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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION GRADUATION PAPER POLITENESS STRATEGIES USED IN BUSINES

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION

GRADUATION PAPER

POLITENESS STRATEGIES USED IN BUSINESS

COMPLAINT LETTERS

Supervisor:Asso.Prof Nguyen Xuan Thom

Student:Nguyen Thu Nguyet

Course: 2010

Hanoi, 2014

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ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ SỬ DỤNG TRONG THƯ PHÀN

NÀN TRONG THƯƠNG MẠI

Giáo viên hướng dẫn: PGS.TS Nguyễn Xuân Thơm

Sinh viên: Nguyễn Thu Nguyệt

Khóa: QH2010

Hà Nội - 2014

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ACCEPTANCE

I hereby state that I: Nguyen Thu Nguyet, QH2010.F1.E1, being a candidate for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor‟s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

I agree that my paper deposited in the library would be accessible for the use of further study and research in accordance with conditions set by the library

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DECLARATION

I certify that this study is my own work I have included fully references to the materials that I used as literature review This research has not been submitted for any formal assessment as well as published in any kind of press

cooperation in this research and especially their performance which inspired me with the idea of conducting a study on students‟ learning style preference from the beginning

The researcher, Nguyen Thu Nguyet

Questionnaire survey, interview and observation reveal descriptive statistics and indepth responses for analysis Results show that first year Fast-track students at ULIS belong to sensory groups, who prefer external information from visual, sounds and experience Not all teachers have full understanding about their

students‟ learning style preference Their use of activities, correction and

instruction without awareness about students‟ preferences results in different reaction of students The activities implemented in class produce more effects if they match with students‟ preference In constrast, activities with less favorable attitude receive less attention Instruction experiences a similar trend Suggestions for facilitating students‟ learning style preferences are given by teachers of first year Fast-track students Those include types of activity, use of media and suitable time to employ

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RESEARCH OUTLINE

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of research problem and rationale for the study

2 Aims and objectives of the study

3 Significance of the study

4 Scope of the study

5 Methods of the study

6 Design of the study

2.2.1 Positive politeness strategies

2.2.2 Negative politeness strategies

2.3 Weightiness of FTA

3 Business complaint letters

3.1 Business letters

3.1.1 Essential Qualities of a Good Business Letter

3.1.2 Parts of a Business Letter

3.1.3 Format of a Business Letter

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CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOG Y

1 Selection of subject

2 Data collection instruments

3 Data collection method and procedure

4 Expected outcome

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION PART 3: CONCLUSION

1 Summary of the main findings

2 Contributions of the study

3 Limitations of the study

4 Suggestions for further studies

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of research problem and rationale for the study

The technological developments in every area of business and commerce have imposed many alternatives to such a traditional method of communication like letters Contrary to popular belief, letter writing is not a lost art, but a viable t ool in today's corporate society (Lisa, 2011) Letters show you care, that you thought about the recipient individually, that they deserve more than an automated response, and that you are actually communicating your thoughts with each other

(Garret, 2012)

Besides, letters may be defined as a means through which views are expressed and ideas or information is communicated in writing in the process of business activities Companies write business letters as a way of persuading the customers

or clients to accept the contract or proposal or enter into an agreement A well written and formatted letter represents the business identity as well as conveys the professionalism of a company In reverse, the customers or clients can write letters

-to the companies seeking information about products; complaining about unsatisfactory goods, bad service, and inaccurate shipment or suggesting some

changes that should be made to the company

In regard of different purposes, there are different types of business letters: inquiry letters, sale letters, claim letters, etc Among these types of business letters, complaint letter is one of the most difficult types to write There are two main reasons for this The first is the writers may be in a bad mood when writing a complaint letter; therefore, they may use abusive language or allow themselves to get sidetracked from their specific problem into generalized criticism of the company or its products or services Second, writing complaint letters does not only mean the writers want to convey a complaint message to the company but

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also persuade the company to take a certain course of action to compensate for

their dissatisfaction

Therefore, expressing goodwill towards the recipient should be an underlying goal

of any business letter (Nguyen, 1992), especially in a letter of complaint One of the strategies to create goodwill in business correspondence is politeness Politeness contributes to respectful interaction by showing consideration and deference towards others (Watts, 2003) Politeness also generates social connections among interlocutors and permits a particular form of social cooperation (Benjamins, 2004) Both Watts (2003) and Benjamins (2004) state that politeness cultivates a comfortable atmosphere in communication and m akes

interaction more effective

With the hope of finding out how English writers use politeness strategies to write complaint letters, the researcher hopes that her findings will be very useful for everyone who cares about English business complaint letters in the research paper

entitled: “Politeness strategies used in English business complaint letters”

