Application Of Cooperative And Politeness Principles Into The Teaching Of Business Letter Writing

In China, there is no scarcity in studies on strategies taken to achieve efficiency and effectiveness of English business letters by employing seven C principles that are developed from Grice's Cooperative Principle (CP) and Leech's Politeness Principle (PP). However, seldom do researchers direct their attention to the analysis of errors students make in business letter writings that do not follow requirements of CP and PP or to needs analysis of Chinese Business English learners in the aspect of business letter writing.This thesis proposes to adopt qualitative case study and contrastive analysis as research methods. Cases studied here are poorly written sentences from after-class business letter writings done by 47 junior English majors from English department of Dalian Maritime University who took the compulsory course Business Letter Writing in the first semester of 2006. Taking CP and PP as theoretical support, this thesis systematically analyzes the problems that English majors encounter in composing most frequently used business letters in international trades, and figures out their causes accordingly from views of pragmatics, psycholingusitics and cross-cultural communications. Based on needs analysis of English majors as pre-experience learners, it puts forward productive suggestions on the arrangement of classroom activities and selection of teaching materials and aids for the course of Business Letter Writing. With reference to a research done by Hei Longjiang University, it suggests that Business English teachers improve their professionalism to further promote the development of Business English teaching in China and ensure the success of the course. Finally, it respectively gives out a set of strategies taken to use concise and polite language in business letter writings, according to the process of business letter composition.