A STUDY ON LEXICAL COHESION IN VIETNAMESE AND ENGLISH CORPORATE ADVERTISINGS

Besides the sentences and grammaticalcohesive devices, the lexical cohesive devices are also essential to make a text to be acoherent message.. Aims of the study This thesis aims to: - g

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

The Vietnamese government and people have a more and more positive point of viewthe role of trading activities in which the value of corporate advertisement has beenhighly appreciated after Vietnam operated the open-door policy as well as officiallyjoined the biggest trade organization “WTO” In order to create good images of acompany or an organization, it is essential to build an informative and eligibleadvertising The purveyors might market their branches of business, operationalpolicies, and organization and so on through their skills of textual and lexicalmanipulation

The corporate introduction is normally written by the owner of the company inhis/her mother-tongue language and has it translated into target language or by thecopywriter Thus, sometimes the terminology and terms used to render the text might

be different from the original meanings Besides the sentences and grammaticalcohesive devices, the lexical cohesive devices are also essential to make a text to be acoherent message

To a writer of corporate advertisings, knowledge of linguistics, culture in general anddiscourse analysis is really important for a coherent text Corporate advertising is ameans of introducing company or organization name, operation methods, potentials,services, production, staff and so on I recognize some challenges in dealing with aninteresting but demanding text of corporate advertising These might be solved bywriters if they have a thorough comprehension of and ability to use coherence andcohesive devices in the discourse In discourse, cohesion has an interrelation withcoherence; the former is a guide to and part of the latter in reading, writing They arefeatures related to elements that produce cohesive and coherent texts Thus, I makedecision to study the use of lexical cohesion in the English and Vietnamese corporateadvertisings as well as the frequency of occurrence

2 Aims of the study

This thesis aims to:

- give a systematic and comprehensive description of lexical cohesion features inEnglish

- figure out how these devices are used in texts

- make comparative analysis of lexical cohesion between English and Vietnamesecorporate advertisements to help copywriters and readers surmount difficulties

in using and understanding the lexical cohesive devices

3 Scope of the study

Within the framework of a minor M A thesis, we only study on lexical cohesion in thecorporate advertisement texts in English and Vietnamese taken from the only sources

of websites that introduce companies or organizations The sample includes 3 texts inEnglish and 3 texts in Vietnamese used as written discourses

4 Methods of the study

The methods of description, analysis and statistic in linguistics are used in this study.The data are collected by pointing out the frequency of occurrence of lexical cohesivedevices used in the written discourse of corporate advertisements The investigationwill lead to the implication of better methods of writing corporate advertisements usinglexical cohesive devices

5 Design of the study

This minor thesis consists of three parts as follows:

Part A: Introduction

Part B: Development

There are three chapters in this part

Chapter 1 deals with theoretical background of the research with three main sectionslike: discourse and discourse analysis, cohesion & coherence and lexical cohesionChapter 2 presents specific features of advertisement in general and corporateadvertisements in particular

Chapter 3 gives comparison of lexical cohesion in English and Vietnamese corporateadvertisements

Part C: Conclusion

In this part, the author summarizes the findings and giving suggestions for furtherdevelopment in writing corporate advertisements

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter aims at dealing with theoretical framework of investigation such asconcepts of discourse, cohesion and coherence, cohesive devices, register and genre indiscourse analysis which are relevant to the purpose of this study, as well as thedefinition and properties of advertisement in general and corporate advertisement inparticular

1 Discourse and discourse analysis

1.1 The concepts of discourse

There are different ways of understanding and defining discourse Halliday (1985)

defines “Discourse is a multidimensional process” According to Crystal (1992) discourse is seen as “a continuous stretch of language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument, joke, or narrative” Cook

(1989) has a similar perspective of discourse; he considers discourse as “stretches oflanguage perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive” In other words, asBrown and Yule state, discourse is language material, either spoken or written, inactual uses by speakers (and writters) of the language

1.2 Text and Discourse

It is still in vagueness to define whether or not discourse and text are of two separateentities and some linguists are trying to set them apart According to Widdowson(1979) text is sentences in combination whereas discourse is the use of sentence forcommunication