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The aim of this study is to find out the politeness strategies used in English business complaint letters as it comes out from works on pragmatics and illustrates

different aspects, especially the language choices for making polite complaints

To achieve those above aims, this study tries to answer these two following

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3 Significance of the study

The study is believed to bring an overview of language used in business complaint letters in terms of politeness strategies Accordingly, people who are interested in the field, especially ones who want to propose complaints through letters can take this study a reliable reference source Furthermore, findings of the study are expected to contribute to related literature

4 Scope of the study

Within the framework of this paper, the research focuses on politeness strategies used in 30 business letters of complaint It also investigates how often these politeness strategies used as well as the impact of those on each other

5 Methods of the study

This study uses the methods of description, analysis, and statistics in linguistic study A number of materials on applied linguistics, notably on politeness strategies are studied to build up a theoretical background for the study

Data used in this study are mainly collected from textbooks and authentic English written by native English speakers

6 Design of the study

Part I is an introduction presenting the rationale, the aims, the significance, the

scope, the method and the design of the study

Part II consists of 3 chapters:

Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background of this work Firstly, the notion and the background of speech act and politeness are provided The emphasis will be on the concept of politeness, types of politeness strategies and the act of complaining

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Chapter 2 is the study which deals with methods to study

Chapter 3 provides implications to how to convey a complaint in English business correspondence Some strategies are employed and their effects are given out Part III is the conclusion, the summaries of the whole thesis

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PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

1 The speech act

In an article, Joanna Jaworowska has synthesized speech act theories A speech act

is a minimal functional unit in human communication Just as a word ( refusal) is

the smallest free form found in language and a morpheme is the smallest unit of

language that carries information about meaning (-al in refuse-al makes it a noun), the basic unit of communication is a speech act (the speech act of refusal)

According to Austin's theory (1962), what we say has three kinds of meaning:

1 Propositional meaning - the literal meaning of what is said

“It's hot in here.”

2 Illocutionary meaning - the social function of what is said

“It's hot in here” could be:

- an indirect request for someone to open the window

- an indirect refusal to close the window because someone is cold

- a complaint implying that someone should know better than to keep the windows closed (expressed emphatically)

3 Perlocutionary meaning - the effect of what is said

“It's hot in here' could result in someone opening the windows”

Based on Austin's (1962), and Searle's (1969) theory, Cohen (1996) identifies five categories of speech acts based on the functions assigned to them

• Representatives: the speaker is committed to the truth of a proposition: affirm, believe, conclude, deny, report

• Directives: the speaker tries to get the hearer to do something: ask, challenge, command, dare, insist, request

• Commissives: the speaker is committed to a (future) course of action: guarantee, pledge, promise, swear, vow

people can judge something they (or others) do or say means politeness, or rather,

in what view something is socially correct This issue should be considered under each other culture for judging things For example, in the same act of complimenting, the US-Americans pay compliments frequently; handle them in an easy manner and accept them less sincerely On the contrary, the Germans offer compliments more sparingly They value modesty and tend to play the compliments down One more example when it comes to invitations, in North American, invitations are accepted at once but usually neither taken nor meant serious However, in Korea, people expect rejections on the first instance before accepting the invitations without showing enthusiasm

Although each culture has differences in judging politeness, in pragmatics, the term “politeness” “refers to the choices that are made in language use; the linguistic expressions that give people space and show a friendly attitude to them.” (Tran, 2008)

There are a lot of politeness theories proposed by many linguists and sociologists: Lakoff (1972, 1973), Leech (1983), Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) However,

in the scope of this research, I will clarify only the politeness strategies theory

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belongs to Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), which according to Watts (2003) in

his Politeness, Cambridge University Press:

Brown and Levinson (1978) politeness is "as a complex system for softening face threats"

2.1 The concept of face and face threatening act (FTA)

The concept of a face threatening act (FTA) derives from Politeness Theory, as first proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978) Brown and Levinson define “face”

as “the public self-image that every member (of a society) wants to claim for himself” (1987, p 61) They recognize that everyone has similar face wants and they distinguish between two aspects of face– positive face and negative face While positive face concerns the hearer‟s desire to be appreciated and approved of

by selected others, negative face “represents the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p 61) Everyone has both negative face and positive face, and both of these aspects of face are, at times, threatened by another (Brown & Levinson, 1978) When an act of verbal or non-verbal communication “run (s) contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or the speaker”, this is called a “face-threatening act” (FTA) (Brown & Levinson, 1978, p 70)

They also propose 4 kinds of FTAs:

