Abstract

    Politeness is a universal phenomenon that exits in all cultures and can be found in almost every aspect of our daily life. No matter it is daily communication or business communication between business corporations, politeness plays an important role in them, which also used in business e-mail. Bad-news business e-mail may cause misunderstanding in cross-cultural communication, so how to use politeness strategies in bad-news business e-mail by Chinese and English natives is the aim of this paper.

Key words: politeness;   politeness strategies;   bad-news business e-mail

摘 要

礼貌是存在所有文化中的普遍现象，也是存在于我们日常生活的方方面面，无论是日常的交往问候，还是公司之间的商务往来，礼貌都在其中起着积极的推动作用。在商务电邮中我们也会经常用到礼貌策略。在跨文化交际中，坏消息商务电邮可能引起误解，所以在坏消息商务电邮中中西方商务人士是如何使用礼貌策略是这篇文章的目的。

关键词：礼貌；礼貌策略；坏消息商务电邮；

1. Introduction
    With China’s rapid economic development and entry into the WTO, China with the western countries the trade and economic exchanges between china and western countries have become more and more frequent, and become the important force of the world economic progress. Business E-mail promotes economic exchanges, realizing the win-win cooperation activities. Its importance has become more obvious.
   Politeness can not only be widely used in people’s daily conversations，but also applied in written business E-mail. In our daily communication and business e-mail, some misunderstandings often arise. Some of them are due to grammatical mistakes, but most of them are caused by unfamiliarity with the speaker’s culture. Just as Miller (J, Thomas, 1983) said, most of our misunderstandings of other people are not due to any inability to hear them，parse their sentences or to understand their words.