Sales promotion communication in Chinese and English: A thematic analysis

In today's knowledge-based global economy, understanding the similarities and differences in persuasive messages across languages is essential to effective communication. This study presents a comparison of sales letters written in two languages, namely, Chinese and English, using Halliday's (1994) notion of Theme. Theme is taken as the point of departure for writers’ attempts to project their perceptions of the reality of the experiential field onto their readers. The concept of Rheme then provides room for the further development or elaboration of Theme. Of the 7664 sales texts collected, 160 (80 in Chinese and 80 in English) are randomly selected for detailed analysis using the independent conjoinable clause complex as the unit of analysis. The differences identified can be attributed to differences in both cultural expectations and grammatical structures.