The Pragmatic Approach to Effective Business Correspondence Writing
Abstract
International Business English (IBE), which is called Business English in general in the West, is a variety of ESP (English for Specific Purposes). With China becoming the world’s largest market and manufacturing center, and especially after China’s entry into WTO, IBE is playing an increasingly important role. Business correspondence, as one of the key forms of business communication, especially with the advent and development of fax and email, has become indispensable for business operation. Both corporations and people in the business circle have realized that effective communication, to a certain degree, depends on the efficiency of correspondence. Therefore, in the past years, many scholars of linguistics have focused on studying how to better apply the English language so as to improve business communication.
Pragmatics is an indispensable branch of linguistics. It is the study of specific discourse in specific contexts, analyzing how to understand and command a language in different lingual contexts. Business letters are written against a certain background; therefore, it is essential to study how to enhance communication by applying principles of pragmatics. This paper aims at exploring methods of improving writing skills for business correspondence by analyzing the related pragmatic principles. The whole thesis is divided into five Chapters:
Introduction
Chapter One: Communication Process. This chapter introduces the inherent relations of language to communication, as well as the importance of language in a macroscopic perspective.
Chapter Two: An Introduction of Business Correspondence. In this chapter, the definition of “register” is adopted to define the language used in business correspondence.
Chapter Three: Pragmatic Principles of Business Correspondence. It mainly expatiates the “Cooperative Principle” and “Politeness Principle” with a number of examples.
Chapter Four: Application of the Pragmatic Principles in the writing of Business Correspondence. It explores the application of the pragmatic principles in business correspondence. Some skills are also mentioned so as to achieve the effectiveness of business correspondence writing as a whole.
Chapter Five: Conclusion
The present writer wishes to draw more attention from scholars to the significance of business correspondence and help to bring more theoretical research in this field to a higher tier.
Contents
Chapter one Communication Process. 7
1.1 The importance of language in communication. 7
1.2 The elements of the communication process. 9
1.3 The communication process. 10
1.4 The importance of effective communication in business. 12
1.5 Barriers to communication. 13
1.5.1 Psychological barriers. 13
Chapter Two An Introduction of Business Correspondence. 15
2.1 Reasons for using business correspondence. 15
2.2 Style for business correspondence. 17
2.3 Martin Joos’ classification of styles. 17
Chapter Three Some Pragmatic Principles in Linguistics. 19
3.1 Procedures Involved in Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle. 19
3.2 The Cooperative Principle. 20
3.2.1 Four Maxims of Cooperative Principle. 20
3.2.2 Conforming and violation of the principle. 23
3.2.3 “Theory of Conversational Implicature” deduction. 24
3.3.3 Analysis of Politeness Principle. 30
3.3.3.3 Approbation Maxim.. 31
Chapter Four Application of the Pragmatic Principles in Business Correspondence Writing 35
4.2.1.1 Types of business correspondence. 43
4.2.1.2 Application of “You attitude” in Business Correspondence. 45
4.2.2.1 The functions of vagueness. 55
4.2.2.2 Application of vagueness in Business Correspondence. 59
