On Mode of Business Contract Negotiation and Politeness Strategie1.doc

On Mode of Business Contract Negotiation and Politeness Strategies摘 要商务谈判本质上是一种运用语言进行经济的活动。它的成功与否依赖于语言的运用。在商务合同谈判中，谈判双方既相互竞争又要相互合作。在保持合作关系的前提下，每一方都会想方设法地去赢取自身的最大利益。然而商务合同谈判中由于双方利益对立的关系，冲突和争端是不可避免的。所以怎样平衡谈判中的竞争和合作，对谈判者来说是非常重要的。这需要通过使用恰当的语言来实现，尤其是使用礼貌语言。许多学者从心理学、经济学的角度对商业谈判所需的技巧作了深入研究，但从语言学的角度来阐释语用策略对商务谈判的影响这方面的研究不多见。 本论文希望通过从词汇、时态、语态和句法方面对商务谈判中礼貌语言和策略进行研究，来对这一领域的研究做出一点贡献。本论文结合了格赖斯的合作原则、利奇的礼貌原则、布朗和莱文森的面子理论这三种理论对商务谈判中的案例进行比较详细全面的研究和探讨。希望该项研究能够给商务谈判者提供一些规则和指导，帮助他们更好地解决谈判中遇到的冲突和争端，并帮助他们运用恰当的礼貌语言和策略去创造一种和谐合作的关系进而推动谈判的顺利进行，最终实现商务合同谈判的高效和双赢。 关键词:商务口语谈判;消极礼貌;积极礼貌;礼貌原则AbstractBusiness contract negotiation is essentially a kind of economic activity through language. Whether it succeeds or not depends on the use of language. In business negotiation, both parties have to cooperate with each other as well as being competitive against each other. Either party will endeavor to, win the most benefits while maintaining cooperation with each other. However, discrepancies and conflicts are inevitable in business negotiation due to the competitive economic interest of both parties. So it seems crucial for negotiators to find the way of balancing competition and cooperation in business negotiation. Undoubtedly, this goalhas to be achieved through the appropriate language, especially the polite language.Numerous books have been published to offer guidelines for business negotiation, but they rarely give attention to linguistic strategies in business negotiation. So this dissertation aims to analyze linguistic realization of politeness in business negotiation with regard to lexicon, tense, voice, mood, and syntax. Grices Cooperative Principle, Leechs Politeness Principle and B & Ls Face Theory serve as underlying principles in our analysis and the description of the case study. Based on these theories, a careful case analysis of linguistic strategies of politeness in business contract negotiation is made.It is hoped that this research will provide some guidelines for business negotiators to settle disputes and conflicts in business contract negotiation, assist them in creating a cooperative relationship with each other through employing proper linguistic strategies of politeness theory and finally improve the efficiency of business contract negotiation and realize the long term win-win negotiation.Key Words: Business Contract negotiation, Negative Politeness, Positive Politeness:Politeness Principle 目 录摘 要 IAbstract IIChapter One Introduction 11.1 Rationale of the study 11.2 Research Methodology 11.3 Data collection 1Chapter Two Literature Review 32.1 The Brief Survey of Business Negotiation 32.1.1 The Definition of Business Negotiation 32.1.2 The Principles of Business Negotiation 32.1.3 The Lan guage in the Context of Business Negotiation 42.2 Studies on the Development of Politeness Theories 42.2.1 Studies abroad 42.2.2 Studies at home 5Chapter Three Theoretical Foundations 83.1 Four Main Views of Politeness Theories 83.2 Grices Cooperative Principle 83.3 Lakoffs Theory of Politenes 83.4 Leechs Politeness Principle 83.5 Brown and Levinsons Face Theory 83.5.1 Concept of Face 83.5.2 Face-threateningActs (FTAs) 83.5.3 Politeness Strategies 83.5.4 Three Independent Variables 8Chapter Four Linguistic Analysis of Politeness Theories in Business Contract Negotiation 94.1 Negative Politeness 94.1.1 Lexical Items Personal Pronoun Hedging Words and Phrases Hesitation Words 94.1.2 Syntax Conditional Clause Interrogative Sentences 94.1.3 Tense and Voice Tense Voice 94.1.4 Summary 94.2 Positive Politeness 94.2.1 Lexical items Hedging words and phrases Transitional Word But 94.2.2 Syntax Hedging Sentences Tag Questions 94.2.3 Voice 94.2.4 Summary 9Chapter Five Results and Discussion 105.1 Research Results 105.2 Politeness in Psychological and Social-cultural Perspectives 105.2.1 Politeness in Psychological Perspective 105.2.2 Politeness in Social-cultural Perspective 10Chapter Six Conclusion 116.1 General Summary 126.2 Possible Theoretical and Practical Significance 136.3 Limitations 136.4 Suggestions for Further Studies 13References 13Appendix 13 Chapter One Introduction1.1 Rationale of the studyWith the emergence of a global economy, China interacts and communicates with the foreign countries more and more frequently. Especially business negotiation becomes more important than ever before. How to conduct a successful negotiation, or how to be an excellent negotiator are the questions concerned by many businessmen. At no time in history has there been so great a need for international negotiation skills.Business negotiation is essentially a kind of ec onomic activity through language. Whether it succeeds depends largely on the use of language. Both parties have to cooperate with each other as well as being competitive against each other. Either party will endeavor to win the most of benefits while maintaining cooperation with the other. As a negotiation expert called Herb Cohen (1983) says, successful negotiation does not mean winning by, defeating the other party, but winning by getting what both parties want. Undoubtedly, this goal has to be achieved through an appropriate language. However, the domestic study of negotiation usually focuses on the strategic dimension of the negotiation process and discussions concentrate on business relationships between the concerned parties, psychological strategies, tactics, bargaining strategies, contingency positions, and so on. Numerous books have been published on this focus. Rarely do they give attention to language itself in business negotiation.Since in a competitive world, cooperation has become the operational rule for the pursuit and defense of interest, effective negotiation through dialogue management provides an important means of goal realization for the