My Initial Study on Business English Letter Writing
Abstract
With the rapid development of the social economy, business letter has gradually become one of the important means of communication in the economy field. Through it people can exchange information, contact business, bargain trade, negotiate, transact the issue, set up the friendship and so on. As one kind of the English writings, business English writing has very strong pertinence and teleology in words choice, sentences structure, chapters’ construction and other aspects it’s different from the general English writing, it has its own unique. This determines that business letters must pay attention to politeness principle.
This thesis mainly introduce the practicality of business English letters writing, its unique language features, syntactic structure, and from the perspective of pragmatics---politeness to expound the writing methods and techniques of the business English letters, at the same time, it explain how to use the business vocabulary and the sentence to write a polite and decent business letter.
Keywords: business English letter writing, politeness principle, euphemism
Contents
摘 要 2
Abstract 3
Contents 4
Introduction 5
1. Characteristics in Business English Letter Writing 6
1.1. The Role of Business English Letter 6
1.2. Some Features of a Good Business English Letter 7
1.3. Types of Business English Letter 7
2. Principles of Business English Letter 7
2.1 Consideration 8
2.2. Correctness 9
2.3. Completeness 10
2.4. Concreteness 11
2.5. Conciseness 12
2.6. Clarity 13
2.7. Courtesy 13
3. Difference Between Business English and Normal English 15
3.1. Use Terms and Acronyms 15
3.2 Use Customary Sentences 16
3.3. Different Meaning 16
4. Politeness Principle in Business English Letter 17
4.1 Tact Maxim 18
4.2 Generosity Maxim 18
4.3 Approbation Maxim 18
4.4 Modesty Maxim 19
4.5 Agreement Maxim 19
4.6 Sympathy Maxim 19
5. Skills of Business English Letter Writing 20
5.1.Choice of Words 20
5.1.1. Adopt Affective Word 20
5.1.2. Adopt Modal Verb 21
5.1.3 Adopt Mild Tone 21
5.1.4 Adopt Your-Attitude 21
5.2 Sentence Pattern and Grammar Use 22
5.2.1. Adopt Interrogative Sentence rather than Imperative sentence 22
5.2.2. Adopt Subjunctive Mood 22
5.2.3. Adopt Passive Voice 23
5.2.4. Change the tense 23
5.2.5. Weaken the negative 24
Conclusion 25
Acknowledgements 25
Bibliography 25
