论文总字数：31481字

摘 要

1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Research background 1

1.2 Need for the research 1

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 Previous studies on business e-mail writing 3

2.2 Problems in the previous studies 4

3. BUSINESS EMIAL WRITING FROM CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE 6

3.1 Features of business e-mail writing 6

3.2 Common mistakes in e-mail letters 8

3.3 Cross-cultural reasons that cause difference in Chinese and English business writing 9

3.3.1 Cultural dimensions by Hofstede 9

3.3.2 High/low context by Hall 10

4. STRATEGIES OF BUSINESS EMIAL WRITING 12

4.1 Raising people’s cross-culture awareness and developing their cross-cultural communication ability 12

4.2 Mastering basic features of business e-mail writing 13

5. Conclusion 14

REFERENCES 15

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the people who have ever helped me in this paper.

My sincere and hearty thanks and appreciation go firstly to my supervisor, Mr. Chen Haitao, whose encouragement and suggestions have given me so remarkable insights into business writing studies. I am extremely grateful for his valuable academic instructions during my study. The work would not have been possible without his patient guidance, continuous encouragement and generous support. It has been a great privilege and joy to study under his guidance and supervision. Furthermore, it is my honor to benefit a lot from his personalities and diligence, which I will treasure in my whole life.

Special thanks go to Li Lu, my classmate, who has imparted to me so much valuable knowledge and given me guidance, assistance and concern in every aspect of my study. I also appreciate his academic advice and emotional support for the preparation of my thesis.

I would like to thank all the other teachers for their enlightenment, knowledge, encouragement and help throughout my study at Nanjing Tech.

Finally, my gratitude is given to my dear friends and fellow students, who have accompanied me throughout the four years at the university.

Abstract

With the expansion of globalization and fast development of china’s economy, business e-mail writing is playing an increasingly important role in china’s business area. Business letter is a kind of formal written tool used by business organizations to contact their potential customers and to do business negotiations etc. contemporarily，because of the wide spread of the internet, it is gradually represented by e-mail. Due to its cultural background and language differences, there are certain differences in English and Chinese business letters’ writing style. This paper first gives a clear definition of business e-mail writing and then explains the 5C principles in detail, second, the thesis introduces the common mistakes found in real business e-mail and analyzes the possible reason behind them under the guidance of functional theories. Then, it analyses the reasons that cause difference in Chinese and English business writing from the perspective of Hofstede and Hall’s dimensions of culture. Finally, the paper proposes some suggestions in how to write a good business e-mail from cross-cultural perspective.

Key Words: business e-mail writing; cross-cultural study; strategies

摘 要

随着全球化的扩大和中国经济的迅速发展，电子商务写作的应用越来越重要。商务信函主要作为从事商业的组织之间，或者是商业组织和其服务的客户之间等，进行外部联系时使用的，一种较为正式的书面文体，其多被用于联系商业业务、进行商务洽谈、沟通商务事宜等;由于文化背景与语言特点的差异，英文商务信函与中文商务信函在写作模式(文体)上存在着一定的差异。本论文首先对商务电子邮件英语做了清晰定义并分析其主要的特点即5C原则，接着从霍夫斯泰德和霍尔德的文化维度论(高/低语境和集体/个人主义原则)入手分析中西方商务写作出现差异的原因，并举例介绍了在真实邮件中发现的常见错误，并分析了产生这种错误的可能原因和相应改正办法，最后得出商务信函写作的几点建议。

关键词： 电子商务写作 跨文化 写作策略

• 1. INTRODUCTION
  2. Research background

Against the backdrop of globalization and the rapid development of china’s foreign industries, business e-mail writing is growing increasingly important in our society. It has become an indispensible skill for everyone in the business area. Statistics have shown that about 88.9% of Internet users use e-mail in their daily communication, and about 90.02% of employees are using e-mail to contact their potential customers. Thus its writing quality, which means reducing misunderstanding, is rather essential to communication negotiates. However, the existing language framework is not sufficient to support business email writing. What’s worse, lacking of basic knowledge and structure leads to more problems to both our daily life and our work.

Business communication focuses on the response given by the reader. The main purpose is to affect the reader's responses in the way the writer has intended. Writing for result requires business writer to think on his or her readers’ perspective, not to follow rote patterns like an automaton. Business writer should have a clear writing objective, express exactly what his readers want. However, due to culture difference, we are used to writing in our own way of thinking and structure, which can often cause confusion to our foreign partners.