For some linguists, discourse is different from text According to Cook (1989:158) text

is “ a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context” However, Brown and Yule (1983:6) argue that text is the representation of discourse and the verbal record

of a communicative act

Actually, it is not easy to make a clear-cut distinction between “text” and “discourse”.The concepts of discourse and text defined by Halliday (1985: 290) maybe the most

comprehensive He states that “discourse” itself is a process and the term “text” is usually taken as referring to the product And obviously, cohesion and coherence are

typical of text as a language unit

1.3 Spoken and written discourse

Talking and writing represent different modes of expressing linguistics meanings Asstated by Halliday (1985) “Speaking does not show clearly sentence and paragraphboundaries or signal the move into direct quotation while writing leaves out theprosodic and paralinguistic contribution” While written discourse comprises completesentences with subordination, rich lexis and frequent modifications via adjectives andadverbs, spoken contains incomplete sentences Although spoken and writtendiscourses share the communicative functions, they serve various functions Theformer is concerned with interact ional use and the latter with the transactional use(Brown and Yule, 1983: 13)

By comparison, writing language is under no temporal, spatial pressure The writer hastime to choose lexical items, check words and structures to make necessary correctionwhich is primarily concerned with the transactional use Spoken language, as stated byBrown and Yule (1983), is the kind of language which is produced under sometemporal, spatial pressure with the speaker’s monitoring of what it is that he has justsaid, determining his current phrase and simultaneously planning his next utterance andwhich is primarily concerned with the interactional use

There are three prominent features that can apply to distinguish written and spokendiscourse

1 Density: the density is the information volume presented Evidently, writtenlanguage is dense while spoken language is sparse

2 Complexity of grammar: in spoken language grammar is not so important, butinformation For written language, it is important to maintain enoughinformation, appropriate grammatical structures as well as rational organization

2 Context in discourse analysis

2.1 The notion of context

As premise, we should take a short excursion into the history of the notion of context.Halliday and Hasan draw their concept of context from Bronislaw Malinowski'sprinciple of describing the environment and culture along with the text to analyze.Malinowski, himself being an anthropologist in the 1920s, added various information

to his reports on the language of the Trobriand islanders, which included as muchcultural background as possible (context of culture), and the immediate environment inwhich the text was produced (context of situation) He encountered basic difficultieswhen translating pragmatic conversations of the Trobrianders into English, but later onrealized that even so called "civilized" language, mostly used for abstraction, could not

be separated from its cultural and immediate surroundings if it had to be understoodand rendered intelligibly Based on this early framework of context, more and morefeatures determining the production and reception of texts were defined and added,from Firth's 'nonverbal actions', 'effects', and 'objects and events' surrounding the text,

to Hymes' 'intent', 'key', 'medium' and 'genre', and normative principles of the text.According to Halliday then, all these features are indebted to the complexity of modernsociety and communication itself, but they enable us to predict what is going to happen

within "the framework of something that we knew was going to happen" The success

of every act of communication thus is based on our predatory interpretation of thecultural and situational context The situational context of our text could becharacterized as well organized and highly predictable In general, there are two maintypes of context

2.2 Context of situation

Context of situation is an integral concept of discourse analysis According to Eggins(1994:30), context of situation is usually discussed under three variables: what is talkedabout, what the relationship between the communicators is; what role the languageplays Other linguists have the same opinion that in order to understand thoroughlywhat someone says or writes It is necessary to know the context of situation likeNunan (1983)

2.3 Context of culture

Besides the language and context of situation we need to pay attention to the context ofculture As stated by Malinowski (1923) “if you are not a member of the culture, youcannot understand what is meant” To recognize the text as meaningful, the readers orhearers need to refer the text to a cultural context It is important to know the culture ofthe given language in interpreting and understanding the given messages

3 Cohesion & Coherence

3.1 Cohesion vs Coherence

The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, andthat defines it as a text Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element inthe discourse dependent on that of another

Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical, and other relations which link variousparts of a text These relations or ties organize and, to some extent, create a text, forinstance, by requiring the reader to interpret words and expressions by reference toother words and expressions in the surrounding sentences and paragraphs Cohesion is

a surface relation and it connects together the actual words and expressions that we cansee or hear.

