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【Abstract】The focus of this paper is on how to realize politeness with various politeness strategies in bad-news business letters and at the same time to fulfill the writer’s communicative goal. Its aim is to analyze the manifestations of politeness strategies in bad-news business letters so as to see how people in the business world understand the importance of politeness in business letter writing and use politeness strategies in a more efficient way.
【Key words】politeness； politeness strategies； business letters
【作者簡介】黄丹艳，广东外语外贸大学国际学院。
Part One Introduction
Business letters refer to those used in business transactions and they are the most frequently used means in business communication by business firms to keep in touch with their customers. According to common practice， business letters may be classified into good-news letters， neutral-news letters， bad-news letters and persuasive letters. Due to the space limit of a term paper， the author mainly focuses on bad-news letters in accordance with the last classification.
Part Two Literature Review
Politeness Principle proposed by Leech is one of the most influential theories of politeness. He adopts the Gricean framework and formulates a series of maxims and sub-maxims. These maxims of Politeness Principle include tact maxim， generosity maxim， approbation maxim， modesty maxim， agreement maxim and sympathy maxim. （Leech，1983：132）：
According to Brown and Levinson （1983）， since most of the speech acts are intrinsically face threatening， interactants of a conversation tend to avoid the FTAs or try to employ some politeness strategies while doing the FTAs to mitigate the damage of the FTAs so as to achieve their communicational goals successfully. He classified these strategies into positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies.
Part Three Manifestation of Politeness in Bad-news Business Letters
In Wayne and Dauwalder’s definition （Wayne
【Key words】politeness； politeness strategies； business letters
【作者簡介】黄丹艳，广东外语外贸大学国际学院。
Part One Introduction
Business letters refer to those used in business transactions and they are the most frequently used means in business communication by business firms to keep in touch with their customers. According to common practice， business letters may be classified into good-news letters， neutral-news letters， bad-news letters and persuasive letters. Due to the space limit of a term paper， the author mainly focuses on bad-news letters in accordance with the last classification.
Part Two Literature Review
Politeness Principle proposed by Leech is one of the most influential theories of politeness. He adopts the Gricean framework and formulates a series of maxims and sub-maxims. These maxims of Politeness Principle include tact maxim， generosity maxim， approbation maxim， modesty maxim， agreement maxim and sympathy maxim. （Leech，1983：132）：
According to Brown and Levinson （1983）， since most of the speech acts are intrinsically face threatening， interactants of a conversation tend to avoid the FTAs or try to employ some politeness strategies while doing the FTAs to mitigate the damage of the FTAs so as to achieve their communicational goals successfully. He classified these strategies into positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies.
Part Three Manifestation of Politeness in Bad-news Business Letters
In Wayne and Dauwalder’s definition （Wayne