The Application of Politeness Principles in International Business Negotiation.doc

毕业论文（设计） The Application of Politeness Principles in International Business Negotiation1.Introduction12. Politeness Principle and the relevant theories32.1 Politeness Principle (PP) and the Maxims of PP32.2 Brown and Levinsons face theory42.3 Politeness Strategie52.4 Cooperative principle83.Language Features of Business Negotiation103. 1 Idiomatic and professionalized terms103. 2 Vague language113. 3 Polemic and persuasive expressions124 Application of Politeness Strategy in Business Negotiation144. 1 The application of tact maxim144. 2 The application of generosity maxim164. 3 The application of euphemistic expressions185. Conclusion20References221.Introduction Since China entered into WTO, the volume of the foreign trade in China has increased greatly. In business, it is mostly through negotiations that the two parties bridge the difference and reach a fair and mutually satisfactory deal. Business negotiation plays a critical role in a transaction, because the buyers and sellers need to negotiate with each other before signing a contract. International business negotiation is a process that at least two or more parties with common and conflicting interests trying to reach an agreement of mutual benefits. Whether it will succeed or not depends largely on the use of negotiation strategy. In the course of business negotiations, the harmonious, friendly and cooperative atmosphere can keep it go on smoothly. Therefore, some appropriate strategies and tactics to ensure the negotiation handing on well become important. As is proved, politeness strategy is the most commonly used one that contributes to a successful business negotiation (Richard et al, 2000:352). Politeness strategy can enhance the mutual trust and understanding among negotiations so as to increase the possibility to negotiations.In this paper, the main body will be divided into three parts. In the first part, the central conceptPoliteness Principle and its maxims, and some relevant theories are introduced; in the second part, the key point is language features of business negotiation, it has three branches which are help comprehend the importance of the verbal strategy in negotiations. In the third part, three maxims of Politeness Principle, accompanying the detailed examples, are used to describe how the Politeness Principle works in negotiation. It is no doubt that the negotiators should take advantage of the effects of the politeness and its verbal tactics. To start with , the author would like to highlight some of the main theories concerning about politeness and its verbal strategies before moving into the application of politeness principle in business negotiation.2. Politeness Principle and the relevant theories2.1 Politeness Principle (PP) and the Maxims of PPBasically, politeness is considered to be considerate for others. Hudson thinks “we usually try to avoid exposing other peoples weakness, or raising heated controversy, unless we are sure that it will not affect the attitude of others towards us or we are indifferent to their opinion” (1985:115). In other words, politeness is important in promoting inter-personal relationship to achieve both individual and group goals. The function of the Politeness Principle (PP) is that speakers should try to express themselves in a polite way, in an indirect way and let the hearers feel their implication. The purpose of doing this is not to hurt others feeling or make them lose face. So if there is the need of politeness, people when talking must observe PP. Geoffrey Leech (1983:56), the famous British linguist, divides the PP into six categories of maxims, each of which consists of two sub maxims. They are as follows:(1) Tact Maxim (in impositive and commissive):a. Minimize cost to otherb. Maximize benefit to other(2) Generosity Maxim (in impositive and commissive):a. Minimize benefit to selfb. Maximize cost to self(3) Approbation Maxim (in expressive and assertive):a. Minimize dispraise of otherb. Maximize praise of other(4) Modesty Maxim (in expressive and assertive):a. Minimize praise of selfb. Maximize dispraise of self(5) Agreement Maxim (in assertive):a. Minimize disagreement between self and otherb. Maximize agreement between self and other(6) Sympathy Maxim (in assertive):a. Minimize antipathy between self and otherb. Maximize sympathy between self and other Leechs PP Maxims can be summed up from two aspects: to minimize (all things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs, and to maximize (all things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs. Each maxim has two sides of a problem: the former is other - oriented and the latter is self - oriented. The six maxims are often used in inter-personal communication. In the following parts in this paper, some of the maxims will be chosen to the analysis of business negotiation.2.2 Brown and Levinsons face theoryThe central concept of Politeness Principle is“face”,which is taken to be important to individuals in both positive and negative aspect . The face theory is developed by Brown & Levinson (1987:61). They propose that everyone has a face want in conversations. Face is“the public self - image that every member wants to claim for himself. It is emotionally invested and that can be lost ,maintained ,or enhanced and must be constantly attended to in interaction”(Brown and Levinson, 1987:61). There are two aspects of the face: Positive Face and Negative Face.A persons positive face indicates the need to be accepted, while a persons negative face refers to the need to be independent, to have freedom of actions, and not to be imposed on by others. Generally speaking, all the parties involved in communications should try their best to save each others face, for the loss of face of one party may result in the loss of the other. Brown and Levinson considered