论文总字数：31250字

摘 要

缩略语是英语词汇的重要组成部分，并在商务英语中扮演着重要的角色。商务英语中的缩略语使得商务沟通更加顺畅，不论是在信函、电报、合同中，还是商标、广告、名片中，无不频繁出现英语缩略语。同时，商务英语缩略语的构词和使用具有一定的特点和特殊性。如使用不当，不仅会造成理解上的歧义，还会对商务交流和谈判产生负面影响。本文先简要介绍商务英语缩略语的结构特点，其次分析其语用价值，并对缩略语在商务坏境下的使用要求进行了初步的探讨，有助于商务工作者更好的掌握和使用缩略语。

关键词：缩略语；商务英语；结构；语用价值

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………1

2.1 The definition of abbreviation……………………………………………...2

2.2 The origin of abbreviation .………………………………………………....3

1. The Structures of the Abbreviations in Business English … …………...4

3.1 Initialism…………………………………………………………………….4

3.2 Clipped word … ………………………………………………………........5

3.3 Blend ……………………. ………………………………………………...5

3.4 Other special abbreviations………………………………………………..6

4. The Pragmatics Values of the Abbreviations in Business English..............7

5. The Cautions in Application ……………………………………………….9

6. Conclusion …………………………………………………………………12

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...13

1. Introduction

As an international language, it is inevitable to use English in international trade and communication, and the emergency of abbreviations in business English makes business communication smoother. The abbreviations in Business English is a kind of language expression pattern that simplifies and reorganizes the structures of complicated names or definitions according to word-formation methods (LIAO amp; Xiao 106). The number of abbreviations in business English keeps growing and it has diverse forms and broad meaning, involving economy, commerce, finance and many other fields. However, insufficient understanding of English abbreviations can lead to the misuse and abuse of abbreviations, affecting communication in business, and even missing trade opportunities which may cause a large amount of economic losses. Therefore, the study of English abbreviations in business environment is the precondition and key to communicating and transacting successfully. This thesis will focus on the word formation and pragmatic values of abbreviations in business English, and give corresponding suggestions on the special phenomena and problems that appear in the process of use.

2. Literature Review

With unprecedented development, English abbreviations emerge in endlessly, which have become one of the most rapidly expanded language phenomena in modern English. However, studying English abbreviations as a specialized language is a master of recent decades. In the 19^th century, the development and influence of English abbreviations was still very limited; it was not until the 20^th century when human beings vigorously developed science and technology that the abbreviations of related terminology increased rapidly, and the study of English abbreviations also developed. After that, some dictionaries about English abbreviation were published and it gradually formed a system which permeated into various disciplines widely, especially in the commerce, industrial technology and names of institutions.

There are two most influential English abbreviations dictionaries from abroad, one is AIAD ( Acronyms, Initialisms and Abbreviations Dictionary ), the other is AD ( Abbreviations Dictionary). The first edition of AIAD contained 12,000 entries; in the second edition it is double, and up to now it has had 586,000 entries in total. And AD is an international source book for locating elusive or general information on a vast array of topics (Han amp; Wang 244), and recognized as an essential reference book in the fields of the public, academia and business.

The English abbreviations are traditionally divided into initialism, acronym, clipped word and blend according to its classification of structure. This method of division is scientific, but it is not entirely appropriate to the abbreviations in business English. Many domestic scholars study the abbreviations in business English or foreign trade, such as LIAO Ying, XIAO Min and YU Fu-Lin. LIAO Ying and XIAO Min study the origin of English and the abbreviations in business English and make statements about the evolution of abbreviations, but they lay more emphasis on the syllable about the classification of structure; YU Fu-Lin studies English abbreviations in foreign trade’s construction and grammatical characteristics in his work “The Characteristics and Translation of the Abbreviations in Foreign Trade” (YU 25), which is more comprehensive. There are also many scholars who study the pragmatic value of English abbreviations, such as LI Dan and FU Yushan. LI Dan mainly studies the pragmatic functions in her work “English Abbreviations and Their Pragmatic Function” (LI English 143); and FU Yushan analyzes the rhetorical characteristics in addition to the pragmatic values of English abbreviations (FU 100). However, there is not much research on the pragmatic values of business English abbreviations, and more study is needed in this aspect. Before that, we first briefly discuss the definition and origin of English abbreviations to grasp the concept of it better.

