ABSTRACT

As a vital means of business communication, business letters are aimed at conveying information to readers and expressing writers intention to maintain friendly cooperative relationship. It is well-known that various conflicts involved in interest exist in business communication. Thus, bad-news business letters begin to emerge, which to some degree causes reader’s resistance. Applied to deal with problems from the readers’ point of view, you-attitude is to weaken the negative information that bad news have brought about and to maintain the normal business cooperation.

Under the guidance of Cooperative Principle, Face Theory and Politeness Principle, this thesis adopts the qualitative research method, discussing the use of you-attitude in bad-news business letters at lexical, syntactic and textual level. After analyzing some typical cases, it can be discovered that you-attitude is applied with positive words, hedges, modal auxiliaries, impersonal expressions and avoiding you-language at lexical level. At syntactic level, you-attitude is applied with positive tones, complex sentences, subjunctive mood, affirmative sentences, interrogative sentences and passive voice. At textual level, it is realized with indirect structure. Pragmatic analysis of you-attitude is conducive to a developed strategy of business writing. Eventually it will help to achieve the goal of maintaining normal business activities.

Key words: bad news; business letters; you-attitude

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-4

2.1 Theoretical Background-4

2.1.1 Grice's Cooperative Principle-4

2.1.2 Brown and Levinson's Face Theory-5

2.1.3 Leech's Politeness Principle-6

2.2 A General Introduction to Bad-News Business Letters-6

2.3 An Overview of You-Attitude-7

2.4 Summary-8

Chapter Three  METHODOLOGY-10

3.1 Research Methods-10

3.2 Data Collection-11

3.3 Data Analysis-12

3.4 Summary-12

Chapter Four  RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-13

4.1 Pragmatic Analysis of You-Attitude at Lexical Level-13

4.2 Pragmatic Analysis of You-Attitude at Syntactic Level-16

4.3 Pragmatic Analysis of You-Attitude at Textual Level-19

4.4 Summary-21

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-22

REFERENCES-23

APPENDIX-25