A Study Of Politeness Strategies In English Business Correspondence By The Chinese And The Natives

In the process of human civilization and modernization, politeness functions fundamentally in the production of social order and human cooperation.It exists universally in various societies and has being weighing much in social life. In China, politeness ranks as one of the most valuable cultural heritages. The importance of politeness in Chinese culture is explicitly explained in one of the remarks of the famous ideologist Xunzi, the gist of which is without politeness, nothing can be achieved. Similarly, in western culture, politeness is regarded as 'a letter of credit everywhere'. However, politeness is culture specific. Different culture possesses different concepts and connotations of politeness. The differences concerning politeness have emerged in people's life with the rapid development of cross-cultural communication, in which people find themselves enjoy different linguistic choices and strategies to achieve politeness. The clash in cultures, if not appropriately handled, will lead to misunderstandings which incur great loss.This sounds a right note in cross-cultural business cooperation. In business activities, both parties have to cooperate for mutual benefits as well as to compete against each other for the best part of the profits. Therefore, politeness plays an important role in the delivery of the two basic points of both sides. Cross-cultural business communication relies much on business correspondence. Politeness is vital in business correspondence. It has been the foremost principle in business letter writing. However, the conciseness and clearness of business letters sometimes hinder the writer in being polite. Felicitous politeness strategies thereby become very important.Because of the importance of politeness, polite phenomenon in international communication has long been favored by researchers. Nevertheless, despite the fruitful studies on politeness phenomenon, there are still limitations in this kind of research. Most studies have concentrated on oral language; few of them have considered written language and even less have had an eye on the written language for professional purposes such as the business correspondence. Besides, the major data are elicited byquestionnaires or the role-play. Obviously, if these studies are to progress, natural data are necessary.Consequently, in light of Brown and Levinson's analytical model, the present thesis studies the politeness strategies applied by the natives and the Chinese in English business correspondences. The purpose of the study is to facilitate the acquisition of pragmatic aspects in English learning and teaching and to supplement business-writing courses by pragmatic knowledge on politeness strategies.In order to fulfill the above-mentioned purposes, about 320 pieces of natural English business letters are collected from Hunan Tea Import and Export Co., Ltd., Berdini Furniture Engineering Co., Ltd., Hubei Join Overseas Consulting Co., Ltd. and some commercial pamphlets and magazines. These letters are classified and sampled into two groups. Each group has 30 letters that consist of 10 letters of each of the three categories of business correspondences. Then, the author analyzes the data in the following three procedures: first, analyzing the overall application of politeness strategies; second, testing the difference in frequencies concerning negative politeness strategies; third, describing the distribution patterns of politeness strategies in different types of correspondences and the distribution patterns of sub-strategies.Major findings are: both groups have adopted certain amount of politeness strategies in business correspondences; however, they have performed differently in the application of negative politeness strategies. Also, there are differences in the distribution patterns in various types of correspondences and the sub-strategies weigh differently in the applications.Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications of the study are presented. Hopefully, they might be beneficial to teachers and learners of English in their teaching and learning practice.