1 Acts which threaten the audience‟s negative face: ordering, advising, threatening, warning

2 Acts which threaten the audience‟s positive face: complaining, criticizing, disagreeing, raising taboo topics

3 Acts which threaten speaker‟s negative face: accepting an offer, accepting thanks, promising unwillingly

4 Acts which threaten speaker‟s positive face: apologizing, accepting compliments and confessing

Off record

Don‟t do the FTA

1 Bald On-record politeness: This strategy is used in situations where people

know each other well or in a situation of urgency In these instances maintaining face is not the first priority or main goal of a conversation A person may shout, “watch o ut” if they see someone is in danger or a mother may tell her son to “eat your peas” at supper This strategy does not try to preserve face, but can be used to threaten it if taken out of context

2 Off-record: This strategy is more indirect The speaker does not impose on

the hearer As a result, face is not directly threatened This strategy often requires the hearer to interpret what the speaker is saying

3 Positive Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize the threat to the

audience‟s positive face This can be done by attending to the audience‟s needs, invoking equality and feelings of belonging to the group, hedging or indirectness, avoiding disagreement, using humor and optimism and making offers and promises

4 Negative Politeness: This strategy tries to minimize threats to the

audience‟s negative face An example of when negative politeness would

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be used is when the speaker requires something from the audience, but wants to maintain the audience‟s right to refuse This can be done by being indirect, using hedges or questions, minimizing imposition and apologizing

The authors propose 15 strategies for achieving positive politeness and 10 for negative strategies as follows:

2.2.1 Positive Politeness Strategies

1 Notice, attend to H: S should take notice of aspects of H‟s conditions

Examples:

“What a beautiful dress! Where was it bought?”

“We ate too many beans tonight, didn‟t we?”

2 Exaggerate: S says with exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of

prosodic Examples:

“You are a fantastic cook, the lunch was great!”

“How absolutely marvelous/ extraordinary/… ”

3 Intensify interest to H: S intensifies the interest of his own contribution, by

“making a good story” and draw H as a participant into the conversation with

direct questions and expressions like you know, see what Example:

“I come into his room, and what do you think I see? – a huge mess all over the place and right in the middle, a naked….”

4 Use in-group identity markers: S uses any of the innumerable ways to convey

in- group membership: address forms, language or dialect, jargon or slang and ellipses Examples:

“Honey, can you give me the beer?”

“Hey brother, what‟s going on?”

5 Seek agreement: S seeks ways in which it is possible to agree with H

Examples:

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- Did you see the game last night? (raise safe topics)

- I had a flat tire on the way home –Oh no, a flat tire! (repetition)

6 Avoid disagreement: S desires to agree or appear to agree with H leads also to

mechanisms for pretending to agree: white lies and hedges Examples:

“You hate him – Oh, sometimes” (token agreement)

“Is she small? – Yes, she‟s small Well, not really small but certainly not big.” (pseudo-agreement)

“I‟ll see you later then.” (hedges)

7 Presuppose, assert common ground: The value of S‟s spending time and

effort on being with H, as a mark of friendship or interest in him, by talking for a while about unrelated topics Example:

“I really had a hard time learning to drive, you know.”

8 Joke: Jokes are based on mutual shared background and values and putting H

“at ease” Example:

“How about lending me this old heap of junk? “(H‟s new cadillac)

9 Assert or presuppose S’s knowledge of and concern for H’s wants: S asserts

or implies knowledge of H‟s wants and willingness to fit one‟s own wants in with

them Example:

“I know you don‟t like parties, but this one will really be good – do come!”

10 Offer, promise:

Examples:

“I‟ll try to get it next week!”

“I‟ll wash the dishes later!”

11 Be optimistic: S assumes that H wants for S or for H and S, and will help him

to obtain them Example:

“You‟ll lend me your apartment-key for the weekend, I hope.”

12 Include both S and H in the activity:

Examples:

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“Let‟s have break! Let‟s have a kitkat!”

“Let‟s go, girls!”

13 Give reasons:

Examples:

“Why don‟t we go shopping?”

“Why not lend me your jacket for the weekend?”

14 Assume or assert reciprocity: S and H may be claimed or urged by giving

evidence of reciprocal rights or obligations obtaining between S and H Example:

“Yesterday I„ve washed the dishes, so today it‟s your turn!”

15 Give gifts (goods, sympathy, understanding, co-operation): S may satisfy

H‟s positive-face want by actually satisfying some of H‟s wants (action of giving, not only tangible) Example:

gift-“I‟ll give you a hand.”