• 1. Need for the research

With the wide spread of internet, e-mail has become a necessary tool in business negotiation. By sending business e-mail to each other, we can exchange information, contact business and solve problems, even promote friendship.

A courtesy and descent business e-mail can help to build a favorable business image for the company and help to do business. However, an e-mail without courtesy can not only lead to the failure of the business but also destroy the image which the companies have built up before. Therefore, it is important for business men to master some basic concepts of business writing.

But even if we did master all skills and principles, we cannot be perfect e-mail writer. Due to the difference in the culture, social conditions, customs and beliefs, there is no way for us to avoid misunderstandings, what we can do is to minimize them. Thus requires us to know some basic culture diversity behind business contact.

• 1. LITERATURE REVIEW
  2. Previous studies on business e-mail writing

E-mail is a way of sending a message from one computer to another or more other computers. It is a stylistic form developed with commodity production and trade. It is also defined as a form of asynchronous computer mediate communication (CMC). Its main features are fast, convenient and low cost, making it quickly sweep throughout the world.

It is a kind of cross-culture bridge connecting people from different parts of the world. Though it is cheaper and faster, it can cause misunderstanding and confusion at the same time. To make it better serve the people, the research and study on this terms never ends throughout history.

Quite a few scholars in our country show great interest in the study of the principles and rules of business e-mail writing. For example, Professor Ge Qun and Professor Ge Hua (2003) stressed a focal point on the vocabulary characteristics of contemporary business English writing. they also cited five basic principles for writing a successful e-mail:(1) Conversational setting（2）Flexible pattern（3）You-viewpoint（4）Tactful choice of words（5）Warm courtesy

Zhang Chengguo and Len Qing (2008) emphasized the importance of connectivity of passages in writing an e-mail, they pointed out that a good connected e-mail can fully convey the writer’s meaning and also can be perfectly understood by the receiver.

Liu Xiaodan (2012) stated the customer-oriented strategy in business writing. She calls for taking the relations with customer into consideration and put the theory “customer is god” into business writing.

Yao Yi (2001) explained carefully the use of politeness as one of the basic principles in business writing. The author used SPPS to illustrate the relationship between students’ writing scores and the politeness used and put forward in the end writing does not involve face to face contact, it is a form of interaction and the basic framework for the analysis of politeness can be extended to written texts.

Scholar Li Yueju (2008) pointed out the fuzzy terms in writing e-mails and its impact on the successful express of clarity, one of the basic principles.

Li Junxian (2007) illustrated how to write business e-mail correctly from the structure of an e-mail, mainly explained the salutation, the subject and the Body part.

Li Huiluo(2009) studies the strategies of writing business e-mail from Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and hall’s high/low context, specifically explains the reasons that cause difference in Chinese and English business writing.

Wang Zhuo(2013) analyzes Chinese and English business letters from vocabulary characteristics, syntactic characteristics, discourse structure, conversational implicature, principle of courtesy, speech act and finally from the analysis of the contrast draw some suggestions in both Chinese and English business writing.

Zang Qingwu(2006) analyzed some common obstacles rose in cross-cultural communication, and raised corresponding advice.

Tang Ling(2006) explained 4c principles(correctness, conciseness, clarity and courtesy) in detail. Her study is an enlighten guide for college students to grasp the basic structure of e-mail writing

Wu Xuqiong(2013) in her thesis demonstrated the germany functional theory as a reasonable guidance, then explored the characteristics of business writing from stylistic and linguistic features, at last she introduces some common mistakes in real business e-mail and finally proposes solutions.

• 1. Problems in the previous studies

Although some scholars’ findings are true and valuable to some extent, tiny weaknesses still remain. For example, they seldom mentioned the influence of different culture values and beliefs Chinese and western people hold in their business writing.

Hofstede(1991) defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another”.

For the sake of cultural differences, the American anthropologists A.L.Kroeber and K.Kluckhohn, proposed the following definition:

“Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviors acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts. The essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values. Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products and on the other, as conditioning elements of further action. This definition is broad enough to include most of the major territory of culture, such as values, religion, special relations, customs, material objects and so on.”(Kroeber ＆ Kluckhohn, 1952)

Globalization has made cross-nation communication more frequent and extensive than ever before. However, problems also exist. This is because people around the world live in different cultures and they cannot understand each other easily. Thus learning culture is of great need to people’s communication throughout the world.

