ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the corporate context shapes one particular type of business text, direct sales letters. The relationship between the corporate context and the writing process has been explored in several studies concerning other forms of business writing. Organisations are increasingly using direct mail letters to offer products and services or to establish and maintain relations with their clients. Research into such letters has provided valuable insights into the textual ways in which organisations aim to achieve such goals. A distinction is often made between the 'linguistic' context of utterances and their 'situational' context. The description of the situational context may be restricted to the immediate textual environment in which utterances are produced and interpreted, but it may also include background knowledge that is brought to bear on the immediate situation. Discourse practices with respect to particular marketing genres can be described in terms of their conventional production, distribution and consumption processes.
