摘　 要

经济全球化的发展促进了中国与其他国家的贸易往来。商务信函作为商务交际的一种重要途径在国际贸易的过程中发挥了巨大作用。然而，在书写商务信函时需要特别重视礼貌原则的应用。本论文以英文商务信函为载体，利奇的礼貌原则和布朗和列文森的面子保全理论以及顾曰国的中国礼貌原则为主要的理论框架，研究了好消息、坏消息及劝说类英语商务信函中的礼貌策略的应用，并结合实例从选词，句法及篇章上进行研究。通过各种礼貌策略来分析礼貌的表现方式，并以理论作为依据，从而找到在英语商务信函中最恰当的表达方法。希望通过这一研究能帮助写信者在信件中更礼貌地表达自己的想法，把信息和思想更加准确地传递给收信人。

关键词：商务信函；礼貌；策略；礼貌原则

Abstract

The economic globalization promotes the trade contact between China and many other countries. The business letter, as an important sort of communicating approach, takes a great part in this process. However, varieties of problems often arise when people confront writing business letters especially in a foreign language and politeness is one part which plays an important role in commercial communication. So more attention should be paid to politeness principle in business letters. This thesis studies the application of politeness strategies in good-news, bad-news and persuasive English business letters by taking English business letters as the carrier, and Brown & Levinson’s Face-saving Theory and Leech’s Politeness Principle as well as the Gu Yueguo’s Chinese Politeness Principle as the theoretical foundation. The research is made from lexical level, syntactic level and discourse level combined with the examples. It aims at finding the best way of expressing method in English business letter through analyzing various politeness strategies. This research is expected to help more and more writers to express politeness in business letters appropriately, and pass on the information and ideas to readers successfully.

Key words: business letters; politeness; strategies; politeness principle

1 Introduction
   The economic globalization has a significant effect on social development. So appropriate communication between different countries when doing business becomes more essential. And business letters plays an important role during this process. This thesis is to investigate the politeness theories and strategies as well as the characteristics of the letters to help writer to express appropriately his or her politeness in business letters, and pass on the information and ideas to the reader successfully.