Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Politeness strategies play a significant role in successful business negotiations. This study, based on the principles of Brown and Levison’s face theory, makes a detailed analysis of the application of politeness strategies in English business negotiations from two aspects: positive strategy and negative strategy with a few actual cases. It is hoped that this research will provide some guidelines for business negotiators to settle disputes and conflicts in business negotiation, assist them in creating a cooperative relationship with each other through employing proper linguistic strategies of politeness theory and finally improve the efficiency of business negotiation and realize the long term win-win negotiation.

Key words: face theory; politeness principles; politeness strategies; business negotiation

摘要：礼貌策略对商务谈判的成功非常重要。本文以布朗和列文森的面子保全理论为基础，结合具体的谈判案例，分别阐述积极的礼貌策略、消极的礼貌策略在英语商务谈判语境中的应用。希望本文能在商务谈判双方在解决纠纷和处理冲突时提供一些指导，协助他们运用适当的礼貌语言策略创造合作关系，最终提高商务谈判的效率而达到双赢的目的。

关键词：商务谈判；礼貌策略；面子

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of economic globalization and the prosperity of international business, international business negotiations are on the dramatic increase. Business negotiation is essentially a kind of economic activity through language. Whether it succeeds or not depends on the use of language. In business negotiation, both parties have to cooperate with each other as well as being competitive against each other. Either party will endeavor to win the most benefits while maintaining cooperation with each other. Therefore, how to conduct a successful negotiation or how to be an excellent negotiator are the questions concerned by many businessmen. This requires appropriate language, especially polite language, to achieve this aim.
Politeness, as a kind of pragmatic strategy, is the best way to achieve a communicative purpose by language users. Whatever the speaker observes or violates the politeness strategies, his words will minimize the expenses and maximize the benefit to both parties. Politeness strategy aims to help speakers to use implicit meaning to reach the communicative goal and maintain the harmonious social relations.