Pragmatic Analysis Of Hedges Applied In Business Negotiation

With further development of economic globalization and the deepening implement of Chinese reform and open-up policies, business activities become increasingly frequent and important in Chinese business field. Business negotiation is a complex communication activity, which requires both parties to adopt negotiation skills and language strategies flexibly in order to establish good business relationships, to reach an agreement, to conclude business deals and therefore to achieve ideal win-win effects. One of particular characteristic of business negotiation is that economic benefits are totally determined by negotiation results. Hedges, as a kind of important language communicative tool, are used widely in business negotiation, which influence the communicative effects directly. However, although Chinese and foreign scholars have done many researches in different contexts based on different theories, there is still some room for the research on hedges in business negotiation, especially in terms of the relation between pragmatics and business negotiation.This thesis endeavors to apply cooperative principles to analyze hedges utilized in business negotiation. The negotiation samples of this thesis are collected from a textbook of college business English called Practical English Correspondence for import and export. The author collects small samples of most hedges used in this textbook and analyzes them carefully. Besides the background, purpose and significance of the research, the layout of the thesis is listed in introduction as well. This thesis firstly introduces hedges and business negotiation in details, then lists studies of hedges and business negotiation at home and abroad, and in the end it states that studies on hedges applied in business negotiation. What’s more, based on the illustration of pragmatics, cooperative principle, politeness principle and the face theory, the thesis analyzes strategies that negotiators utilized in business negotiation activities. In the final part of this thesis, it concludes that the application of hedges in business negotiation should guarantee the realization of cooperative principle, politeness principle and protection of faces with the aim to make business negotiation go smoothly, to realize the goals of negotiation and to achieve good communicative effects.The author sincerely hopes that this research will provide some guidelines for business negotiators. It will lets negotiators know more about the business negotiation. Therefore, they can use appropriate languages to establish a harmonious relationship and finally facilitate the business negotiation and have a win-win ending.