negotiators of both sides. To best manage and control dialogues in competitive situations, a linguistic approach to negotiation is at least as effective as other literature on the successful business negotiation.In fact, language is often taken for granted perhaps because it is used every day. Negotiators may have their attention focused on the more material aspects of an issue they are discussing, and neglect the fundamental role language is playing in the be and But representation of these aspects. Yet the effectiveness of negotiating skills can improve with the art of language. Proper phrases of language can be cooperative polite to save the hearers positive/negative face as well as the speakers. Improper linguistic strategies can do nothing but hurt the self-esteem of the hearer or impose restriction upon the addressee, or even break the business negotiation. So successful negotiators will not take language for granted in the difficult and complex world of human interaction.Language for negotiators is by no means a small thing. To use language well always means to be cooperative and polite in your language. Cooperative Principle (hereafter abbreviated as CP) and Politeness Principle (hereafter abbreviated as PP) are widely known principles used to interpret the literal sense and pragmatic force of utterances in pragmatic perspective. There is a trade-off? relationship between them. On the one hand, CP enables one participant in a conversation to communicate on the assumption that the other participant is being cooperative. As a result, CP has the function of regulating what we say and ensuring that it contributes to some assumed illocutionary or discourse goals. On the other hand, PP plays a regulative role, maintaining t he social equilibrium and the friendly relations that enable us to assume that our interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place (Leech, 1983: 82).Recently scholars have just begun to pay attention to the language with politeness strategies in negotiating. Even though no special books or works have been published in this area, some papers and theses have studied business negotiation from the perspective of politeness principles. For example, some scholars used the six maxims of politeness principles proposed by Leech to explore business negotiation. Some other people have applied Brown and Levinsons Face-saving Theory (FST) to the study of business negotiation. And some rules and features of lexicon and sentence patterns have been detected and summarized, such as, pronoun, the impersonal words, modal verbs, interrogative sentence, or if-clause, etc. These rules which are already widely accepted and adopted by negotiators are proved to be effective in settling the disputes and improving efficiency of business negotiation.Up to now few attempts have been, made to apply both Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principles to the study of business negotiation manipulation. The present thesis will be a new attempt in this aspect.1.2 Research MethodologyThis thesis will conduct an analysis of business negotiation data and qualitative description is the main research methodology. The data are collected from many business negotiation materials, from which ten passages are selected and attached in the appendix. The analysis of the research can be divided into two parts. One part adopts Brown and Levinsons Face Theory and analyzes the cases from positive politeness and negative politeness, which is the content of Chapter 4. In the other part Chapter 5, the cases which have little connection with face-threatening acts are analyzed based on Grices Cooperative Principle and Leechs Politeness Principle. The data of these two chapters are observed and analyzed from lexicon, syntax, tense and voice. 1.3 Data collectionFor the reason of confidentiality, business companies are reluctant to disclose their negotiation transcripts. Its hard for me to collect the cases at first hand. So I have to choose the cases from some published materials on the subject of English business negotiation. Chapter Two Literature Review2.1 The Brief Survey of Business Negotiation2.1.1 The Definition of Business NegotiationInternational business negotiation can be traced back to the very beginning of international business transaction dated from the ancient Rome Period. The word “negotiation” comes from the Roman word negotiari which means “to carry on business” and is derived from the Latin words “neg (not)”and “otium (ease or leisure)”.Obviously it was true for most businessmen that negotiations and businesssuccess involves hard work.(Korobkin,2003:15).James Wall thinks that business negotiation is a process through which two or more parties coordinate an exchange of goods or services and attempt to agree upon rate of exchange for them(1985:4); and Ways Max defines it as a process in which two or more parties, who have both common interests and conflicting interests, put forth and discuss explicit proposals concerning specific terms of a possible agreement(1979: 15). What Wall and Ways Max say essentially have no differences. It is a kind of communicative process of economical activity. The primary objective may be an agreement or any other outcome indigenous to or resulting from the ongoing exchange; its core lies in the interplay of two phrases, common interests and conflicting interests.Negotiation parties must have common interests and conflict interests. Common interests mean that they jointly prefer certain outcomes to other possible outcomes. Conflicting interests mean that some of the jointly preferred outcomes are better for one party, whereas others are better for the other party. Unless both are present, in either an overt or a latent way, negotiation makes no sense. Negotiated accords are actually specific and not