that all the speech acts are face - threatening acts (FTA) (1987:65). Thats to say, a persons speech can be interpreted as a threat to anothers face or his own face.The face - threatening act is always a threat to peoples speech communication. Therefore people must handle it appropriately by using some effective measures and strategies. The polite language is the best pragmatic strategies. It can deal with FTA much better than anything else so that people would be able to communicate successfully, especially in commercial communication. To apply FTA theory properly will benefit a lot in business negotiation.2.3 Politeness StrategieBrown and Levinson outline four main types of politeness strategies: bald on record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record or indirect strategy (1987:67).First, the bald on record strategy do not attempt to minimize the threat to the hearers face. This strategy is most often utilized by speakers who closely know their audience. With the bald on record strategy there is a direct possibility the audience will be shocked or embarrassed by the strategy. For example, the bald on record strategy might be to tell your sister to “do the dishes. Its your turn.” The second strategy is positive politeness and this strategy attempts to minimize the threat to the hearers positive face. This strategy is most commonly used in situations where the audience knows each other fairly well. Quite often hedging and attempts to avoid conflict are used. For example, a positive politeness strategy might be the request “It would be great if you could do the dishes for me.”The third strategy is negative politeness which presumes that the speaker will be imposing on the listener. The potential for awkwardness or embarrassment is greater than in bald on record strategies and positive politeness strategies. Negative face is the desire to remain autonomous. Thus, a request without consideration of the listeners negative face might be uncomfortable: “I need $5” is awkward if five dollars is outside the listeners financial capabilities. But if the speaker, knowing that the listener wants to maintain their autonomy, adds an out for the listener like “I know youve been kind of strapped for cash, but could I borrow $5?”, the listener is more likely to give them that money because the request showed a respect for their ability to maintain autonomy.The final politeness strategy outlined by Brown and Levinson is the indirect strategy; this strategy uses indirect language and removes the speaker from the potential to being imposing. For example, a speaker using the indirect strategy might merely say “wow, its getting cold in here” insinuating that it would be nice if the listener would get up and turn up the thermostat without directly asking the listener to do so.In Brown and Levinsons five politeness strategies mentioned above, positive politeness strategy, negative politeness strategy and off-record politeness strategy should always come first:(1)Positive politeness strategy: It orients to preserving the positive face of other people. Informal pronunciation, shared dialect, slang expressions, nicknames ,more frequent reference to speaker and hearer as we and less indirect requests are the common ways of the positive politeness strategy. (2)Negative politeness strategy: It orients to preserving the negative face of other people. This is more likely if there is a social distance between the speaker and the hearer. Then nicknames, slang and informal pronunciation tend to be avoided and requests tend to be more indirect and impersonal, often involving could you or could I ask you toor even referring to the hearer in the third person. Negative Politeness also involves more frequent use of the expressions like please, possibly, might. I m sorry but etc. (3)Off -record politeness strategy: through which the hearer is not directly addressed. The speaker does not have to ask for anything. He can imply his needs or express his needs equivocally and generally. E.g. 1) My briefcase is heavy. (= Give me a hand. ) “My briefcase is heavy” indicates “I need somebodys help”.2) We have kept working a day! (= We should have a rest.)“We have kept working a day” indicates “I feel tired”, its a sign to the partners that “I want to take a break”.All these theories above can be applicable in business negotiation, and do a lot of benefits to that.2.4 Cooperative principleThe success of a conversation depends upon the various speakers approaches to the interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations is sometimes called the cooperative principle. This principle first suggested by Herbert Paul Grice. “The Cooperative Principle (CP): Make your conversational contribution such as is required，at the stage at which it occurs，by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”(Grice，l 975) We can understand it partly by noting those people who are exceptions to the rule, and are not capable of making the conversation. We may also, sometimes, find it useful deliberately to infringe or disregard it when we receive an unwelcome call from a telephone salesperson, or where we are being interviewed by a police officer on suspicion of some terrible crime.The English language philosopher Paul Grice proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share a cooperative principle. Speakers shape their utterances to be understood by hearers. Grice analyzes the cooperation as involving four underlying rules and maxims. (David Crystal calls them conversational maxims. They are also sometimes named Grices or Grecian maxims.) They are the maxims of quality, quantity, relevance and manner.The Maxim of Quantity: (1) make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange); (2) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. (It is not clear how one can decide what quantity of information satisfies the maxim in a given