnamese
syntactic structures on the levels of clauses and phrases.
Also, as suggested in the title of the thesis, the object of the research is narrowed down to
syntactic structures used in trend description in business news. The trends are either concerned
with specific statistics and figures or with general remarks about changes or tendency.
The resources of the analysis are English and Vietnamese business articles from business and
economic newspapers.

4. Methodology of the study
As the title of the thesis suggests, the study is aimed at comparing and contrasting the syntactic
structures used in describing trends in English and Vietnamese business articles; therefore, three
methods namely descriptive, comparative and contrastive are employed.

By descriptive method, a systemic list of structures used to describe trends in business articles
will be presented. Their syntactic features will be shown explicitly. Comparative and contrastive
methods enable the author to discover the similarities and differences between structures used in
describing trends in the two journalistic languages.
The basic process of the research is as follows. Firstly, four English and four Vietnamese
business and economics newspapers are chosen with two copies each. Three articles are taken
from each copy, so in total forty-eight articles are selected for the examination. Then the samples
are thoroughly analyzed, calculated in percentage and put into charts or tables in order to find out
the prominent syntactic structures frequently used in describing trends in the two languages.
Next, English and Vietnamese syntactic structures are contrasted to highlight the similarities and
differences between the two groups. The findings of this process are finally applied into
improving English-Vietnamese translation and teaching students how to describe charts and
graphs effectively.

5. Design of the study
The thesis is divided into three main parts namely Introduction, Development and Conclusion.
In the first part of the study, the author introduces the reasons for choosing the topic, the
objectives to be obtained in conducting the research, the scope of the study, the methods
employed to facilitate the realization of the paper and the design of the study.
The second part, Development, is the focus of the thesis, to which most time and effort are
devoted. This part consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, Literature Review, the writer
presents the theoretical background knowledge about contrastive analysis, syntax and syntactic
structures, journalistic register and trend description in books and newspapers. These will serve
as a springboard for the writer to dash into the exploration of the topic. The next chapter, A
contrastive analysis of syntactic structures used in describing trends in English and
Vietnamese business articles, studies the syntactic structures i.e. clauses and phrases used to
describe changes in English and Vietnamese business articles. Similarities and differences are
accordingly presented with a view to the data shown in charts and tables. The last chapter,
Implications and recommendations is a practical application one because the outcome of the
contrastive analysis will be used to improve English Vietnamese translation of trend description

as well as helping students how enhance their skills of describing charts and graphs in English.
Lastly, the Conclusion part includes a review of the study, some concluding remarks and
suggestions for further research.


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