Abstract:

With the rapid development of social economy and the growing international business activities, more and more people take up the foreign-related business work recently. As a communication tool, business letters play an important part in nowadays society. Successful business letters are made up of tow basic principles: cooperative principle and politeness principle. According to these two principle, this thesis briefly sums up the politeness strategy and the main exciting problems during business letters writing, then, analyzes the reason of the problems and solutions with examples. On this basis, this paper also discusses the politeness in nowadays business English letters from the language expression、content and specific operation. What’s more, it makes a deep analysis of the relationship between writers and readers and helps both of them choose the best way to express politeness. Eventually, both the writer and the reader set up a friendly business basis and increase the efficiency and quality of the service to the other side.

Key words: business English letter; politeness principle; politeness performance

摘要：

随着社会经济的迅猛发展,国际商务活动日益增多，越来越多的人从事涉外商务工作，作为一种交流方式，商务信函在当今社会发挥着重要的作用。成功的商务英语信函措辞要满足两个基本原则，即合作原则和礼貌原则。本文分别从这两方面简要总结了商务英语信函写作过程中的礼貌策略和存在的主要问题，并举例分析存在问题的原因和解决方案。在此基础上，本文还探讨了礼貌在当今社会商务英语信函中的语言表达形式，表达内容和具体操作。更重要的是，它深入分析了作者和读者之间的关系，帮助他们选择最佳的方式来表达礼貌。最终，作者和读者之间建立起一个有好的商务贸易基础，同时提高了对贸易方服务的效率和服务的质量。

关键词：商务英语信函;礼貌原则;礼貌表现

1 Introduction
    Business English letter is the most important medium to deliver message, make deals and contact with each other. As is known to all, politeness plays a major role in interpersonal communication, as well as in the business contacts, during the business contacts, tone of the words can show a person's professional accomplishment. A polite letter with kindness and proper words could establish a good image for a company, on the contrary, an impolite one would bring the negative evaluations. There is no doubt that everyone wants to do a good job in writing business letters. However, the most important politeness is to respond to other side as soon as possible, and the most touching politeness is to trust the other side. In other words,a polite business letter must respect the other side’s views, rights and needs as well as make them feel pleasure. Frankly speaking,it is difficult to avoid disagreement during business contacts. However, a considerate business letter will resolve the divergence or have little effect on the friendly relations as much as possible. Then, it will increase the possibility of success trade.