2.1 The definition of abbreviation

The word abbreviation comes from Latin, meaning that “the same and spelled the same”, while the Webster dictionary and Cambridge dictionary define it differently. The definition of abbreviation in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is that “a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the whole”, such as doc (lt; doctor ), ft (lt; foot ), TOEFL(lt; Test of English as a Foreign Language), BBC(lt; Britain Broadcasting Corporation ), etc. Collins Dictionary of English-Chinese has further particulars than Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary about the definition. Its definition is that “An abbreviation is a short form of a word or phrase, made by learning out some of the letters or by using only the first letter of each word”, which gives a brief introduction on the basic structures of abbreviations. But the definition of it in Cambridge international Dictionary of English is that “to make a word ( sentence, book, etc. ) shorter”, which includes the abbreviated forms of word, sentence and book. Obviously, the definition of abbreviation in Cambridge international Dictionary of English is more comprehensive than that in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Because GBY (lt; God Bless You ), IOU (lt; I owe you.), BTW (lt; By the way.), AB (lt; The Amplified Bible (1965), Zondervan Publishing House ),etc. are abbreviations. And they are abbreviations of sentences and books rather than words or phrases. So the abbreviated forms of sentence and book should be included in the category of abbreviations.

2.2 The origin of abbreviation

Using abbreviation as an English word first appeared in the early 16^th century. The appearance of abbreviation is for simplifying the complex content like any other language, commonly seen in numismatics, emblems, patterns and inscriptions. And on account of the carriers being too small, using them to express the complex context can only be done by the way of writing abbreviations on the carriers. Abbreviations have also been used as note symbols and passwords. For instance, the Greeks used HIS to represent Jesus; the ancient Romans abbreviated the Latin ‘Anno Domini” as AD which means the Christian era and they abbreviated the “ante meridiem” and “post meridiem” as a.m. and p.m. respectively, which remain heavily sued to this day.

Nowadays the time, along with the development of technology and the emergency of communication facilities such as telegram and e-mail, international trade develops rapidly and the competition in international businesses gets more and more fierce and intense. And the abbreviations in business English appear more and more frequently before people’s eyes, the commonly-seen ones including WTO, CEO, APEC, GDP, ID, IT, etc. Buying and selling parties who are separated by seas and oceans communicate by telephone and sending text messages, both requiring brief and to the point for memorizing and recording easily which can save time and cost to achieve a win-win situation in the international communications. And it is the reason that modern linguistics propose the linguistic economy. Therefore, people create a large number of abbreviations in the business context and there are a great diversity of ways to simplify those abbreviations, such as L/C (lt; Letter of Credit ), BK (lt; bank ), WKS (lt; weeks ), A/B (lt; Air Bill ), cred (lt; credit), ft (lt; foot ).

It’s not hard to see that the abbreviations in business English are mostly new words and the emergence of them is of short history. They are the products of the development of the times and the gathering of various tides.

3. The Structures of the Abbreviations in Business English

With diverse kinds and complex structures, the abbreviations in business English have various forms and they can be divided into four categories: initialism, clipped word, blend and other special abbreviations.

3.1 Initialism

The initialism usually consists of the first letters of each notional word (sometimes including the empty words) of the original phrase (Li Stylistic 381). And this way of abbreviation often writes in capital letters, with or without symbols between letters.

3.1.1 An abbreviation consists of the first letter of a single word. This kind of abbreviations are usually various document names or units of measurement, such as M (lt;meter), L (lt;litter).

3.1.2 An abbreviation consists of the first letters of each word of the phrase.

Firstly, a phrase without a preposition or conjunction forms an abbreviation by extracting the first letters of each notional word, such as CAF (lt;Currency Adjustment Factor), D/C (lt;Documentary Credit), IMF (lt;International Monetary Fund). Or a phrase without a preposition or conjunction forms an abbreviation by extracting the first letters of the main notional words, such as SB (lt;South Buffalo Railway Company), MOC (lt;Mitsubishi Oil Company, Limited).

Secondly, phrases with prepositions (of, for, to, on, against, with, etc.) can be abbreviated according to the following rules: 1. Extracting the first letters of each notional word with omitting prepositions, such as L/C (lt;Letter of Credit), IFAD (lt;International Fund for Agricultural Development); 2. Extracting the first letters of the main notional words with omitting prepositions, such as IUMS (lt;International Union for Moral and Social Action), CISG (lt;United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods); 3. Extracting the first letters of all words including prepositions, such as FOB (lt; Free on Board), DAF (lt;Delivered At Frontier) , CPT (lt;Carriage Paid To).

Thirdly, a phrase with conjunctions (and, than, etc.) forms an abbreviation by extracting the first letters of each word, but omitting the conjunctions, or replacing “and” with the symbol “amp;” sometimes, such as CIF (lt; cost, insurance and freight), Camp;F (lt; cost and freight), LCL (lt; less than container load).

