Politeness Strategies in Pakistani Business English Letters A Study of Opening and Closing Strategies

Abstract

The present study explores the politeness strategies used in Pakistani business letters written in English. It benefits from qualitative and quantitative approach of research. The specialized corpus has been compiled on business correspondence and named ‘Pakistani Business English Letters’ (PBEL). PBEL consists of 1000 Pakistani business English letters collected from government and semi-government institutes e.g. banks, universities, private companies, factories etc in 2011. This study investigates the differences between Pakistani and American ways of using politeness strategies in external parts of business letters e.g. Opening and Closing of the letter. The Brown and Levinson (1987) model of politeness strategies has been adapted according to PBEL instances. The software ANTCONC 3.2.4 has been used as research tool in this study to calculate the frequent politeness strategies used within Pakistani Business English letters. This study is very insightful for teachers and learners regarding the usage of politeness strategies in business communication. It will also lend a helping hand to the textbook writers as it will acquaints them with the differences of using politeness strategies for intra-national and international business communication.

Keywords: cross cultural communication, Pakistani business English letters, external strategies, politeness strategies