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Abstract: Nowadays the tendency of economic globalization in the world brings about increasingly closer international trade cooperation. The business letter has been an important communicative tool in the international trade. A polite business letter could promote the trade and help achieve the business cooperation. Therefore the presentation of courtesy in the business letter is of great significance. This paper presents a study of the courtesy in the business letter from the lexical aspect.
關键词：business letter, courtesy, lexical presentation
Chinese library classification number: F713.51document id code: A article number:
Business letter as a kind of practical writing has its own specific language features, which are called seven “Cs”: completeness, concreteness, clearness, conciseness, courtesy, consideration and correctness. One of its essential language features is courtesy, which is important for international business, especially for international business letter. (廖瑛，2003:3).
Lexical Presentation of Courtesy
[作者简介]刘文君，女，中南大学外国语学院硕士研究生，研究方向：MTI翻译实践，中西商务文化对比研究（湖南长沙，410083）
In a courteous business letter, four kinds of words with presentation of courtesy are frequently used to enhance the relationship and reduce the unfavorable influence.
Hedges
Hedges are referred as words “whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (Lakoff, 1973:471). It is used to generate the ambiguity which can facilitate achieving specific communicative goals, mitigating the imposition and avoiding absolute statements.
Some hedges like kind of, sort of, almost, to some extent etc. could be used in a wide variety of business letters. They are adopted to mitigate the imposition, protect each other’s benefit and face. For example:
Example 1 If you can drop the price some, we will persuade our clients to meet you half-way.
Example 2 We have examined all the cartons one by one and found nearly each of them was leaking more or less.
Some other hedges like I’m afraid, I’m sorry, I think, etc. are applied to show the writer’s hesitation, speculation or to perform indirect speech acts. For example:
Example 3 I am afraid we cannot delivery the goods all at one time.
Example 4 We think that you have broken the agency agreement signed by both of us.
1.1.2 Positive words
There are a lot of positive words with affective meaning being adopted in business letters for leaving favorable impression to recipients and helping finish the transaction pleasantly. The words with positive significance such as grateful, appreciate, satisfy, helpful, advantage etc. could convey the pleasure and approval.
There are two situations suitable for adopting the positive words. When the appreciation and praise are to be conveyed for trade counterpart’s support, order, reply or payment etc., the writer would choose the positive words as follows:
Example 5 We should be appreciated/grateful/glad/delighted if you advance delivery to the middle of June and ship the goods in one lot.
The other situation is that when the business letter is written for collection, refusal or claim etc., the positive words should be adopted in order to avoid the negative words like complain, mistake or troublesome. For example:
Example 6 We are not completely satisfied with your manner of doing business.
Example 7 Thank you for your helpful letter to kindly inform us the problems.
No matter which situation the positive words are used in, the purposes are the same, which is to show the politeness to recipient and avoid the negative effect.
Modal auxiliaries
Modal auxiliaries play a significant role in expressing requirements, questions or suggestions etc. in a polite way. The modal auxiliaries such as would, might, could are often used to propose requirement indirectly by asking about reader’s possibilities, abilities or desires to the requirement. And the subjunctive mood and the interrogative clause with the use of modal auxiliaries are always employed in the business letter for mitigating the imposition which is put upon the involved parties and leaving the margin for choices and possibilities for each other’s cooperation in future. For example:
Example 8 You might make shipment a little later, that is, by June 10.
Example 9 Would you please tell us more detailed information on your requirements?
Example 10 We should be thankful if you would arrange for immediate shipment.
These three sentences with the secondary modals all realize the courtesy by transforming the commanding tone into a softer requesting one, which are indirect and polite for the involved parties to accept.
Personal Pronoun
In a successful writing of business letter, the personal pronoun is regarded as the basis of courtesy. The proper adoption of personal pronoun in the business letter can convey the message in a polite and tactful way.
When the business letter is to convey the good-news message, promotion or sales information etc., the writer should put himself/herself in the position of recipient, taking into account his/her benefit, hope and demand, by conveying the understandable and practical information. This kind of recipient-oriented attitude is called “You-attitude”, which is used frequently to realize courtesy in the business letter. For example:
Example 11 You will certainly be interested in the special offer on page 4 of the latest catalogue sent to you by us.
Example 12 You can earn a 5% discount when you pay cash
These two sentences express good offer and discount to recipient with the use of “you” instead of “we”, which could make a better impression and convey the practical benefits that recipient could get obviously.
However, when the business letter involves the information about dispute, problem, or blame etc, “You-attitude” would not be suitable to be employed, since the expression would become direct and rude sometimes and also would make the recipient feel embarrassed and lose face.
Example 13 Your error caused the delay, and you alone will be responsible for extra charges on your bill.
For the reason that “You-attitude” is not applicable in every occasion, we should turn to consider the “me-attitude”, which could effectively soften the negative tone and show thoughtful considerations when the recipient makes mistakes or disagrees with writer etc. There are a comparison between “You-attitude” and “me-attitude” for showing the difference as follows:
Example 14 We are sorry that you misunderstood us.
Example 15 We are sorry that we didn’t make ourselves clear.
Conclusion
As presented above, the proper use of words in the business letter will effectively convey the positive, practical and understandable messages with soft tone and tactful manner.
Bibliography：
[1] Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press,1975.
[2] Ashley, A. A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[3] Lakoff, G. Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1973(2): 458-508.
[4] 方春祥.《外貿函电》。北京：中国人民大学出版社，2005.
[5] 梁树新.《现代国际商务函电》。北京：人民邮电出版,2008.
[6] 廖瑛.《实用外贸英语函电》。武汉：华中科技大学出版社,2003.