Halliday and Hasan (1986) identify five main cohesive devices in English: reference,substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion

E.g American Life Inc pays the mortgage on each property from its own funds until the mortgage is paid in full The Company’s principals have made personal

guarantees covering all debt and no debt is cross-collateralized among the

properties and partnerships

Reading this example, we can understand that there is a link between ‘American Life Inc.’ and ‘the Company’’.

Coherence, on the other hand, is defined as the relationships of various ideas in a textthat are linked together to create a meaningful discourse According to Nunan (1993)coherence is “the feeling that sequences of sentences or utterances seems to hangtogether and make sense In short, coherence means the relationships that link themeanings of utterances in a discourse or of the sentences in a text These links may bebased on the speakers’ shared knowledge

E.g The aviation business includes handling aircrafts and passengers, offering security check, services of security guard, fire fighting and other ground services

In the above example, there is a conceptual relationship among the aviation business

and other terms in the text

Though cohesion and coherence, in essence, is different from each other, they areclosely linked together They represent the very essential elements that make a text ordiscourse coherent and that make coherent text or discourse different from randomsentences or utterances Cohesion is mainly used to embody coherence by a system of

cohesive devices Accordingly, cohesion and coherence help consolidate the text as acomplete and unified linguistics unit beyond the largest syntactic unit of sentence.

3.2 Main principles of cohesion

Halliday & Hasan (1976) as well as other linguists assume that cohesion isexpressed partly through the grammar and partly through the vocabulary.These cohesive devices are closely connected to create a coherent text

Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion

Endophoric reference Synonym/near-synonym

Nominal substitution Super-ordinate

Clausal substitution

Collocation

Verb + adverbAdverb + adjectiveAdjective + preposition

3.2.1 Grammatical Cohesion

We can see that a coherent text is a sequence of sentences or utterances which seem “to

be linked” together containing words or phrases that enable the writer or speaker toestablish boundaries across sentence or utterance and help sentences to be tied together.They are considered as cohesive devices

Structure in text is provided by grammar therefore cohesion is considered to be outside

of the structure Cohesion refers to the “non-structural text-forming relations” (Hallidayand Hasan 1976: 7) The concept of cohesion in text is related to semantic ties or

“relations of meanings that exist within the text, and that define it as a text” (ibid: 4).within text, if a previously mentioned item is referred to again and is dependent uponanother element, it is considered a tie Without semantic ties, sentences or utteranceswould seem to lack any type of relationship to each other and might not be consideredtext Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 4) refer to this interstitial link as “the presupposing”and “the presupposed” Using the authors’ example, “Wash and core six cookingapples Put them into a reproof dish.” The word “them” presupposes “apples” andprovides a semantic tie between the two sentences, thus creating cohesion Cohesioncreates interdependency in text

a Referencing

Referencing functions to retrieve presupposed information in text and must beidentifiable for it to be considered as cohesive In written text, referencing indicateshow the writer introduces participants and keeps track of them throughout the text.(Eggins 1994: 95) There are three general types of referencing: homophonicreferencing, which refers to shared information through the context of culture,exophoric referencing, which refers to information from the immediate context ofsituation, and endophoric referencing, which refers to information that can be

“retrieved” from within the text It is this endophoric referencing which is the focus ofcohesion theory Endophoric referencing can be divided into three areas: anaphoric,cataphoric, and esphoric Anaphoric refers to any reference that “points backwards”

to previously mentioned information in text Cataphoric refers to any reference that

“points forward” to information that will be presented later in the text Esphoric refers

to any reference within the same nominal group or phrase which follows thepresupposed item For cohesion purposes, anaphoric referencing is the most relevant

as it “provides a link with a preceding portion of the text” (Halliday and Hasan 1976:51); hence its most common usage

Functionally speaking, there are three main types of cohesive references: personal,demonstrative, and comparative Personal reference keeps track of function throughthe speech situation using noun pronouns like “he, him, she, her”, etc and possessivedeterminers like “mine, yours, his, hers”, etc Demonstrative reference keeps track ofinformation through location using proximity references like “this, these, that, those,here, there, then, and the” Comparative reference keeps track of identity and similaritythrough indirect references using adjectives like “same, equal, similar, and different,else, better, more”, etc and adverbs like “so, such, similarly, otherwise, so, more”,etc (ibid: 37–39).

