Genre analysis of business letters of negotiation

Abstract

This article reports on the findings of a survey on Genre Analysis [Swales, J. (1990, 1992, 1993). Genre analysis - English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: CUP (Reprinting 1991); Swales, J. (1992). Re-thinking genre: another look at discourse community effects. Ottawa: Carleton University. (Mimeo); Swales, J. (1993). Genre and engagement. Revue Belge de Philogie et d'Histoire, 71, 687-698.] of 117 commercial letters in English exchanged by fax between a Brazilian company and two European companies. These letters were analysed in terms of shared communicative purposes and rhetorical features which together contribute to the building-up of the resulting generic structure named as Business Letters of Negotiation (LN). All Moves and Steps will be presented here and discussed with examples of the most frequent linguistic signals which characterize them. A brief discussion on these categories, and teaching implications follow these findings.