[7] 汤军.商务英语典型礼貌语言机制初探，《西安外国语学院学报》，1998(4):17-20.
關键词：business letter, courtesy, lexical presentation
Chinese library classification number: F713.51document id code: A article number:
Business letter as a kind of practical writing has its own specific language features, which are called seven “Cs”: completeness, concreteness, clearness, conciseness, courtesy, consideration and correctness. One of its essential language features is courtesy, which is important for international business, especially for international business letter. (廖瑛，2003:3).
Lexical Presentation of Courtesy
[作者简介]刘文君，女，中南大学外国语学院硕士研究生，研究方向：MTI翻译实践，中西商务文化对比研究（湖南长沙，410083）
In a courteous business letter, four kinds of words with presentation of courtesy are frequently used to enhance the relationship and reduce the unfavorable influence.
Hedges
Hedges are referred as words “whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (Lakoff, 1973:471). It is used to generate the ambiguity which can facilitate achieving specific communicative goals, mitigating the imposition and avoiding absolute statements.
Some hedges like kind of, sort of, almost, to some extent etc. could be used in a wide variety of business letters. They are adopted to mitigate the imposition, protect each other’s benefit and face. For example:
Example 1 If you can drop the price some, we will persuade our clients to meet you half-way.
Example 2 We have examined all the cartons one by one and found nearly each of them was leaking more or less.
Some other hedges like I’m afraid, I’m sorry, I think, etc. are applied to show the writer’s hesitation, speculation or to perform indirect speech acts. For example:
Example 3 I am afraid we cannot delivery the goods all at one time.
Example 4 We think that you have broken the agency agreement signed by both of us.
1.1.2 Positive words
There are a lot of positive words with affective meaning being adopted in business letters for leaving favorable impression to recipients and helping finish the transaction pleasantly. The words with positive significance such as grateful, appreciate, satisfy, helpful, advantage etc. could convey the pleasure and approval.
There are two situations suitable for adopting the positive words. When the appreciation and praise are to be conveyed for trade counterpart’s support, order, reply or payment etc., the writer would choose the positive words as follows:
Example 5 We should be appreciated/grateful/glad/delighted if you advance delivery to the middle of June and ship the goods in one lot.
The other situation is that when the business letter is written for collection, refusal or claim etc., the positive words should be adopted in order to avoid the negative words like complain, mistake or troublesome. For example:
Example 6 We are not completely satisfied with your manner of doing business.
Example 7 Thank you for your helpful letter to kindly inform us the problems.
No matter which situation the positive words are used in, the purposes are the same, which is to show the politeness to recipient and avoid the negative effect.
Modal auxiliaries
Modal auxiliaries play a significant role in expressing requirements, questions or suggestions etc. in a polite way. The modal auxiliaries such as would, might, could are often used to propose requirement indirectly by asking about reader’s possibilities, abilities or desires to the requirement. And the subjunctive mood and the interrogative clause with the use of modal auxiliaries are always employed in the business letter for mitigating the imposition which is put upon the involved parties and leaving the margin for choices and possibilities for each other’s cooperation in future. For example:
Example 8 You might make shipment a little later, that is, by June 10.
Example 9 Would you please tell us more detailed information on your requirements?
Example 10 We should be thankful if you would arrange for immediate shipment.
These three sentences with the secondary modals all realize the courtesy by transforming the commanding tone into a softer requesting one, which are indirect and polite for the involved parties to accept.
Personal Pronoun
In a successful writing of business letter, the personal pronoun is regarded as the basis of courtesy. The proper adoption of personal pronoun in the business letter can convey the message in a polite and tactful way.
When the business letter is to convey the good-news message, promotion or sales information etc., the writer should put himself/herself in the position of recipient, taking into account his/her benefit, hope and demand, by conveying the understandable and practical information. This kind of recipient-oriented attitude is called “You-attitude”, which is used frequently to realize courtesy in the business letter. For example:
Example 11 You will certainly be interested in the special offer on page 4 of the latest catalogue sent to you by us.
Example 12 You can earn a 5% discount when you pay cash
These two sentences express good offer and discount to recipient with the use of “you” instead of “we”, which could make a better impression and convey the practical benefits that recipient could get obviously.
However, when the business letter involves the information about dispute, problem, or blame etc, “You-attitude” would not be suitable to be employed, since the expression would become direct and rude sometimes and also would make the recipient feel embarrassed and lose face.
Example 13 Your error caused the delay, and you alone will be responsible for extra charges on your bill.
For the reason that “You-attitude” is not applicable in every occasion, we should turn to consider the “me-attitude”, which could effectively soften the negative tone and show thoughtful considerations when the recipient makes mistakes or disagrees with writer etc. There are a comparison between “You-attitude” and “me-attitude” for showing the difference as follows:
Example 14 We are sorry that you misunderstood us.
Example 15 We are sorry that we didn’t make ourselves clear.
Conclusion
As presented above, the proper use of words in the business letter will effectively convey the positive, practical and understandable messages with soft tone and tactful manner.
Bibliography：
[1] Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press,1975.
[2] Ashley, A. A Handbook of Commercial Correspondence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[3] Lakoff, G. Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1973(2): 458-508.
[4] 方春祥.《外貿函电》。北京：中国人民大学出版社，2005.
[5] 梁树新.《现代国际商务函电》。北京：人民邮电出版,2008.
[6] 廖瑛.《实用外贸英语函电》。武汉：华中科技大学出版社,2003.
[7] 汤军.商务英语典型礼貌语言机制初探，《西安外国语学院学报》，1998(4):17-20.