b Substitution and Ellipsis

While referencing functions to link semantic meanings within text, substitution andellipsis differ in that they operate as linguistic links at the lexico-grammatical level

In Bloor and Bloor (1995: 96), substitution and ellipsis are used when “a speaker orwriter wishes to avoid the repetition of a lexical item and is able to draw on one of thegrammatical resources of the language to replace the item” The three types ofclassification for substitution and ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal, reflect itsgrammatical function When something in text is being substituted, it follows that thesubstituted item maintains the same structural function as the presupposed item Innominal substitution, the most typical substitution words are “one and ones” thatsubstitute nouns In verbal substitution, the most common substitute is the verb “do”and is sometimes used in conjunction with “so” as in “do so” and substitute verb andverb phrases Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 125–126) point out that “do” often operateswith the reference items “it” and “that” but still have the main function as a verbalsubstitute because of its grammatical role In clausal substitution, an entire clause issubstituted and though it may seem to be similar to either nominal or verbal substitu -tion, the difference is the presupposed anaphoric reference

Though substitution and ellipsis are similar in their functions as the linguistic links forcohesion, ellipsis differs in that it is “substitution by zero” (ibid: 142) Ellipsis refers

to a presupposed anaphoric item although the reference is not through a

“place-marker” like in substitution The presupposed item is understood through its structurallink As it is a structural link, ellipsis operates through nominal, verbal and clausallevels Halliday and Hasan further classify ellipsis in systemic linguistic terminology

as deictic, numerative, epithet, classifier, and qualifier

c Conjunction

Conjunction, as described by Bloor and Bloor (1995: 98) acts as a “cohesive tiebetween clauses or sections of text in such a way as to demonstrate a meaningfulpattern between them”, though Halliday and Hasan (ibid: 227) indicate that

“conjunctive relations are not tied to any particular sequence in the expression”.Therefore, amongst the cohesion-forming devices within text, conjunction is the leastdirectly identifiable relation Conjunction acts as a semantic cohesive tie within text

in four categories: additive, adversative, causal and temporal Additive conjunctionacts to structurally coordinate or link by adding to the presupposed item and aresignaled through “and, also, too, furthermore, additionally”, etc Additive conjunctionmay also act to negate the presupposed item and is signaled by “nor, and Not, either,neither”, etc Adversative conjunctions act to indicate “contrary to expectation” (ibid:250) and are signaled by “yet, though, only, but, in fact, rather”, etc Causalconjunction expresses “result, reason and purpose” and is signaled by “so, then, for,because, for this reason, as a result, in this respect, etc” and adverbs: consequently,accordingly The last conjunctive category is temporal and links by signaling sequence

or time Some sample temporal conjunctive signals are “then, next, after that, next day,until then, at the same time, at this point”, etc

3.2.2 Lexical Cohesion

Halliday & Hasan (1976) classify reiteration into four types: the same word, a

synonym/near-synonym, a super-ordinate, and a general word For example, ‘a boy’can be replaced in the following sentences with ‘the boy’ (the same word), ‘the lad’ (asynonym/ near-synonym), ‘the child’ (a super-ordinate), and ‘the idiot’ (a general

word) (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 279-80) Meanwhile, they recognize collocation as an

important part of creating cohesion in connected text Collocation refers to the semantic

and structural relation among words, which native speakers can use subconsciously forcomprehension or production of a text They argue the case of collocation as follows:The cohesive effect…depends not so much on any systematic relationship as on theirtendency to share the same lexical environment, to occur in COLLOCATION with oneanother In general, any two lexical items having similar patterns of collocation – that

is, tending to appear in similar context – will generate a cohesive force if they occur inadjacent sentences (Halliday & Hasan 1976:286)

A ‘cohesive force’ will produce a ‘cohesive tie’, which is the relationship between acohesive item and the item it presupposed in a text It other words, collocational linksbetween lexical items create cohesion

In response to Halliday & Hasan (1976)’s initiation of cohesion, other researchers havediscussed lexical cohesion However, cohesion can be concluded as “the means bywhich texts are linguistically connected” (Carter 1998: 80) It is significant to recognizethat lexical cohesion cannot exits without sentences., That is, cohesive words should bediscussed not only as the meaning relations which hold between items, but also as theexplicit expression of those meaning relations within a text Ultimately, it is necessary

to consider cohesion as “what gives a text texture” (Halliday & Hasan 1976”)

3.3 Aspects of coherence

Coherence is product of many different factors, which combine to make everyparagraph, every sentence, and every phrase contribute to the meaning of the wholepiece Coherence in writing is much more difficult to sustain than coherent speechsimply because writers have no nonverbal clues to inform them if their message is clear

or not Therefore, writers must make their patterns of coherence much more explicit

and much more carefully planned In general, there are two factors contributing to thecoherence of discourse.