2.2.2 Negative Politeness Strategies

1 Be conventionally indirect: Opposing tensions: desire to give H an “out“ by

being indirect, and the desire to go on record are solved by the compromise of conventional indirectness, the use of phrases and sentences that have contextually unambiguous meanings which are different from their literal meaning Example:

“Can you please shut the door?”

2 Question, hedge: It says of that membership that it is partial, or true only in

certain respects, or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected Examples:

“I´m pretty sure, I´ve seen that movie before.”

“I rather think you shouldn´t do that.”

3 Be pessimistic: S gives redress to H´s negative face by explicitly expressing

doubt that the conditions for the appropriateness of S´s speech act obtain Examples:

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“You don´t have any exotic plants, do you by any chance?”

“I don´t imagine there´d be any chance of “

4 Minimize the imposition: S defuses the FTA by indicating that the intrinsic

seriousness of the imposition is not itself great Examples:

“Just a moment“

“Could I have a tiny bit of ?”

5 Give deference: 2 different possibilities to realize the deference:

5.1 S humbles and abases himself

5.2 S raises H (pays him positive face of a particular namely that which s atisfies H´s want to be treated superior) Examples:

“We look forward very much to see you again.”

“Did you move my luggage?” - “Yes, sir, I thought perhaps you wouldn´t mind and ”

6 Apologize: By apologizing for doing an FTA, the speaker can indicate his

reluctance to impinge on H´s negative face and therefore, partially redress the impingement Examples:

“I hope this isn´t going to bother you too much ”

“I hate to impose, but ”

7 Impersonalize S and H: Phrase the FTA as if the agent were other than S and

the addressee were other than H Examples:

“It broke.” (cf You broke it.)

“Take it out “(cf You take it out.)

“It would be nice if {I/you} can …”

8 State FTA as a general rule: To dissociate S and H from the particular

imposition in the FTA (S doesn´t want to impinge H, but is merely forced to by circumstances), it can be generalized as a social rule/regulation/obligation Examples:

“Passengers will please refrain from smoking in this room“

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“The committee requests the President “

“We don´t sit on tables, we sit on chairs, XY“

9 Nominalize: The more you normalize an expression, the more you dissociate

from it Examples:

“You performed well on the examinations and that impressed us favorably.”

“Your performing well on the examinations was impressive to us.”

10 Go on record as incurring a debt or off record as indebting H: S can

redress an FTA by explicitly claiming his indebtedness to H, or by di sclaiming any indebtedness of H Examples:

“I´ll never be able to repay you if ”

“I could easily do this for you- no problem!”

2.3 Weightiness of FTA

It should be noted that neither negative nor positive politeness is thoroughly good

or bad This depends much on culture, social distance between speaker and hearer, the power that hearer wields over speaker

For example, in China, people set high value of harmony in social relationships In England, it is not difficult to recognize that people impose relatively high value on social distance Therefore, negative and off-record strategies are of the most frequently used strategies to express politeness On the contrary, the Greek have

an inclination to value intimacy & solidarity more than distance so positive and bald-on-record politeness strategies achieve a dominant position in showing politeness

Brown and Levinson (1978) also suggest the equation to compute the seriousness (or weightiness) of the FTAs, since that will determine the appropriate type of strategy to be used:

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Wx: weight (seriousness) of FTA x

• D (S, H): social distance between Speaker and

Hearer

• P (H, S): relative power of Hearer over Speaker

• Rx: the degree to which FTA x is ranked in the relevant culture

The greater the value of W, the closer should be the utterance to the strategy

“Don‟t do the FTA” The smaller the value of W, the closer it should be to the strategy “Do the FTA” baldly with no redress action (Tran, 2008)

3 Business complaint letters

3.1 Business letters

The term “business letter” refers to all types of formal written communication starting with a salutation, ending with a signature and whose contents are professional in nature (Wickford, 2011) A business letter is usually used when writing from one company to another, or for correspondence between such organizations and their customers, clients and other external parties It is considered “the principal means” (Nguyen, 2008) to help companies keep in touch with their customers

3.1.1 Essential Qualities of a Good Business Letter

A letter should serve the purpose for which it is written Otherwise, there will be confusion that may cause delay in getting the goods The qualities of a good business letter can be classified as:

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- Inner Qualities (the Content)

- Outer Qualities (the Appearance of the letter: quality, color, size, etc of the paper used)

In the scope of this research, I will only concentrate on the inner qualities of the selected letters:

1 Simplicity: Simple and easy language should be used for writing business

letters Difficult words should be strictly avoided, as one cannot expect the reader

to refer to the dictionary every time while reading letter

2 Clarity: The language should be clear, so that the Receiver will understand the

message immediately, easily and correctly Ambiguous language creates confusion The letter will serve t he purpose if the receiver understands it in the same manner in which it is intended by the sender

