Abstract and Key Words

Abstract:  Politeness is one of the means to ensure the success of the communication among human beings and has attracted wide attention from the academics. English business letters, an important method of international communications, can not only convey information, but can be used to establish and strengthen the relationships between the two parties. Thus politeness has been placed high expectations on. Leech’s politeness principle and Brown and Levinson’s face theory serve as underlying principles in our analysis. Based on these theories, this essay mainly focuses on the linguistic realization of politeness strategies in good-news and bad-news business letters with regard to lexical, syntactic, and discourse level in the hope of finding out why and how politeness strategies are applied to achieve politeness and facilitate the successful and efficient business transactions.

Key words: politeness, Leech’s politeness principle, face, good-news letters, bad-news letters.

摘要：礼貌是确保人类顺畅成功交际的基本手段之一,自上世纪七十年代以来引起学术界广泛关注。英文商务信函作为商务交流的一种重要方式,不仅具有传递信息的功能,还担负着建立、加强业务联系的重任,因而对礼貌具有较高要求。本文将以Leech 的礼貌原则及Brown 和Levinson 的面子保全论为理论基础,从词汇，语法以及篇章结构三方面探讨礼貌策略在好消息与坏消息信函的不同应用，分析礼貌策略如何在这两种信函中实现礼貌以及成功达成交易。

关键词：礼貌、Leech 礼貌准则、面子、好消息信函、坏消息信函

1.    Introduction
Since China has entered the WTO, there is an increasing demand for international exchange of information and resources. International business communication has received wide attention of the people who are interested in this field. English business letters are important media to convey information, express intentions, and even conclude business in international transaction. Therefore, the effect of courtesy should not be ignored in international business activities. While writing a business letter, we should attach great importance to the politeness principle and the improvement of the politeness means. Besides, the factor of context also should be taken into consideration, for politeness strategies will be used for different purposes in different cultures. Therefore, business letters should make reasonable use of politeness strategies and writing techniques, making the politeness more sincere and smoother transaction.
Business letters are letters written in formal language, usually used when writing from one business organization to another, or for correspondence between such organizations and their customers, clients, and other external parties.