Negative Politeness Strategies in Business Correspondence

Abstract

This bachelor thesis deals with the usage of negative politeness strategies in business correspondence. The aim of the paper is to investigate the linguistic usage, its context and function. The paper is divided into a theoretical section, purpose of which is to investigate Brown and Levinson's pragma-linguistic concept of politeness and discuss the most common linguistic devices of negative politeness, their use and function. The analytical part consequently examines the linguistic features occurred in the provided sample of business correspondence.