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.

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

Contents

Abstract

摘要

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