The use of speech acts in english business letters a case study at commercial companies in binh duong province

A case study as the main research methodology wasconducted to investigate the use of illocution acts including performative verbs, modalverbs, and socio-cultural factors the recipients,

BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI HA THE USE OF SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH BUSINESS LETTERS: A CASE STUDY AT COMMERCIAL COMPANIES IN BINH DUONG PROVINCE MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8220201 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE BINH DUONG-2023 BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI HA THE USE OF SPEECH ACTS IN ENGLISH BUSINESS LETTERS: A CASE STUDY AT COMMERCIAL COMPANIES IN BINH DUONG PROVINCE MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8220201 MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE SUPERVISED BY Ph.D.HUYNH THI BICH PHUONG Ph.D TRAN THANH DU BINH DUONG-2023 DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY This thesis has not been submitted elsewhere and this is my own work I acknowledge that I took my own responsibility for conducting the thesis and I did not use others’ work, except for what was “in-text cited and listed in the reference list” Binh Duong,October 2023 Signature Nguyen Thi Ha i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Huynh Thi Bich Phuong, who devoted much time and effort in supervising me to complete the current thesis If it had not been for such support, I could not have completed the research as expected In addition, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr.Tran Thanh Du who guided me to complete the thesis, gave me suggestions and wholeheartedly urged me to complete the thesis on time as desired On behalf of my friends in the post-graduate program, I would like to thank all enthusiastic lecturers at the university They delivered useful lessons on academic writing, research methodology, language and culture, and so on, so that I could apply the practical knowledge into the research Many thanks should be sent to my family and friends, who always encourage me to overcome many study difficulties to finish the Master’s course Author ii ABSTRACT Email has become a ubiquitous means of communication in business contexts despite some questions regarding its high quality as a fact, which makes a lot of factors taken into serious consideration for successful communication by email This study highlights the use of illocution acts and socio-cultural factors for their positive effects on a business email A case study as the main research methodology was conducted to investigate the use of illocution acts including performative verbs, modal verbs, and socio-cultural factors (the recipients, related fields, and writing contexts) Particularly, thirty extracted emails were collected from four different commercial companies in Binh Duong province-Vietnam, whose writers are all Vietnamese with different backgrounds A formal checklist is suggested to help evaluate the quality of these emails, focusing on the illocutionary acts as the main aspect of speech acts relevant to the study Findings indicate that writers are not seriously aware of the use of performative and modal verbs, which absolutely prevails in highlighting the speech acts in emails Besides, socio-cultural factors and many lexical and grammatical errors cause a lot of loss of literal and pragmatic meanings and misunderstandings between the writers and the receivers Those findings; as a result, contribute to the study for practical implications for the more effective writing of business emails Key words: business letters, business emails, speech acts, illocutionary acts, sociocultural factors, commercial companies iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vii LIST OF FIGURES viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study 1.2 Statement of the problem 1.3 Aims and objectives 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Significance of the study .4 1.7 Structure of the paper CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of key terms 2.1.1 Pragmatics 2.1.2 Speech acts 2.1.3 Locutionary acts 2.1.4 Illocutionary acts and performative verbs 2.1.5 Perlocutionary acts 2.1.6 Business letters 10 2.1.7 Commercial correspondence 11 iv 2.1.8 Emails 11 2.2 Speech acts and the quality of communication 13 2.3 Business email as a written discourse 15 2.4 Key considerations into using business emails 18 2.4.1 Illocutionary acts 20 2.4.2 Socio-cultural factors 21 2.5 Previous studies 22 2.6 Conceptual framework 25 Summary 26 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 28 3.1 Research methods 28 3.1.1 Quantitative method 28 3.1.2 Qualitative method 29 3.2 Research design 30 3.2.1 Case study .30 3.2.2 The current research design 32 3.3 Research contexts 33 3.4 Sampling and participants 34 3.5 Data collection 36 3.6 Data analysis 37 3.7 Reliability and validity 38 3.8 Ethical considerations 39 Summary 40 CHAPTER RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 41 4.1 Results 41 v 4.1.1 Results from email analysis 41 4.1.2 Results from the interview 50 4.2 Discussions 51 4.2.1 The aspects of illocutionary acts employed in English business emails by Vietnamese writers in Binh Duong province 51 4.2.2 The social-cultural components presented in the English business email by Vietnamese writers in Binh Duong province 53 Summary 57 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 58 5.1 Conclusion 58 5.2 Implications 59 5.2.1 For email writers 59 5.2.2 For companies 62 5.3 Limitations of the research 62 5.4 Recommendations for further studies 63 REFERENCES .64 APPENDIX A: THE INTERVIEW SCRIPT 68 APPENDIX B: THE CHECKLIST .70 APPENDIX C: THE RETRIEVED EMAILS 72 vi LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.1 Kinds of speech acts …………………………………………………….7 Table 3.1 Statistics of the emails’ settings 32 Table 4.1 Politeness markers used in the emails………………………………… 39 Table 4.2 Openings and closings of the emails ………………………………… 44 Table 4.3 Writing styles of the emails ………………………………… .44 vii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 2.1 An email screenshot ……………………………………………….… 12 Figure 2.2 The framework of assessing the quality of a written text………………15 Figure 2.3 The current conceptual framework …………………………………….25 Figure 3.1 The research procedure 30 Figure 4.1 Proportion of the errors…………………………………………………40 Figure 4.2 The target recipients…………………………………………………….43 viii