A Study Of Politeness Principle Used In English Business Letters

English business letters have been an important and indispensable toolfor us to exchange information in business affairs. As one of the basicrequirements, the politeness principle has been applied in different types ofbusiness letters. In addition when politeness principle is adopted in businessletters, the option of politeness strategies has to be taken into consideration indifferent situations and contexts. Proper use of the strategies can help torealize the communicative objectives, and the choice of strategies reliesheavily on the types of business letters.The author of the thesis has conducted an analysis of tendency ofpoliteness strategy use in different types of business letters according toBrown and Levinson s politeness theory. Besides, she has also analyzed theapplication of politeness principle in the realization of different speech actsfrom the perspective of context based on Leech s SpeechAct Theory.The author of the thesis has collected132business letters, and takenthese letters as subjects of study to collect data for analysis. Although thenumber of letters is small, all types of business letters are included. Casestudy and statistical analysis have been used by the author to conduct theresearch. The results indicate that politeness strategies can be found from boththe linguistic and non-linguistic contexts.