Abstract In business communication, people often use letters to convey some negative news。 This kind of letters is called bad-news business letters。 Compared with general business letters, bad-news business letters are face-threatening and will affect the trade relationship between the writer and the recipient。 So in order to ensure the business activities proceed smoothly, business people always use abundant vague language in bad-news business letters。 The use of vague language has greatly enhanced the flexibility of language and made the letters more polite and appropriate。 This paper tends to analyze the application of vague language in bad-news business letters and the pragmatic principles it reflects, to be more specific, the politeness principle。 This article aims at helping people to write bad-news business letters in a more polite and appropriate way and promoting the both sides to complete the business deal effectively。73547

Keywords: Bad-news business letters; vague language; politeness principle

摘要在商务沟通中，人们经常需要通过信函传达负面的、消极的信息，这类信函被称为坏消息商务信函。和一般的商务信函相比，坏消息商务信函具有本质上的面子威胁性，会影响到写信人和收信人之间的贸易关系。所以为了保证商务交流活动的顺利进行，商务人员在书写坏消息商务信函时会使用大量的模糊语言。模糊语言的使用在很大程度上提高了语言表达的灵活性，使商务信函更加的礼貌、得体。本文结合相关的语用原则-礼貌原则,对坏消息商务信函中的模糊语言进行分析，旨在帮助人们以更得体的方式书写坏消息商务信函，促进交易双方快捷有效地完成商务交易。

毕业论文关键词：坏消息商务信函；模糊语言；礼貌原则

Contents

1。 Introduction 1

2。 Literature Review 1

2。1 The definition of vagueness 1

2。2 Review of previous research on vague language 2

2。3 The definition of bad-news business correspondence 3

2。4 Previous research on vague language in business correspondences 3

2。5 Limitations of the previous research 4

3。 Linguistic Realization of Vagueness in Bad-news Business Letters 4

3。1 Lexical vagueness 5

3。2 Syntactical vagueness 6

3。3 Hedges 7

4。 Pragmatic Functions of Vague Language in Bad-news Business Letters 7

4。1 Alleviating the face-threatening effects 8

4。2 Enhancing the flexibility of language 9

4。3 Preserving some information 10

4。4 Strengthening the persuasiveness of discourse 11

5。 Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1。 Introduction

     Bad-news business letters have an important effect on business communication in international trade。 However, this kind of letters may displease the reader and damage the two parties’ cooperation。 So the writers should employ some strategies to ensure a successful communication when write bad-news business letters。 It can be easily found that vague language is an essential linguistic strategy used in bad-news business correspondences。 This paper will focus on the pragmatic applications of vague language in bad-news business letters。 The article will research two important questions: (1) how vagueness is realized in bad-news business letters? (2) what are the pragmatic functions of vague language? These two questions will be explained by analyzing practical examples。 The politeness principle and the face theory are used in this paper。 Though there has been lots of previous research concerned about pragmatic functions of vague language in business letters, there still some aspects were not touched such as the realization of vagueness。 Besides, the previous research usually analyzed the vague language in business letters in an overall way and ignored the different effects of vague language in different types of business letters, let alone the bad-news business letters。 So the author was motivated to study this field。 This article is pided into five sections: the first section generally describes the whole paper。 The second section is a literature review of vagueness and bad-news business letters。 The third section introduces the realizations of vagueness in bad-news business letters。 The fourth section mainly investigates the pragmatic functions of vague language in bad-news business letters。 In the last section, a conclusion will be made about the major findings, limitations and recommendations for further research。