1.3.3.1 Topical coherence

Only discussing on a specific topic, can the writer or speaker create a coherent text

E.g The experience we have gained integrating our medicines management solutions enables us to offer a range of quality healthcare solutions where patient care is the driver Our products and services have a proven track record

of successfully delivering improvements to the patient care process We have established a reputation amongst clinicians that is second to none

It is clear that the central topic of the above sentences concerns with the patient caresolutions of a hospital The words and phrases are closely related to each other Thepassage is coherent because we have a feeling that the text hangs together and makessense, and is not just a jumble of sentences In general, the topical coherence isconsidered as the first important aspect of coherence

1.3.3.2 Logical coherence

Another important aspect of coherence is logical coherence because it helps the readerhave a thorough understanding of the text Looking back at the example of the aboveextract, it is apparent that all the sentences are logically connected The first sentencefunctions as a topic sentence introducing the competence and experience of a hospitaland followed with supportive sentences proving by the quality and success of theoperation as well as the staff

It can be said that what makes the above extract different from random sentences is thecoherence achieved by means of logical coherence Generally, in order to have clausesand sentences of a text linked with each other, it is necessary to have cohesion andcoherence What makes a text topically and logically coherent is achieved with theusage of topical coherence and logical coherence

CHAPTER II: SOME GENERAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ADVERTISEMENTS

1 Advertising

In the era of high technology, public media present a lot of advertisings that are sofamiliar with readers that it is not normal to ask what advertisement is Advertising is

around us and so popular that we hardly stop to think of its nature as a form ofdiscourse, as a system of language use We hardly notice the advertisement ofcorporate on newspaper, internet, but only read product advertisement, game showsand so on People consider it as nonsensical ads and they present unattractiveinformation

Advertising is an important form of self-promotion, the consequence of marketingstrategies used by companies to communicate with their existing and potentialcustomers, advertising is a key element in the marketing and advertising expendituretakes a rather big account of many companies’ budget

The main target of advertising is to influence consumer’s behavior, stimulate themtowards action such as sales promotion, hire purchase, special offer And for differentpurposes, advertising can be defined in different ways:

As defined by Cook (1992), advertising is both a linguistic and social activity It is one

of the complex social activities dependent on language as the medium through whichthe activity is accomplished An advertisement is defined as ‘a public notice designed

to spread information with a view to promoting the sales of marketable goods andservices’ Still, advertising is not just about the commercial promotion of brandedproducts, but can also encompass the idea of texts whose intention is ‘to enhance theimage of an individual, group, or organization’

Sometimes, advertising is intended to inform, but more often, and more importantly, topersuade and influence It, moreover, not only influences any human society in which it

is widespread but also reflects certain aspects of that society’s

Advertising is the collective term for public announcements designed to promote thesale of specific commodities or services It is to be distinguished from other activitiesintended to persuade the public such as propaganda publicity and public relations

Advertising techniques range in complexity from the publishing of straightforwardnotices in the classified-advertising columns of newspapers to the concerted use of newspapers magazines television radio direct mail and other communications media inthe course of a single advertising campaign From its unsophisticated beginnings inancient times advertising has burgeoned into a worldwide industry.