During the process, what stands out is the wide use of e-mail in business communication after the information revolution. The invention of internet in the 1940s gives birth to a new business communication tool—e-mail. With great benefits, this new tool soon took place of the traditional business letters and favored by most modern business men. However, though e-mail simplified many complex procedures in the traditional business letters, it still remains basic framework of business letters, it also need partners involved have a basic understanding of each other’s cuture so that they can understand the context in the e-mail. Thus learning culture becomes a necessity.

Also, most of their essays just mainly talked about one or two side of the 5c principles. And seldom of them explain minutely. This paper will first give a brief description to 5c principles, illustrate them in examples and phrases. Then will talk about the reasons caused difference in Chinese and English business writing inducing cultural dimensions and high/low context theory.

• 1. BUSINESS EMIAL WRITING FROM CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
  2. Features of business e-mail writing

As we all know, there are 5 principles in business e-mail writing, namely correctness conciseness completeness clarity and courtesy. These are all fundamental elements for a beginner to learn to write an e-mail. Today I will demonstrate with examples to show vividly how to put these elements into practice.

First, correctness contains exactness both in words and sentences. For example, the choice of words should be selected from those simple, familiar, and conventional expressions; avoid using those complex, uncommon words. Here are the contrast of two words and idioms:

(Gao Jiayong, 2001)

For the correctness of sentence, there are several tips. Firstly, use short ones, reduce sentences connecting by “and” “but” “however”.

Secondly, delete meaningless words and details to avoid verbosity, for example: Before: Keep this information on file for future reference.(将信息存档供今后参考)

After: Keep this information for reference(保存信息供参考) (Gao Jiayong, 2001)

Thirdly, use gerunds and infinitives to make the sentence short and smooth. For example:

Before: A plant suggestion has been made where they would purchase a QW IP machine for the pur-pose of transmitting test reports between plants(为了在工厂之间传输测试报告，工厂做出购买一台仪器的建议。)

After: The plant suggests purchasing a QW IP machine to transmit it test reports between plants(工厂建议购买一台仪器以便在工厂之间传输测试报告。) (Gao Jiayong, 2001)

Second, Conciseness refers to use as less as possible sentences to express your meaning as well as maintain the integrity of the message. A prolix and wordy e-mail is not only a waste of time, but also will cause the reader’s unnecessary trouble, clear and concise should be put at the top priority of business e-mail. Therefore, it is the No.1 element in writing a business e-mail.

In addition, in order to save time and space, abbreviations can be used in e-mail, such as “U” for “you”, “Pls” for “please”, “Info” for “information”, and L/C (Letter of Credit信用单证), CIF(cost, insurance and freight成本加保险加运费价格),EAT( estimated arrival time预计到达时间)，FYI( for your information供你方参考)，S/ C ( sales contract销售合同)，D/ D ( demand draft即期汇票), M/T(mail draft信汇) etc.

Third, business e-mail should seek to be specific and complete, provide all the material the recipient need, an evaluation used to measure whether an e-mail is complete or not is “5WH”, namely who, when, where, what, why and how. There is also another rule to guide the writing of the structure: a complete e-mail should consist 7 parts, namely the heading, the inside address, the date, the salutation, the body, the complimentary closing and signature.

Fourth, e-mail should strive to reach a clear hierarchy and accurate use of words. Writers should say without mincing words so that the recipient will read the letter smoothly and will not misunderstand the writer's intentions. As far as possible straight to the point, straight into the topic.

For example: in the sentence “We will deliver your goods soon.” “Soon” means quickly, the semantics is not clear, it does not indicate a specific delivery time and should be changed to a specific date like July 2rd.

Fifth, business e-mail should word tactfully and politely. Given that e-mail directly affect the success of the entire transaction, buyers and sellers should watch their manners, we should make tone of voice sincere, considerate, thoughtful, not domineering; avoid using offensive phrases.

Several advices should bear in mind. Firstly, minimize the use of negative sentences. For example:

Before: Your letter is not clear at all. I cannot understand it.

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