A Study Of Pragmatic Strategies In Business Negotiation

With the development of global economy and international trade, business negotiation becomes more and more important. Business negotiation is a kind of oral communication; language users use different linguistic forms strategically to achieve different communicative intentions. Some scholars previously focus on business written forms (e.g. business letters); and other scholars concentrate on the use of strategies and tactics from the managerial and psychological perspectives, which seems to be lacking in language data as evidence. Based on politeness theories, the present thesis makes a linguistic study with regard to lexicon, tense and voice, and other syntactic devices in business negotiation. And this thesis is conducted through a qualitative research.The results of the study show that, from the aspect of negative politeness, some politeness strategies are found to be useful to minimize the restriction and imposition placed upon the hearers. These linguistic politeness strategies could be grouped into three levels. First, from the lexical level, the speakers can use some indefinites instead of the pronoun"I"and"you"and hedging words and phrases to reduce the power of suggestion or minimize the impingement upon the hearers. Negative face redress can also be realized with hesitation words, which can help to avoid direct command or imposition. Besides, the proper use of the negation words is also very crucial, which doesn't impede the negotiation process. Second, from the level of tense and voice, with the application of past tense, the negotiator can increase the distance either in time or in space, escaping from the responsibility of his address. And with the use of passive voice, speakers can avoid pinning down who is responsible for the action. Third, the negotiators can mitigate assumption upon the opponent's capability and /or willingness to do any acts predicted of him by the use of conditional (if) clauses and interrogative sentences with modal verbs.From the aspect of positive politeness, several linguistic strategies in business negotiation are found. Concerning lexical usage, negotiators can replace"I"or"you"with"we"to maintain the same stance with the other. Besides, with the use of'yes-but'(agree before disagree), the negotiator can deliver his concern about the addressee's positive face and avoid blunt disagreements. Second, with regard to syntactical reflex, hedging sentences and tag questions weight a lot in asserting common ground with the opponent. In a word, all these strategies are aimed to decrease distance between negotiators and contribute to cooperative and effective negotiations.Different cultures have different modes of interaction. Everyone bears strong identification and marks of the particular culture which he belongs to. As different cultures bear varied influences on the outcome of the same phrasing, some social and cultural factors that influence business negotiations are also analyzed. This present thesis attempts to provide the negotiators with some useful suggestions on how to make linguistic choices of politeness theories. The author hopes that this present study will be instructive for business negotiators to avoid unnecessary conflicts and to improve the efficiency of business negotiations.