A Study Of Politeness Strategies In English Business Correspondence

Politeness, as one of the basic needs that ensure smooth and successful humaninteraction, has been enjoying great popularity with scholars from the fields ofpragmatics, sociolinguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics. Ever since theearly 1970s, dozens of theories have been proposed to explain politeness as alinguistic phenomenon, among which the Politeness Principle of Leech and the FaceTheory of Brown & Levinson set the main frame of the study on politeness. Englishbusiness correspondence is one of the basic ways of business communication, whichfunctions as not only a useful means to exchange information but also an importanttool to build and enhance business relations, thus requires a high degree of politeness.When we look into the teaching and learning process of business correspondencewriting in China, we may find that most of the concentration is paid to theinformational function of a business letter instead of the interpersonal one. However,most of the time, it is politeness for the consideration of harmonious businessrelations that matters the choice of expression. This thesis tries to explain how allkinds of writing techniques are employed to embody various politeness strategiesfrom the pragmatic point of view so as to find out the theoretical foundation for theproper choice of expression in English business correspondence.This thesis is mainly based on the Face Theory of Brown & Levinson and thePoliteness Principle of Leech. It emphasizes the importance of politeness to Englishbusiness correspondence. First, it has an overview of the four major views onpoliteness and centers on the Conversational-Maxim View represented by Leech andthe Face-Saving View represented by Brown & Levinson. These two theories form themain theoretical framework of this thesis. Then, according to the illocutionaryfunctions and the effect on the reader's face, it groups business correspondence intothe following four categories: routine business letter, good-news business letter,bad-news business letter and persuasive business letter. At last, a descriptive analysisis carried out at different levels of the structures of business letters, namely, at theword and expression level, at the sentence level, and at the discourse level so as to seehow politeness is presented and how it facilitates the business communication indifferent types of letters. Among the four types of business correspondence, routinebusiness letter mainly performs collaborative illocutions and is neutral to the reader'sface, thus is not analyzed in this thesis.The analysis shows that good-news business letter performs mainly convivialillocutions and attends to the reader's face, so is essentially polite. However,inappropriate expressions may decrease the favorable effect of the good news or eventurn it into a bad one. Bad-news business letter performs conflictive illocutions andthreatens the reader's face, thus has a higher requirement of politeness in expression.Persuasive business letter performs mainly competitive illocutions and threatens thereader's negative face, thus needs a more diplomatic way of expression in order topersuade the reader to do something at the writer's will on the basis of politeness.According to their nature of politeness, different politeness strategies are employed indifferent types of business letters in order to make the messages conveyed moreacceptable: Positive politeness strategies and direct approach in discourse structureare often used to strengthen the face-building effect of good-news business letter;Negative politeness strategies and indirect approach in discourse structure are usuallyemployed to mitigate the face-threatening force of bad-news business letter;Persuasive business letter uses a special discourse structure called the AICA structureto avoid abruptness and to enhance efficiency in persuasion. Besides, both positivestrategies and negative strategies are adopted in persuasive letters to facilitate thepersuasion.Also, the analysis reveals that the sub-maxim of Leech's SympathyMaxim-"Minimizing antipathy between self and other" plays an ultra important rolein English business correspondence. It coincides with the image-building function of abusiness letter to the utmost and has a direct effect on the emotion of the reader.Violation of this sub-maxim may put a deadly threat to the future business relations.What's more, during the process of analysis we find that there are somedifferences in the employment of politeness strategies. Some politeness strategies canbe used in different types of business letters while others can be adopted only in somekind of letter. Some politeness strategies often work together while others seldomappear at the same time or even have totally opposite effects in expression. Thisphenomenon of the differences deserves more attention in the future study ofpoliteness in English business correspondence.The analysis of this thesis shows that both the Politeness Principle of Leech andthe politeness strategies of Brown & Levinson are embodied to some extent indifferent types of business correspondence. At the same time, these maxims andstrategies conduct and constrain the use of language and provide the theoreticalsupports for the proper choice of expression in English business correspondence. Thestudy of politeness strategies helps improve the writing and teaching ability of Englishbusiness correspondence.