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Abstract:
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Business letters were investigated, in this study, in order to (a) examine when and how the intelligibility of communication is interrupted in cross-cultural communication and (b) to assess the communicative value of both the linguistic and the cultural components of the NN business letter.
Analyses show that there were two forms of the business letter. The first is the 'communicative failure' level, which incorporates letters that exhibit both linguistic and cultural inadequacies. The second is the 'gopher' form that is characterized by business letters, which are culturally permissible with some linguistic deficiency.
Findings testify that the quality of the language used in a business letter contributes largely to the nativeness of the letter. The comprehension of its content, on the contrary, is facilitated by how much adherence to the native cultural conventions the letter exhibits.
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