Then how to write a successful English business letter? It is widely acknowledged that business activities are not simple business contacts any more, but interpersonal communication. Frankly speaking, politeness becomes a key factor to make communication successful. Using polite expressions can show respect to the both parties and make them feel friendly and sincerely treated in the trade process. It is important for a business letter to be polite in all aspects. Through the study of strategies to show politeness in business letter, traders can get some useful suggestions when they are writing business letters. It can help them choose exact words and sentences, being neither humble nor pushy in statements, being graceful and polite in tones, and making them comfortable in business activities. At the same time, fuzzy language is studied here to help writers to express ideas such as bad news, desires to extend the trade deadline and so on. Only when the writers pay enough attention to all small details can they negotiate equally based on the spirit of mutual respect and realize a real international communication.  

2. Literature Review

In the linguistic circle, linguists have been studying the Politeness Principle since a long time ago. Lakov proposed that the rule of the language used was “to be clear and polite “. Although this conclusion was to some extent not very comprehensive, it had had some effect on the following politeness principles. Moreover, Brown and Levinson also presented the idea that “face problem” actually existed in our communication. It means that protecting the face of both parties is one of the essential communication rules. They believed that the so-called face includes “the positive face and “the negative face”. The positive is that in the course of the communication, the communicator’s self image and personality will be recognized, while the negative is that the communicator’s rights and interests will not be harmed, at the same time, their freedom will not be disturbed. As a result, politeness can be pided into positive and negative politeness. And the former refers to enhancing the politeness degree while the latter refers to reducing impoliteness degree in the words to transfer the impolite words into polite ones. Among all the politeness theories, the one proposed by British scholar Leech has the greatest effect. Leech had made a systematic study on the politeness in pragmatics. And in his work “Pragmatic Principles”, he purposed the concept “Politeness Principle”. And he thought that in order to avoid conflicts in the communication, speakers always tend to maximize the degree of the politeness and minimize the degree of impoliteness of their words. This Politeness Principle is composed of six sub-criterions which are tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement maxim and sympathy maxim. To some extent, Leech’s Politeness Principle perfects Grice’s “Conversational implicature” theory. Especially it solved the so-called “equivocating” phenomenon in language used. Although the original intention of the Politeness Principle designed by Leech is to establish a common criterion which can explain all the politeness phenomena in all languages, it is mainly based on the context in English languages. However, for other languages (such as Chinese) and politeness in cross- cultural communications, it is incapable to make it.

Depending on the unique Chinese-style politeness phenomena, Chinese scholars have also conducted deep researches on the Politeness Principle. And among all the Chinese theories, the “Five Standards” proposed by Gu Yueguo had a most far-reaching influence. “Five standards” reflected the characteristics of the Chinese politeness faithfully. What’s more, it could explain the politeness phenomena in Chinese and it was widely recognized by academia. Based on the Leech’s Politeness Principle and Grice’s Cooperative Principle, other Chinese Linguists concluded the seven “C” principles which are courtesy, conciseness, completeness, clarity, correctness, concreteness and consideration. 英语商务信函中的礼貌原则及语用策略(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_58792.html