A Comparative Analysis of Persuasive Business Discourse between Hong Kong and Japan: The Impact of Culture

The use of English as a lingua franca in international business becomes essential in nowaday’s global business environment. Crystal (1997) in his book, English as a Global Language, calculates that non-native speakers of English today outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. Crystal’s remark coincides with Kachru’s three concentric languages in that Kachru’s (1997) findings reinforce the importance of the role of English in the Asia-Pacific region. With the increasing importance of English in international business, undeniably, this global trend has made English a worldwide business language and a business lingua franca. Moreover, the rise of Asian economies has made Asia an important research site to examine how non-native speaking Asian speakers (Chinese and Japanese in this case) compose business-related persuasive message. Prior studies have emphasized East-West or high-context to low- context communication (Hall, 1976). Little research has yet systematically examine the persuasive strategy differences between individuals from nations that share similar high-context cultures (Hall, 1976), such as Japan and Hong Kong. To fill the gap, this presentation report a preliminary findings of a study examining the similarities and differences in composing persuasive message among individuals who come from similar high-context cultural backgrounds and who have received differing amount of influence from western culture. Cultural influence and variables exert impact on the way individuals or groups encode and decode messages (Beamer, 1992; Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). As mentioned by Varner (2000), the dynamics of interpreters influenced the whole intercultural business communication approach when both business partners communicate with a shared language. In order to engage in intercultural business communication successfully, communicators need to understand the business environment and communication practices of each side. Kankannaranta and Louhiala-Salminen (2010) also indicated that for BELF communication, business competence, knowledge of business communication and genre rules are much more important than language proficiency or fluency. Thus, understanding the impact of culture is essential for effective intercultural communication.Two research questions are put forth to examine the impact of culture on business persuasive discourse written by Hong Kong and Japan students. 
Two research questions are:1.What specific cultural influences can be observed in persuasive discourse by Hong Kong and Japanese students?2.Are there differences in organizational pattern between persuasive discourse written by Hong Kong and Japanese students?The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which cultural factor influences writing pattern and strategies in Hong Kong and Japanese students. The associated goal is to compare and contrast the written discourse between Hong Kong and Japanese students. 
The corpora consist of written documents of two researched groups from Japan and Hong Kong. In analyzing the data, I will employ a well-established “structural moves” approach developed by Bhatia (1993) and Swale (1990) in terms of the form and content of writing persuasive documents. The data will be analyzed according to a predetermined set of coding categories for organizational and style patterns which consist of seven moves: Establishing Credentials; Introducing the Request; Offering Incentives/Rewards; Enclosing Documents; Soliciting a Response or Requesting for Cooperation; Using Pressure Tactics; and Ending politely.