Politeness strategies in business letters by native and non-native English speakers

Abstract

While politeness has been the focus of several studies of the speech of non-native speakers of English, the area of politeness in writing has, until now, largely been ignored. For this study, business letters written by a group of native speakers of English were compared to those written by a group of non-native speakers. The results indicate striking differences in the politeness strategies used by each group. Although the non-native speaker data showed an awareness of various types of politeness strategies, the language used to express politeness tended to be less formal and more direct than that of the native speaker group. In addition, the non-native speakers avoided using certain politeness strategies and relied more heavily upon others than did the native speakers. These findings suggest that business writing in English by non-native speakers, even that which is grammatically flawless, may be perceived negatively by the reader because of the inappropriate use of politeness strategies.