3 Accuracy: The statements written in the letter should be accurate to, the best of

the sender‟s knowledge Accuracy demands that t here are no errors in the usage of language - in grammar, spellings, punctuations etc An accurate letter is always appreciated

4 Completeness: A complete letter is one that pro vides all necessary information

to the users For example, while sending an order we should mention the desirable features of the goods, i.e., their quality, shape, co lor, design, quantity, date of delivery, mode of transportation, etc

5 Relevance: The letter should contain only essential information Irrelevant

information should not be mentioned while sending any business correspondence

6 Courtesy: Courtesy wins the heart of the reader In business letters, courtesy

can be shown/ expressed by using words like please, thank you, etc

7 Neatness: A neat letter is always impressive A letter either handwritten or

typed, should be neat and attractive in appearance Overwriting and cuttings should be avoided

3.1.2 Parts of a Business Letter

1 Heading: The heading of a business letter usually contains the name and postal

address of the business, E-mail address, We b-site address, Telephone Number, Fax Number, Trade Mark or logo of the business (if any)

2 Date: The date is normally written on the right hand side corner after the

heading as the day, month and years Some examples are 28th Feb., 2003 or Feb

28, 2003

3 Reference: It indicates letter number and the department from where the letter

is being sent and the year It helps in future reference This reference number is given on the left hand corner after the heading For example, we can write reference number as AB/FADept./2003/27

4 Inside address: This includes the name and full address of the person or the

firm to whom the letter is to be sent This is written on the left hand side of the sheet below the reference number Letters should be addressed to the responsible head e.g., the Secretary, the Principal, the Chairman, the Manager, etc Example:

Subject: Your order No C317/8 dated 12th March 2003

Subject: Enquiry about Samsung television

Subject: Fire Insurance policy

6 Salutation: This is placed below the inside address It is usually followed by a

comma (,) Various forms of salutation are:

Sir/Madam: For official and formal correspondence

Dear Sir/Madam: For addressing an individual

Dear Sirs/Dear Madam: For addressing a firm or company

7 Body of the letter: This comes after salutation This is the main part of the

letter and it contains the actual message of the sender It is divided into three parts (a) Opening part: It is the introductory part of the letter In this part, attention of the reader should be drawn to the previous correspondence, if any For example: with reference to your letter no 326 dated 12th March 2003, I would like to draw your attention towards the new brand of television

(b) Main part: This part usually contains the subject matter of the letter It should

be precise and written in clear words

(c) Concluding Part: It contains a statement of the sender‟s intentions, hopes or expectations concerning the next step to be taken Further, the sender should always look forward to getting a positive response At the end, terms like Thanking you, With regards, With warm regards may be used

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8 Complimentary close: It is merely a polite way of ending a letter It must be in

accordance with the salutation For example:

9 Signature: It is written in ink, immediately below the complimentary close As

far as possible, the signature should be legible The name of the writer should be typed immediately below the signature The designation is gi ven below the typed name Where no letter head is in use, the name of the company too could be included below the designation of the writer

10 Enclosures: This is required when some documents like cheque, draft, bills,

receipts, lists, invoices etc are attached with the letter These enclosures are listed one by one in serial numbers For example:

11 Copy circulation: This is required when copies of the letter are also sent to

persons apart of the addressee It is denoted as C.C For example,

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12 Post script: This is required when the writer wants to add something, which is

not included in the body of the letter It is expressed as P.S For example,

P.S - In our offer, we provide two years warranty

3.1.3 Format of a Business Letter

Tel Name of the firm E-mail:

Fax Postal Address Website:

_ _ Concluding part

_ _

Complementary close

Signature (name) Designation Enclosures

CC-

PS

to compensate for the loss of the speaker Therefore, the speech act complaint involves both expressive function and directive function

In the speech act of complaining, the speaker (S) “expresses displeasure or annoyance” (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993, p.108), and “disappointment or grievance” (Clyne, 1994, p 49), in response to an action that is seen by the speaker as unfavorable It is “an expression of dissatisfaction addressed by an individual A to an individual B concerning behaviors that A feels on the part of B

is unsatisfactory” (Laforest, 2002, p 1596) Clearly, complaining is an intrinsically face-threatening act (FTA) (Murphy & Neu, 1996; Sauer, 2000; Olshtain & Weinbach, 1987) It threatens the hearer‟s positive face because of the speaker‟s damage to his/her self-image, or the speaker‟s accusation and anger on