Advertising goal is a specific communicative task and achievement level to beaccomplished with a specific audience in a specific period of time (Colly: 1997)

From the linguistic points of view, advertising is an activity of verbal communicationnot only to present information but also to win the mind and heart of advertisementreceivers, the potential customers As a result, advertisers benefit from this act

Advertising whose purpose is to promote the image of a corporation rather than the sale of

a product or service; also called institutional advertising This advertising is also used tocreate public awareness of a corporation or to improve its reputation in the marketplace

2 Corporate advertisements

A relatively minor but important form of advertising is corporate advertisement which

is designed solely to build prestige and public respect for particular business Corporateadvertisements are sometimes called as “institutional advertisements” that introducebusiness, culture and identity of a company or an organization Different fromadvertisements of name brand, the sale of a product or service, business to business andpublic service, corporate advertisement gives potential customers an overview of theenterprises operation, orientation, potentials, staff… or improve its reputation in themarket Corporate advertisement is a major contributor toward the first impressionbuyers will have of a company or organization and is a great opportunity to gain theirtrust

When writing a corporate advertisement it is important to remember that its lengthmust be between 400 and 4,000 characters With this in mind, it makes good sense to

plan how the writer is going to structure the information and the presentation of thetext

3 Structure of a corporate advertisement

Paragraph 1 - The introduction

The first paragraph is used to introduce a company including:

1 The year the company was established

2 Company’s location

3 What products/services the company offers

4 Any Foreign investment that the company may have

Simply state the year in which the company was established As for the company’slocation, the city and state/province are sufficient so it is not necessary to write ahistorical overview of the surrounding area The reader wants to read about thecompany, not what its location looks like

Paragraph 2 - What the company do

After introducing the company in paragraph one, the second paragraph would be anideal place to establish:

1 Product range/services offered

2 Machinery and technology used

3 Production experience

4 Number of staff (and foreign language speakers if the company has them)

5 How orders are handled

6 Shared significant achievements that would be meaningful to buyers

When introducing products, avoid lengthy descriptions as they belong in the productdescription section Certain industries will be interested in knowing what machineryand technology the company uses and the production experience as well

Stating the number of people that the company employs will give the readership anindication of the company’s size If the company does employ speakers of foreignlanguages, make sure that it is clear as potential buyers will feel confident that they will

be understood when they contact the company

Making buyers aware of significant achievements that the company has made isanother effective way to differentiate the company from other competitors

Paragraph 3 – Quality certificate (QC)

Quality certifications (such as ISO) allow for an increased level of trust and mentioningthem in the company introduction can only benefit it The company may also wish toinform buyers of the quality control procedures that it has in place and whether the use

or welcome third parties approved by buyers to handle QC operations Additionally,adding the company monthly output volume, countries/regions serviced and any majorclients that the company have will also build credibility with buyers It is important tokeep in mind that awards or certifications that are specific to the city or area only will

be meaningless to readers and omit such certificates to save the reader from confusion

Paragraph 4 - The closing

Many companies use the final paragraph of their company introductions to state their corporate values and invite buyers to contact them

Let us look at the following specific example for the above sample

Innovation First Notice was founded in 1993 with the vision of improving the customer service of insurance carriers, third-party administrators, and self-insureds—while simultaneously cutting their costs.

The initial focus was on First Notice of Loss (FNOL) reports Insurance companies then, like today, were not in the business of capturing information or running call centers Loss reports came in from everywhere: agencies; branches; regional call centers; etc Containing inconsistent and incomplete data, these handwritten forms, faxes and electronic files took days moving between company offices/systems and often had to be re-entered along the way.

The need was just as clear in the call centers Policyholders calling in by phone

experienced long hold times and often couldn’t get through at all during peak times and CAT (catastrophe) situations Incomplete data capture led to frequent callbacks

“Business-hours only” added to the frustration.

Enter Innovation First Notice Our dedicated professionals, redundant call centers and flexible technology platform have eliminated these inefficiencies in information intake, yielding higher customer satisfaction, faster processing times and substantially lower costs We offer our clients:

← Three call centers providing 24x7, after-hours and overflow service so

a client’s customers always get through

← CSRs (customer service representatives) highly skilled in sensitive

insurance and healthcare programs to expertly guide callers through

times of need

← Customizable intake software that adapts to the most complex business

rules and integrates directly with client systems

← The experience gained from 14 years of service handling millions of

information transfers

The original vision remains: improve service and cut costs.

Throughout its history, Innovation First Notice has stayed true to this vision, becoming the premier provider of outsourced customer service solutions to the insurance and healthcare markets Over 100 top companies now trust First Notice to seamlessly