3.2 Clipped word

Clipped word is created by taking a part of the original word as its abbreviation through various ways. And this method is the most common way to form abbreviations.

3.2.1 Take the forepart of a word and omit the latter part, such as certif. (lt; certificate), doc (lt; document), Tel (lt; telephone), AD (lt; advertisement). And this is the most common method applied to abbreviations, which accounts for a large proportion in abbreviations.

3.2.2 Take the latter part of a word and omit the forepart, such as plane (lt; airplane), dozer (lt; bulldozer).

3.2.3 Remove the middle part and retain the forepart and the tail of a word, such as wt (lt; weight), ft (lt; foot), BK (lt; bank).

3.2.4 Some words retain one or two letter which is in the middle part of the words and also retain the forepart and the tail, such as INFM (lt;inform), ACDNT (lt;accident), Ltd (lt; Limited ).

3.2.5 Extract the main pronunciation of consonants of the original word and omit vowels (Coanca 18). Those abbreviations mostly represent the unit word, such as PCS (lt; pieces), kg. (lt; kilogram), ACPTBL (lt; acceptable), RCVD (lt; received).

3.3 Blend

Blend is created by synthesizing and abbreviating two or more words simultaneously (Cannon 109). And new blends are constantly being created with the development of science and technology. According to its structure, the bends can be divided into five categories:

3.3.1 Retain the forepart of the first word and the latter part of the second word, and blend them together to form a new word. Many words are formed in this way, and most of these words have been accepted by the public and included in the dictionaries, such as stagflation (lt; stagnation inflation), motel (lt; motor hotel), escalator (lt; escalading elevator).

3.3.2 Retain the forepart of the first and the second word, and blend them together to form a new word, such as DYNAMO (lt; dynamic models), comsat (lt; communications satellite), ex.int. (lt; excluding interest).

3.3.3 Retain the forepart of the first word and the whole of the second word, such as Medicare (lt; medical care), navaid (lt; navigation aid), Uniball (lt; Universal ball) (a trademark of ball-point pen).

3.3.4 Blend the whole of the first word and a part of the second word, such as videophone (lt; video telephone), high-tech (lt; high technology), copytron (lt; copy electronic).

3.3.5 Blend the initialism and whole word. And this method has two ways of constructing words, one is composed of the initialism of the first several main words and the last whole word, such as E-mail (lt; electronic mail), W/W clause (lt; warehouse to warehouse clause). And another is composed of the first whole word and the initialism of the rest words, such as Revolving L/C (lt; Revolving Letter of Credit), Crew TAF (lt; Crew Training Air Force).

3.4 Other special abbreviations

Some abbreviations are abbreviated to several letters according to the pronunciation of words, and they are easily recognized by commercial workers through its pronunciation, such as U (lt; You), V (lt; we), OFA (lt; offer), BIZ (lt; business).

And English often uses some abbreviations from the other language, mainly including Latin, French, Spanish, German, etc. And abbreviating those words usually follow the source language’s ways of abbreviation, such as LM (lt; lex mwercatoria) (Latin), FW (lt; Franc sur Wagon) (French), Kap (lt; capital) (German).

Some abbreviations are to abbreviate words into a symbol which is concise and clear at a glance and they are used in a wide range, such as $ ( dollar ), % ( percent ), ℃ ( degree Celsius ), £ ( pound ).

4. The Pragmatic Values of the abbreviations in Business English

4.1 Saving labour and economy

With the advancement of society, people speed things up in their work, and the talking and writing are becoming more and more concise and fast. Especially in foreign trade exchanges, high efficiency work is more required and essential. And the English abbreviations are known for their conciseness, which conform to the language’s principle of economy, and they are widely used in foreign trade business. The principle of economy in language is proposed by Andre Martinet, a French linguist (Li English 143). He discovers that the fundamental of linguistic performance is the principle of economy in the process of studying the empty space, and he believes that people always tend to the short expression of language, with the most minimal and efficient linguistic units to complete complex communication. Comparing to the full name, abbreviations can save time and effort in both spelling and pronunciation in the way of substituting the short for the long. It will speed up the transaction process and make work more efficient.

And since telegram, telex and other communication tools have been popularized, both parties of foreign trade shorten the long words and use plenty of abbreviations from the perspective of economy. According to statistics, the total number of electronic text codes written in abbreviations is generally about 15% less than those without abbreviations. And adopting two parties’ accustomed abbreviations can save 20% or more of space. Therefore, the use of abbreviations can save time, save labour, save money, and increase work efficiency, which has an irreplaceable function for foreign trade.

4.2 Bolder and more conspicuous than common words

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