Abstract:Foreign trade English Correspondence is a true reflection of the foreign trade activities, and serves to fulfill a specific business intention. Courteous English letters help to establish a corporate image, enhance communication and promote cooperation; on the contrary, impolite letters will cause the other party’s resentment and result in failure in transactions.

Politeness has been enjoying great popularity among sociolinguists and pragmatic scientists. There are a great number of relevant theories and research, among which Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory is the most influential. The theory includes three basic concepts: face, face threatening acts and face saving strategies. They believe that face is the personal image of a rational and normal individual with communicative competence; face can either be won or be lost; there are positive face and negative face, and accordingly there are positive politeness strategy and negative politeness strategy to save the face. 

Based on Face Theory and through analyzing various examples, this thesis will discuss how to employ positive politeness strategy and negative politeness strategy in convivial, collaborative, competetive and conflictive foreign trade correspondence writing, in order to avoid face threatening acts and allow business correspondence to achieve more effective communication.

Keywords: foreign trade English correspondence  Face Theory  politeness strategy

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 An Overview of Foreign Trade English Correspondence-1

1.1.1 Definition-1

1.1.2 Classification-1

1.2 The Necessity of Saving Face in Foreign Trade English Correspondence-2

1.3 Structure of the Thesis-2

Chapter Two Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory-4

2.1 Brief Introduction to Brown and Levinson’s Face Theory-4

2.1.1 Face-4

2.1.2 Face Threatening Acts-4

2.1.3 Face Saving Strategies-5

2.2 Present Study on Face Theory and the Feasibility of Applying It in Foreign Trade English Correspondence-5

Chapter Three Application of Politeness Strategies in Foreign Trade English Correspondence Based on Face Theory-7

3.1 Application of Positive Politeness Strategy in Convivial Foreign Trade English Letters-7

3.1.1 Concrete and Specific Words-7

3.1.2 Positive Words and Sentences-8

3.2 Application of Positive Politeness Strategy in Collaborative Foreign Trade English Letters-8

3.2.1 You-attitude Language-8

3.2.2 Affirmative Sentences-9

3.2.3 Short and Simple Syntactic Structure-9

3.3 Application of Negative Politeness Strategy in Competitive Foreign Trade English Letters-10

3.3.1 Fussy Words-10

3.3.2 Modal Auxiliaries-10

3.3.3 Positive Verbs-11

3.3.4 Interrogative Sentences-11

3.4 Application of Negative Politeness Strategy in Conflictive Foreign Trade English Letters-11

3.4.1 Nominalization-12

3.4.2 Mitigation-12

3.4.3 Passive Voice-13

3.4.4 Subjunctive Mood-13

Chapter Four Conclusion-14

References-16