The first part of this article identifies several variables from speech act theory
and conversation analysis that might be applied to the study of business com
munication. Recent work on politeness (by R. Lakoff, and Brown and
Levinson) is found to be particularly relevant and useful. The second part of
the article presents an exploratory study that examines several business let
ters in order to see how principles derived from linguistic studies of politeness
might advance the methodology used in business-communication research.
The study indicates that theoretical work on politeness provides useful tools
for analysing written discourse in business environments.
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