The Study Of The Application Of Politeness Strategies In English Business Refusal Letters

During the past 20 years, refusal has been one of the hottest topics in the analysis of language use field. And refusal is a common speech act in daily communication. The past studies on the refusal speech act lie in the following facets, for example, the functions of social factors on the application of refusal strategies, the study of refusal speech act among cultural groups, or the analysis of pragmatic convey by studying the characteristics of refusals of non-natives. What's more, the refusal speech acts they studied concentrated on college students of their daily interpersonal communication.The refusal speech act has nature of impolite and conflictive, which is fully illustrated when refusals are appeared in business communication. Generally speaking, the writer has two goals to achieve when expressing the refusal messages in English refusal business letters. The more important one is to express the bad news; the less important one is to keep goodwill with the reader. Any mistakes of the performance of refusal mean the loss of customers and economic relationship. Thus, we should pay more attention to politeness in English business letters expressing refusal news.The author will elaborate politeness strategies in business refusal letters from the perspective Brown and Levinson's face theory. Firstly, the author gives a general idea of the refusal speech act, especially the one in English business refusal letters, as well as the face theory. Based on the above passages, the author makes thorough analysis of the politeness strategies in English business refusals letters. From the analysis, the author finds that there are three politeness strategies used to perform refusals:positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies besides bald-on-record strategies, each of which is realized by a variety of linguistic ways. During the process of analysis, each strategy is followed by examples. Through the quantitative analysis of these strategies, the author finds that when the writer uses the refusal strategies more frequently in negative politeness strategies than positive politeness strategies. The writer seldom employs bald-on-record strategy. To some certain degree, such distribution mentioned above has some connection with the writer's goals. The author also finds the following strategies are the most popular: Attending to Hearer, Asserting common ground, as well as Hedging. The author gives reasons for the popularity of these strategies.The author strongly believes that the present study can help people to employ politeness strategies better in business refusals communication and strengthen their writing ability to assure the successful communication. The present study will be also helpful for both the teachers and learners of English business letter writing.