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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 1

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

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 6
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


REFERENCES 79
APPENDIX 1: I
APPENDIX 2: IX
APPENDIX 3: XVII 9
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.


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 11
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

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 14
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
16
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, 17

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 19
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:


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


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? 23
Table 2: Permission/possibility/ability modalities
 Obligation/ necessity: must, should, (had) better, have (got) to, need to,
ought to, be supposed to
Markings

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 24
 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)

(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 26
(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