intended to abolish all the conflicts between the parties. Self-interest and mutual interest increases the aggregate of contracts, some of which are negotiated. A negotiators common interests versus his competing interests exactly create the fundamental tension.2.1.2 The Principles of Business Negotiation Cohen Herbert introduces a theme, which is followed throughout the principles of Business negotiation. Successful negotiation does not mean winning by defeating theother party, but winning by getting what both parties want. Business has long been the main maxim of negotiation. Its principles can be classified as follows,Cooperation In Business negotiation, both parties are working together towards common or convergent goals. They first must agree on the overall goal that they jointly share; simultaneously they establish long-term relationship as business partner. The goal of business strategies is to produce a stable relationship favorable to us with the consent of our competitor. By definition; such restraint by a competitor is cooperation. Such cooperation from a competitor must seem to be profitable to him.Competition Competition is a part of life, welcomed by.,some, regretted by othersbut nonetheless, present. Nowhere is this more unavoidable than in negotiation. Somebargaining, when two parties have differently and mutually exclusive objectives, such as haggling over the pri ce of something, is obvious competitive. Even in cooperative bargaining, when the parties are working toward joint or congruent goals, there may still be substantial conflict about how much each will attribute or how much each will benefit. Hence, conflict, while varying in intensity, is inherent in any negotiation situation and needs to be recognized and handled.Synergy Synergy means looking at what appears to be opposite or paradoxical in leans of its commonalties rather than its differences. It is looking for meaningful relationships between what are often thought of as dichotomous elements of a situation. It is an attempt to break out of either or mentality to look for bridging abstractions, to look for wholes rather than parts. The concept of synergy means looking at outcomes in a nonzero-sum way. Work groups can obtain synergistic results when the process of working heightens sharing and functional competition.Mutual benefit In business negotiation, every side wants to get more profits. For along-term commercial relationship, winning of only once negotiation cannot determine to gain profit forever. The aim of negotiation should be achieved by signing agreement. Even if one side has to do much sacrifice, the whole condition should get to harvest on every side. They gain more or less profit with some extent satisfaction.In brief, business negotiation parties are both cooperative and competitive. Each party endeavors to gain the most shares of benefits in it. Naturally, tension occurs. If the parties somehow communicate more fully, negotiating problems would be more easilyresolved, for communication can reduce the possibility of misunderstanding and improve the relationship in the long run. Appropriate language can create a friendly and favorably harmonious negotiating climate, which is of great significance to the success of business negotiation. In the following part, business negotiation language is touched upon in order to necessitate the use of politeness language.2.1.3 The Language in the Context of Business NegotiationContext generally means the circumstances in which speech communication occurs. Itmay involve speech surroundings, participants, and all the other factors, which somehow govern human speech. As a rule, we often misunderstand the relationship between the context and human speech. It is better to say that human speech should rather adapt itself to the context than be restrained by the context. This adaptability is in the main shown in two respects. Negatively, there occur some misunderstandings from the inappropriate use of human speech, which is not suitable for the situation. Positively, a speaker actuates all the potentialities of language to be adapted to the context, while taking advantage of all theconditions provided by the context.In the context of business negotiation, an experienced negotiator gives full play to thefunctions of language, which serve his goal much better. As is above shown, communication is at the heart of the negotiating process. The better youre able to communicate your point of view, the better your chances of walking away with what youre after. The way you present the things you want to say can make all the differences. This necessitates the skillful use of context, which activates the communicative role of language.According to the specific context, we try to make the language work in order to obtainthe anticipatory effects, choosing the most suitable linguistic form. Moreover, we caneliminate ambiguity in the context, when preciseness is needed; likewise, we can alsoarouse some uncertainty as is needed. Whats more important, we can increase the plasticity and possibility of language, with the help of context as a foil, such as the illocutionary of the language and the psychic workings revealed by the language. These aspects will be dwelled upon in the fourth part. Of course, we can not catalogue all the uses of language in the context. The point is that we let language work as effectively as possible, taking all the advantages of context.Considering that, negotiators should take the contextual factors into consideration. Inthe course of negotiation, negotiators try their best to persuade the other reasonably and energetically, for every little omission may relate to the loss of millions, even billions of benefits. The point of their verbal fighting usually is the key of negotiation. Apart from firming up the nego