4 Methodology………………………………………………………………………6

5 Attitude Resources Analysis in letters of establishing business relations…………...6

5.1 Statistics of Attitude resources in letters of establishing business relations……….6

5.2 Affect, Judgment and Appreciation analysis……………………………………10

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………...12

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………..14

Biblograghy………………………………………………………………………….15

Appendix……………………………………………………………………………..17

1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Appraisal Theory has been developed by Martin and White based on Systemic Functional Linguistics to study interpersonal meaning of language. It originates from a research project called “Write It Right” carried out by a group of scholars and researchers led by Professor James Martin in the University of Sydney. Appraisal theory aims to investigate interpersonal meaning and explore attitudes, opinions and stances of language users through the appraisal languages. Martin& White propose that “appraisal is concerned with evaluation: the kinds of attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced and readers aligned” (2005:22).

However, the genre of foreign trade correspondence has not been explored under this

theory, which has been applied to a variety of genres. Foreign trade correspondence is the most frequently used international business contact, which is important in the international economic and trade activities. Among the foreign trade correspondence, letters of establishing business relations with prospective dealers is a quite important measure to maintain or expand business activities. 

1.2 Research Aim And Significance

This thesis aims to employ one of the three sub-systems of Appraisal Theory—Attitude system to analyze attitude resources in letters of establishing business relations. This thesis aims to find out how sub-categories of Attitude, i.e. Affect, Judgment and Appreciation are used to achieve the ultimate goal of establishing business relations. Furthermore, parts of realizations of all these attitude values in the letters will be explored and analyzed in detail. 

The significance of this thesis is to help us to understand interpersonal meanings in letters of establishing business relationship and grasp foreign trade correspondence under Appraisal Theory.

2 Literature Review

In order to strengthen the competitiveness in international trade, foreign trade correspondence has been studied from different perspectives. Such as politeness strategies, cooperative principles, the principle of Completeness, Concreteness, Clearness, Conciseness, Courtesy, Consideration and Correctness (7 Cs), vocabulary characteristics, the interpersonal meanings and so on.