Abstract
This paper examines the employment of pragmatic empathy as a grand strategy in business letter writing. To account for the realization of pragmatic empathy in business letters, we make a corpus-based manual analysis of four types of business letters. It is found that (1) the choice of deixis is a major concern in most letters: while second person is often used in competitive letters, first or third person frequently appears in other three types of letters; (2) conventionalized indirectness strategy is often used in competitive business letters while mitigation strategy is preferred in conflictive business letters; (3) the employment of different strategies is an adaptation to various empathetic concerns in business letter writing. It is concluded that different types of business letters are characterized by different pragmatic strategies to achieve empathy. This paper, which is an attempt to investigate business letters from the empathy perspective, sheds light on business discourse research in general and business letter writing in particular.
Highlights
As a major communication tool in international business interactions, business letter writing is “a written-language-based social practice of business interaction realized through letter exchanges for the purpose of business promotion” (Zhou, 2007)
This paper examines the employment of pragmatic empathy as a grand strategy in business letter writing
It is found that (1) the choice of deixis is a major concern in most letters: while second person is often used in competitive letters, first or third person frequently appears in other three types of letters; (2) conventionalized indirectness strategy is often used in competitive business letters while mitigation strategy is preferred in conflictive business letters; (3) the employment of different strategies is an adaptation to various empathetic concerns in business letter writing
Summary
As a major communication tool in international business interactions, business letter writing is “a written-language-based social practice of business interaction realized through letter exchanges for the purpose of business promotion” (Zhou, 2007). The “7Cs” principle consists of 7 basic requirements for business letter writing, initiated with the letter “C”, i.e., correctness, conciseness, clarity, concreteness, completeness, courtesy, and consideration The former “5Cs” concentrates on communication efficiency whereas the latter “2Cs” cater for interactional harmony. Liu and Zheng (2015) studies business letter writing based on the face theory, proposing politeness strategies, either positive or negative, in order to establish and maintain sound business relations. PP cannot adequately explain why and how business letter writing is managed, as it involves the face wants of the recipients and the substantial benefits and costs of the recipients Given these factors, the present research attempts to investigate business letter writing from the perspective of pragmatic empathy, exploring how various pragmatic strategies are employed to achieve empathy, and realize the goal of business communication.
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