Empirical Study On Applicability Of Strategies Of Writing Business Complaint Letters From The Perspective Of Sino-American Culture

Business letter is one of the most commonly used means to transfer information in business communication at present (now it is e-mail). It plays an important part in facilitating establishment of cooperative relationship as well as trade success. However, it might result in severe consequences sometimes because of ignorance of expression skills, especially in negative information letters, such as complaint letters, which might cause antipathy of the addressees.According to studies of Hofstede and Hall about culture, China tends to be collective high-context culture while America is inclined to be individual low-context culture. Chinese people emphasize harmonious atmosphere and are used to concerning for others. They often speak in a roundabout way and imply their intentions with euphemistic words or gestures, seldom arguing or debating openly or loudly. Moreover,"face"(In this thesis,"face"refers to the concept of being respected by others.) means a lot to them, especially the positive face. People want to be recognized and respected by the community. The person who loses"face"would be looked down upon, which is disastrous for him. Thus, they try not to threaten each other's"face"in daily communication. Face-threatening behaviors and speeches are offensive to them. However, Americans stress pursuing for individual rights and freedom. They care nobody else except themselves or their immediate families. They are open, assertive and aggressive, being ready to argue or debate with others. Thus, direct complaints are expected once their rights are hurt, which are not regarded as face-threatening for them.Business complaint letters deliver unpleasant information to the addressees. In accordance with the studies about Chinese and American cultures, American businessmen often complain directly and aggressively in the letters. As the addressees, Chinese businessmen probably find it unacceptable or feel face-threatened, even though they constantly come into contact with Americans. Therefore, it is supposed that indirect complaints would still be favorable for Chinese businessmen despite frequent contact with Americans. This is the first hypothesis.Many researchers have studied negative business letters and proposed several strategies to make the letters more polite and milder, which are believed to facilitate settlement of problems and maintain cooperation.However, the reform and opening up policy has been implemented in China for three decades. Great changes have taken place to the society. As the contact with American enterprises increases, Chinese business people might have become more and more familiar with Americans'direct complaints. Thus, three more hypotheses are proposed as follows: Chinese businessmen would not feel face-threatened or unacceptable any longer when receiving direct complaint letters from their American counterparts; with the increasing of working years, Chinese business people would accept direct complaints more easily; the strategies proposed by previous researchers for writing negative business letters have become inapplicable when writing business complaint letters to Chinese now.Based on such hypotheses, the research was carried out by employing questionnaire as the instrument. It chose 170 subjects who engaged in foreign trade and frequently corresponded with their American counterparts in the work. According to analysis results, the first hypothesis is verified to be true, that is, the subjects are still willing to accept indirect complaint letters despite frequent contact with American counterparts. But they are unwilling to accept direct ones, which is opposite to the second hypothesis. The relation between the attitudes towards direct complaint letters and the working years is proved to be the same as the hypothesis, that is, the longer the working years is, the easier the subjects are to accept direct complaint letters. The strategies proposed by previous researchers for writing negative business letters are testified to be still applicable for business complaint letters to Chinese.