A Study Of Politeness Strategies In English Business Letters Written By Chinese English Learners

A polite English business letter not only stands for good corporate image but also is an important means to build and maintain harmonious business relationship across cultural business communication. The politeness strategies play an important role in a polite English business letter. But Chinese English Learners (hereafter abbreviated as CELs) can not often apply politeness strategies properly in writing English business letters. This thesis collects 180 pieces of English business letters written by CELs in class time, who attend the second bachelor-degree for English major in Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Those letters can be divided as following six types: sales letters, inquiries letters, quotations letters, orders letters, reminders letters, complaints letters.Guided by Brown& Levinson's politeness theory, this thesis employs quantitative approach and calculates frequent percentage of politeness strategies in the above six types of letters grouped into three business stages:'making contact','negotiating','In conflict'. Then this thesis makes contrastive analyses with results in Pilegaard's research which investigated frequent percentage of politeness strategies in English business letters written by native professionals. It found the following differences:1) CELs tend to use politeness strategies more often than native professionals. In letters aimed at the'In negotiating'stage, CELs employ higher percentage of positive politeness strategies while native professionals in Pilegaard's research employ higher percentage of negative politeness strategies2) In sales letters, CELs use positive politeness strategies less often in the proposition-external position than in the proposition-internal position. To the contrary, native professionals use positive politeness strategies more often in the proposition-external position than in the proposition-internal position. 3) In orders letters and letters aimed at'in conflict', CELs employ higher proportion of positive politeness strategies in the proposition-external position than in the proposition-internal position. To the contrary, native professionals employ smaller proportion of positive politeness strategies in the proposition-external position than in the proposition-internal position.4) In quotations letters, CELs employ larger share of negative politeness strategies in the propositional section than in the non-propositional section, but native professionals carry smaller share of negative politeness strategies in the propositional section than in the non-propositional section.5) In letters written by CELs aimed at'making contact', buyers'claim common ground'more than sellers in the non-propositional section and sellers'focus on cooperation'more than buyers in the non-propositional section. To the contrary, sellers'claim common ground'more than buyers in the non-propositional section and buyers'focus on cooperation'more than sellers in the non-propositional section in Pilegaad's research.6) In letters written by CELs aimed at'negotiating', buyers'claim common ground'more than sellers in the proposition-external position and sellers'give freedom of action'more than buyers in the proposition-external position. Inversely, sellers'claim common ground'more than buyers in the proposition-external position and buyers'give freedom of action'more than sellers in the proposition-external position in Pilegaad's research.7) In letters written by CELs aimed at'In conflict', buyers'dissociate S/R from act'more than sellers in the proposition-internal position , however, sellers'dissociate S/R from act'more than buyers in the proposition-internal position in Pilegaard's research.This thesis also describes characteristics and problems in linguistic productions of politeness strategies in English business letters written by CELs such as: overpoliteness, impoliteness, Chinese politeness and related inappropriate linguistic polite phenomena.This article gives us a general survey of politeness strategies in English business letters written by CELs and hopes to give some useful hints about the future business English writing and teaching.