A Pragmastylistic Study Of Good-News And Bad-News Text In English Business Correspondence

Business correspondence is an important channel of modern business communication. Its main functions involve transferring business information, presenting business affairs, and conducting business communication. In its long period of application and development, to meet the need of effective communication, the language of business correspondence has developed its own characteristics.The present study takes good-news and bad-news business correspondence as research object. Orienting from its communicative features, the study adopts the model of pragmastylistics to analyze the language of good-news and bad-news business correspondence, and discuss the manifestation of pragmatic theories in these contexts. The Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle are two important pragmatic theories involved in business correspondence, so this study takes them as the theoretical foundation. The Cooperative Principle and its maxims require that participants in communication should provide true, right amount of and relevant information when possible. The Politeness Principle, one of the modes concerning politeness followed by people in their communication, is considered as the complementary to the Cooperative Principle. According to the Politeness Principle, the addresser should minimize the dispraise and maximize the benefits for the addressee. The focus of the dissertation is placed on the linguistic realization of cooperation and politeness in good-news and bad-news English business correspondence. The purpose of this study is not only to prove the universality of the model of pragmastylistics but also to explore the relationship of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in good-news and bad-news business correspondence.Based on a systematic analysis of good-news and bad-news business correspondence, the study concludes that both the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle play a significant role in business letter writing. The three maxims of Cooperative Principle (the Maxim of Quantity, the Maxim of Quality and the Maxim of Relevance) closely relate to the content of correspondence, while the Maxim of Manner refers to how language is used. In general, the four maxims of the Cooperative Principle are closely followed in good-news business correspondence. In bad-news business correspondence, on the other hand, the maxim(s) of the Cooperative Principle may be violated out of politeness. To some degree Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies as well as Leech's Politeness Principle are demonstrated in the language of good-news and bad-news business correspondence.