discourse,business English discourse, cohesion, and coherence.
語篇(text／discourse)在不同學者的著述中，有不同的含義，有些語言學家認為，語篇既指書面語言，又指口頭語言。有些語言學家認為語篇(text)只指書面語，而用“話語”(discourse)指口語。有些語言學家用“話語”指書面語和口語。威多森用“話語”指書面語。所以，很多人在講到書面語時用text這壹術語，在談到口語時則用discourse。斯塔布斯認為，話語常常有“口頭交流(interactive)”的含義，而語篇則有“非口頭交流的獨白(noninteractivemonologue)”含義。斯塔布斯還認為，話語有壹定的長度，而語篇則可以很短。所以，像Exit(山口處)，No smoking!(禁止吸煙)這樣的語言單位是語篇，而不是話語。埃德門德森認為，語篇指不出現在使用場合的語言，而話語則指出現在使用場合的語言。本文采用韓禮德，誇克等人的觀點，用discourse／text這壹術語既指口語又指書面語。實際上，discourse和text只具有地域色彩差別。美國學者喜歡用discourse，與之相對應的是discourses analysis：歐洲學者喜歡用text這個詞與之相對應的是text linguistics，它們指同壹內容。 眾所周知，語篇(discourse)是語篇分析(discourse analysis)的研究對象。語篇分析作為壹門學科是20世紀50年代以後才發展起來的。語篇分析通常指的是對比句子更大的語言單位，如句群、段落等語言單位所作的語言分析，目的在於解釋人們如何構造和理解各種連貫的語篇(coherent discourse)。研究語言結構的理論壹般分為兩大類：語法和語篇分析。前者通常研究單個的、孤立的句子；而後者則研究用於交際(communication)的語篇。語法學研究詞的形式、用法和句子各個組成部分及其安排的規律：在語法研究中，句子是最高壹層的結構。語篇分析研究比句子更大的語言單位，研究語篇中句子的排列、銜接(cohesion)和連貫(coherence)，是壹種超句法分析。 歷史悠久的傳統語法，本世紀風靡壹時的結構語法和近三十年來在語言學理論領域中最引入註目的轉換生成語法，對語言的研究都只局限於句子本身及其組成部分，這些學派很少研究句子與句子的關系，也極少討論句子在比其更人的語言單位中的地位和作用。然而，正如壹個單詞在不同的句子中可以有不同的意義和不同的句法功能壹樣，壹個句子、句群和段落在不同的語篇和語境中也會有不同的表意作用和交際功能。如果不把句子、句群或段落放到壹定的語言環境中去考察，那就無法確定其真正的意義。離開了語言的使用場合、離開了 特定的語言環境，那就很難確定語言單位的交際功能，治言單位也無法充分起到交際的作川。 越來越多的語言學家認識到，語言研究不應局限於句子平面，不應只研究句子結構，而應超 越句子的範圍，研究句子、句群和段落在語篇中的作用，研究現實生活中活生生的語言。 銜接（cohesion）和連貫（coherence）是語篇分折（discourse analysis）中的兩個重要術語。由 於語言學家們研究語篇的角度不同，他們對這壹術語的定義也就不壹樣。對於銜接與連貫的 關系，目前人們既有壹致的看法，也有許多分歧。如何把握銜接與連貫的實質以及二者之間 的關系是語篇分折中壹個不容回避的重要問題。以連貫為例，克瑞斯多爾從語篇本身的特征 出發，把連貫定義為壹段話語“潛在的功能性聯系”（he undetlying functional COnnectedness．）。 而彼多非在對語篇進行形式分析時認為，語篇連貫是語言外的聯體在頭腦中的映像，如果讀 者能夠重新構造山壹個聯系著的、完整的世界映像，那麽這段話對讀者來說，就是連貫的。 國內的學者壹股認為，銜接是詞匯和語法方面的手段，是形式的；連貫是用這些手段得到的 效果。在銜接與連貫的關系方面，語言學家們的看法也不壹致。例如，韓禮德和哈桑認為， 銜按是創造語篇性的必要但不充分條件，而威多森則認為，銜接既不是連貫的必要條件，也 不是充分條件。 本文從宏觀和微觀兩方面，以會話分拆理論和銜接連貫理論為基礎，在對其分析的前 提下，探討商務英語語篇中的銜接與連貫問題並以此推動語篇分析的研究發展。
In different scholars" works, text/discourse has different meanings. Some linguists believe that it refers to both spoken language and written language. Some linguists take text as the written form of language but discourse as the spoken form of it. Other linguists regard discourse as both the spoken and the written forms of language and H. Widdowson takes discourse as written language. So many people want to use text to refer to written language and discourse to spoken language. In 1983, Stubbs thought that discourse always has an oral interactive sense, while text often has non-interactive monologue meaning; discourse has a kind of length while text might be very short.W. Edmondson regards text as a kind of language unit which did not appear on a use occasion, however, discourse as a kind of language unit appearing on a use occasion. In this paper, discourse is to be used to refer to both the spoken and the written forms of English. In fact, the differences between discourse and text are territorial. They are the same in essence. American linguists prefer to use discourse and discourse analysis while European linguists use text and text linguistics.It is well known that discourse is the object of study of discourse analysis. Since 1 950s of the 20th century, discourse analysis has become one of independent subjects. It means analyzing a kind of language unit that is much bigger than a sentence, e.g. sentence groups, paragraphs, etc. It aims at helping people to