WEB-ресурс научно-практических конференций

Mandzij H.P.

PECULIARITIES OF MARKETING TERMINOLOGY IN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE

Nowadays more and more people are getting involved in the world of business relationships. As a result of it, business people need specialists possessing knowledge of the English language used for writing documents. A written form of agreements is a guarantee that different people, for example Buyers and Sellers, will cooperate in accordance with a certain business strategy, and their interests will be taken into consideration by their partners.

The topicality of the paper lies in attempt to deeply analyse the marketing terminology and to determine its basic linguistic features.

The aim of the research is to investigate peculiarities of marketing discourse. It is performed through comprehension, interpretation and analysis of semantics and structural characteristics, all of them illustrated by examples from texts of contracts.

The style of official documents is divided into sub-styles of the language of business documents, economic and diplomacy documents documents . The aim of the style of official documents is to state conditions binding two parties in an undertaking and to reach agreement between them.

The syntactical pattern of marketing texts is made up from compositional patterns of variants of this style which have their own designs. The form of a document itself is informative, because it tells something about the matter dealt with.

One of the most striking features of this style is usage of words in their logical dictionary meaning. There is no room for contextual meanings or for any kind of simultaneous realisation of two meanings. Words with emotive meanings are not to be found there either [3, P.159].

Every type of business documents has its own set phrases and clich?s which may sound strange in colloquial English, e.g. invoice, book value , currency clause, promissory note, assets , etc. If a person wants to avoid misunderstanding, he / she should use glossary of terms.

Indeed, there are many differences in the vocabulary of formal and informal business correspondence. Much vocabulary of formal English is of the French, Latin and Greek origin. They are often translated into informal language by replacing them by words or phrases of the Anglo-Saxon origin.

e.g. Formal style Informal style

commence begin, start

conclude end, finish, stop

prolong , continue go on

Phrasal and prepositional verbs are characteristic of informal style, that is why they are not used in business correspondence. Their formal equivalents are used in official texts instead.

Formal style Informal style

discover find out

explode blow up

encounter come across

invent make up

investigate look into

Informal terms have emotive qualities which are not present in formal language. Formal language often insists on a greater deal of preciseness. But the problem is that there are not always proper equivalents in formal and informal English. The informal word job , for instance, has no formal equivalent. Instead of it, we have to look for a more restricted in usage and a more precise term, according to the context, among possible variants: employment, post (esp. Br.E .), position, appointment, vocation, etc . [2, P.34].

As far as lexical terms are concerned, the texts under analysis show the appearance of typical features accounted for in other marketing texts, namely technical terms or terms of art , i.e., words specific to the genre, as for example salvage , inure, assured or underwriter , which are certainly unfamiliar out of this context; common terms with an uncommon meaning such as average (in the context of marine insurance meaning "partial loss") or attachment (here, the enforcement of the policy); words of Latin ( operators, negligence, belligerence ) , French ( default, damage, claim, force, commencement ) and Old English ( therein, hereunder, thereof) origin; unusual prepositional phrases of the kind in the event of any claim , instead of "if there is any claim" or in no case shall this insurance cover , for "this insurance will never cover" and finally, doublets , like wear and tear or cost and expense , normally partial synonyms, which are very usual in this register. These features are accompanied by other characteristics that abound in economic genres, such as over-precision in the specification of detail (exemplified by the use of long lists of lexical words attached with or, or without any punctuating device when describing the exclusions.

The main features of the style of marketing texts are:

1. steady system of linguistic means in the text;

2. lack of emotional colouring;

3. decoding character of language;

4. usage of a special symbolic system;

5. definite syntactic structure.

Like other texts, a marketing text is a communicative occurrence produced at a given place and intended to serve a specific function. Text typology is concerned with the identification of the criteria leading to the classification (typology) of texts (or text types, text classes, styles, genres). Using some of the most obvious criteria, texts can be classified as spoken or written, dialogical or monological , spontaneous or prepared, informal or formal, individual, private or public interactional (contact-oriented) and transactional (message-oriented), etc.

Bibliography:

1. Архелюк В.В. Соціокультурна детермінованість дискурсу // Наук. Вісник ЧНУ. – 2003. – Вип.165-166. – Герм. Філологія. – С.235-245.

2. Лозинская Р.Г. Документ как тип текста и его стилистические характеристики. / Тезисы к 7-му зональному совещанию Восточно-Сибирского региона . Часть I . – Иркутск : ИГУ, 1983. – С.34-38.

3. Zaruma-Panskyh O.R. Some Syntactic Peculiarities of International Law Documents // Language Teaching: Classrom , Lab and Beyond. 5th National TESOL Ukraine Conference. - Vinnytsia , 2000. - P. 159.