One of the greatest features in business English letters is the use of the principle of politeness。 The politeness principle plays an important role in business English letters。 American pragmatist Leech, based on Grice’s cooperative principle, put forward the politeness principle。 The politeness principle is intended to point out that both sides are supposed to pay attention to politeness and try their best to protect other’s benefit。 Leech’s politeness principle consists of six criteria: tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement maxim, sympathy maxim。 But Leech’s politeness principle still has a lot of limitations, so Brown and Levinson proposed a “face saving theory” which is based on Leech’s theory。 This is one of the most influential politeness theories so far。 Although the predecessors did a very detailed research about politeness principle, the writer of the thesis think the study is still inadequate。 First of all, because there are many kinds of business letters, we can’t be sure whether the principle of politeness is applicable to all business letters。 Second, different principles of politeness suit for different kinds of business letters。

This paper is pided into four parts。 The first part is an introduction to business letters and politeness principle which include the studies of them。 Second, the author introduce the business letters in detail which includes the types, the formats and features。 Third, the author introduce the politeness principle in detail。 Because politeness principle have six maxims。 Finally, the author conclude the article which includes its advantage and disadvantage。 If we can use it properly, it can benefit us a lot。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 Principle of politeness

Politeness is referred to showing your respect to others by proper act and dress。 Not only has it become one of the essential principles in people’s daily communication, but also has been widely concerned by pragmatics。 In the 1960s, American pragmatist Grice put forward the principle of cooperation(Grice 45) according to the formal logic and natural language logic。 That is the guiding principle of the conversation。 He believes that when people communicate with each other, they should follow the principles of cooperation which include: quality maxim, quantity maxim,relevant maxim and manner maxim(Grice 45)。 Only if do the two sides follow the rules, they can have an agreement。 Many foreign scholars found that these principles can not fully cover all the language phenomenon。 Thus, the British pragmatics Leech, based on the principles of cooperation of the Grice, put forward the “politeness principle”(Leech 79)。 Leech’s politeness principle is intended to point out that people who communicate with each other must pay attention to politeness and reduce the loss。 Leech’s politeness principle consists of six maxims: tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement Maxim and sympathy maxim。 From these maxims, you can see that when people communicate with others, they tend to increase the loss of themselves instead of others so that they can be easy to get an agreement。 But Leech’s politeness principle still has a lot of limitations, so Brown and Levinson concluded the face-saving theory(Brown & Levinson 61) according to the Leech’s theory。 This is one of the most influential politeness theories so far。 They think that speech act is a threat to people, politeness is rational “model people” which is to reduce the threat to people that need face。 The face contains positive face and negative face(Brown&Levinson 102)。 Positive face refers to people who want their words and deeds to be appreciated by others。 And negative face refers to people who want to enjoy freedom。

In real life, there are a lot of potential threats to the face of the behavior(face-threatening acts referred to as FTAS)。论文网