make up and understand all kinds of coherent discourses.There are two kinds of theories that dwell upon language structure. One is grammar, the other discourse analysis. The former always deals with single, isolated sentences, while the latter studies discourse in communications. In grammar, a sentence is the largest unit of grammatical structure, while discourse analysis is a super-sentential analysis. It studies sentences" arrangement, cohesion and coherence.What the traditional grammar and the structural grammar together with the transfermational generative grammar study is limited to the level of sentence and its components. Those grammarians do not adequately take the relations between sentences and their positions and functions in a larger language unit into consideration. However, like individual English words possessing different meanings and functions in different sentences: sentences sentence groups and paragraphs have different connotations and communicative functions in different linguistic contexts. If sentences and sentence groups or paragraphs were not placed in a certain context, then there is no way to identify their real sense. It is difficult to define language units" communicative functions if there were no concrete contexts and occasions. More and more linguists have come to realize thativlanguage study should not be confined at the sentence level. It must go beyond the sentence bounds and study the functions of sentence groups and paragraphs in discourse as well as the vividness of language in real life.Cohesion and coherence are two important terms in discourse analysis. Linguists study discourse from different angles. Accordingly they define these two terms in different ways. When speaking of the relations between cohesion and coherence, linguists hold identical and divergent views on them. How to understand the crux of cohesion and coherence is an important question that we cannot evade. By using coherence as an example, Crystal defines it as a piece of discourse with the underlying functional connectedness on the basis of discourse features; Petofi regards it as an image of relatuni in human brains, If readers can match a discourse with a sense so that they can rebuild a connected, completed image, then it is a coherent discourse to them. Scholars in China always take cohesion as lexical and grammatical devices a matter of form. Coherence is an effect of a discourse consisting of these cohesive devices. As for the relations between cohesion and coherence, scholars hold different views on this point
目錄：
Acknowledgements3-4 Abstract in Chinese4-6 Abstract in English6-8 PartⅠ Introduction8-11 1．1 Historical Backgrounds8-9 1．2 The Main Contents of Discourse Analysis9-11 Part Ⅱ Discourse and Business English Discourse11-26 2．1 Discourse and Business English Discourse11-13 2．2 Macrostructure of Business English Discourse13-15 2．3 Microstructure of Spoken Business English Discourse15-19 2．4 Micro-structure of Written Business English Discourse19-26 Part Ⅲ Cohesion and Coherence26-38 3．1 The Origins and Development of Cohesion and Coherence26 3．2 Definitions of Cohesion and Coherence26-28 3．3 The Relationship Between Cohesion and Coherence28-34 3．4 Cohesion and Coherence in Business English Discourses34-38 Part Ⅳ Conclusion38-39 Bibliography39-40