4.2.1 Tact Maxim and Generosity Maxim 15

    4.2.2 Approbation Maxim and Modesty Maxim 15

    4.2.3 Agreement Maxim 16

    4.2.4 Sympathy Maxim 16

V. Conclusion 18

Bibliography…19

The Application of Cooperation Principle and Politeness Principle in Business English Letter

The Application of Cooperation Principle and Politeness Principle in Business English Letter

I. Introduction

International business has become the main type of trading, among which business English letter plays an important role for two parties in business to communicate their intentions in a clear way. Since business English letter are built on the complex basis of English competence and business knowledge, it is of a comprehensive skill to write business English letter. However, many English learners are lack of business knowledge and pragmatic competence, due to the inexperience in cross-cultural communication with native speakers of English. As a result, failures or misunderstandings may occur in writing business English letter. 

 As a special type of communication, business English letter must follow the rules of certain pragmatic principles in order to smooth the communication. The Cooperation Principle (CP) and the Politeness Principle (PP) are two important principles to guide communication. It is known to all, a company in international trade with a good understanding of different cultures and customs in different countries and skillful usage of pragmatic principles can build a great image, and avoid unnecessary losses in international business activities. On the contrary, business English letter with improper means of expression may bring a negative evaluation to a company, or even destroy the positive image of the company. Therefore, it is of great significance to apply pragmatic principles to guide business English letter. The present study will study the application of the CP and PP in business English letter. It is expected the study can benefit Chinese learners of English writing appropriate business English letter to write proper business English letter in international trade.

As for the structure, the present thesis consists of five parts. The first part is an introduction, in which it gives the outline of the thesis, including the significance, the structure of the thesis. The second part is mainly about business English letter. It reviews the basic knowledge of international business and business English letter, including the meaning of them and the important principle for business English letter—the “7c principle”. In the third part, this thesis summarizes the pragmatic principles of the politeness principle and Cooperation principle. The fourth part examines the application of PP and CP in business English letter, which is the key part of the thesis. The last part comes to a natural conclusion of the whole study.

II. Introduction of Business English Letter 源:自*优尔~·论,文'网·www.youerw.com/

2.1 A Brief Introduction of Business English     

    As an important part of the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) theory, Business English is the language carrier of global economic cooperation and it has its own unique style. Business English is separated from normal English. It mainly contains language knowledge, communicative function, specialized knowledge and management function. Thus it can be seen that Business English is not only has the characteristics of English language, but also has the specificity of business environment. Just like the Tourism English, Legal English and Medical English, Business English is the variants of normal English due to the special social functions. Business English takes the normal English as the basis and it is professional, targeted and practical. As the main practical form, written Business English has important meanings.