On the Types of Chinese Business Correspondence

Abstract

The paper deals with one of the current issues in genre studies – types of Chinese business correspondence. The main typological features of the business letter genre are analyzed which serves as a foundation for the Chinese letter general compositional structure modeling. The main approaches of foreign and domestic researchers to the study of Chinese business writing are given, which makes it possible to identify the basic classification criteria for the types of letters. Letters can differ depending on their structure, purpose, addressee, function, composition, form of writing, and even due to relations between the sender and the addressee; the theme and communicative intentions should be considered the most preferable criteria. The author suggests an intention–based approach to the classification of business correspondence, which could be supplemented by such research tools as the presentation of letters in the form of mental cards and communicative steps content analysis. The above–mentioned method allows integrating the existing approaches to the description of business letter genre.