case.)The Maxim of Quality: (1) do not say what you believe to be false; (2) Do no say that for which you lack adequate evidence.The Maxim of Relation: Be relevant.The Maxim of Manner: (1) avoid obscurity of expression; (2) avoid ambiguity; (3) be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity); (4) be orderly.Of course, Grice does not of course prescribe the use of such maxims. Nor does he suggest that people use them artificially to construct conversations. But they are useful for analyzing and interpreting conversation, and may reveal purposes of which (either as speaker or listener) we were not previously aware. We always particular communicate non-literal meanings by appearing to “violate” or “flout” these maxims. If you were to hear someone described as having “one good eye”, you might well assume the persons other eye was defective, even though nothing had been said about it at all. People have different ideas towards what communication means. In one sense, it is the act of sending and receiving of message. In one sense, it refers to the psychic as well as the verbal understanding that is formed between sender and receiver. Our own needs will be best served if we define communication as the process by which message affect response. (Janis, 1978:22) The communication activities of a business organization fall into two broad categories: internal operational and external operational communications. Effective business communication involves both the sender and the receiver. Cooperative Principle (CP) is very important in business communication. It is easily to find that CP is usually applied in business communication. And the maxim of cooperative principle obviously shows in the business communication. The maxim of quantity requires businessmen to convey neither too much nor too little message. Therefore, the businessmen should not speak too much unimportant message. Too much message will make the receiver feel difficult to catch the main point or sometimes leading misunderstanding. 3.Language Features of Business Negotiation3. 1 Idiomatic and professionalized termsThere are a set of language rules accepted through common practice in business negotiation, such as how to greet each other, how to make a wish ,how to accept or refuse an invitation ,how to bargain or compromise ,etc.For example:(1)“Hoping to have another cooperation with you later on in some other field. ”It shows that the two parties have not reached an agreement on the negotiating issues, in other words, the trade is failed.(2)“I would make a report to my superior to insure some details of our contracts and the final prices.”It indicates that the negotiation undertakes a vital stage and more time is needed for that party to make a further consideration, in other words, the trade is most likely to succeed.Negotiators also tend to utilize the professional terms to make their words more understandable and acceptable. Generally speaking, different terms or expressions are used in different situations. (3)“In case no settlement can be reached ,all the dispute shall be submitted for arbitration.”This is a typical expression in contracts. To sum up, idiomatic and professionalized terms are not only the basic features of business negotiation, but they are also the necessary parts.3. 2 Vague languageIn order to avoid misunderstanding and inconvenience, language in business negotiation, whether it is in the oral form or written form of conversation, should be clear and accurate. But sometimes speakers cannot express their ideas clearly, or they would not like to say it clearly for some particular purposes, in which cases they prefer to put vague language to rational use. e.g. (1) We will do all we can to make the goods reach you in time.(2)We have always insisted on the principle of “equality and mutual benefit and exchange of needed goods”,but we have adopted much more flexible method in our dealings nowadays.In the above sentences , such phrases as“do all we can to ”,“much more flexible method”are all general expressions ,which pass the vague information to the listener. It is very important to maintain a harmonious atmosphere and avoid making tense situation in the course of business negotiation. However, conflicts are inevitable. When a face-to-face conflict occurs, in order to save each others faces, negotiators need to use vague expressions; otherwise, the negotiation may reach an impasse.3. 3 Polemic and persuasive expressionsDuring negotiation, negotiators try their best to persuade the other and every omission may result in the loss of millions, or even billions of benefits. Its natural and easy for them to run into conflict. Their language seems to be polemic and persuasive. Take a look at the following dialogues, in which C represents the Chinese negotiator, while F represents the foreign negotiator. They are talking about the claimant.(1) C: Talking about the repair work hour, they can be grouped into two categories: 110 pieces of front- back jacks as the first category, while other repairs as the second. Mr. Smith from your company knew clearly about the repairing hours for each piece because he himself came to my company and participated in the repairing work. Mr. Smith also has signed a Memorandum. So here leaves no room for consultation.F: As a workman from my company to give guidance in the repairing work in your company, Mr. Smith has no right to determine the reparation compensation.C: The repair of each front - back jack cost 67 hours. Isnt that a fact?F: Mr. Smith has no such right to decide!C: It has nothing to do with Mr. Smiths right here. Whether he himself has the right or not is quite another thing. The key point is whether it is a fact that Mr. Smith himself has confirmed the repairing hours on the spot?F : The fact is a fact ,but the C: The fact is a fact, but the fact cannot be accepted. You see, it has become a tongue twis