6533b86cfe1ef96bd12c8858

RESEARCH PRODUCT

De l'usage stratégique du stéréotype dans la lettre commerciale de Vente Par Correspondance

subject

description

The commercial letter constitutes for every organization a professional external communication tool with a twofold purpose: to incite the customer to order and to develop the customer relationship. Indeed, developing customer loyalty is today the basis of any commercial approach. Companies have to develop a close relationship with each of their customers quickly and remotely: each communication medium has to make this relationship strategy visible to the customers. In the mail order business, the commercial documents which are regularly sent to customers are the basis on which the construction of the customer relationship rests. This study analyses the strategic use of stereotypes in a corpus of commercial letters sent by a mail order company (2006 to 2009) and adopts the global theoretical framework of the Analysis of Argumentative Discourse (Amossy 2000). In a perspective which aims at overriding the stereotyped and sometimes "eccentric" image of this type of document, this study deals with the nature of the stereotypes and with how the enunciative, textual and discursive regime (status) of the commercial letter shapes and exploits familiar collective representations and shared beliefs while serving a punctual argumentative aim and also building a long-term customer relationship.