NGÔN NGỮ SỬ DỤNG TRONG THƯ PHẢN HỒI KINH DOANH TRÊN PHƯƠNG DIỆN HÀNH VI LỜI NÓI VÀ CÁC CHIẾN LƯỢC LỊCH SỰ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION
GRADUATION PAPER

language used in
business response letters in terms of
speech acts and politeness strategies
SUPERVISOR : ASSOC.PROF. NGUYEN XUAN THOM
STUDENT : NGUYEN THI MINH TRANG
YEAR OF ENROLMENT : QH 2010
HANOI – 2014
ĐạI HọC QUốC GIA Hà NộI
TRƯờNG ĐạI HọC NGOạI NGữ
KHOA TIếNG ANH SƯ PHạM
KHểA LUN TT NGHIP

NGÔN NGữ Sử DụNG TRONG THƯ PHảN HồI
KINH DOANH TRÊN PHƯƠNG DIệN HàNH VI LờI
NóI Và CáC CHIếN LƯợC LịCH Sự
GIáO VIÊN HƯớNG DẫN : PGS.TS NGUYễN XUÂN THƠM
SINH VIÊN : NGUYễN THị MINH TRANG
KHóA : QH 2010
Hà NộI 2014
ACCEPTANCE PAGE
I hereby state that I: Nguyen Thi Minh Trang – QH2010.F.1.E.1 , being a
candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (TEFL) accept the requirements of
the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper
deposited in the library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in
the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in

accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care,
loan or reproduction of the paper.
Signature
Date
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The researcher wish to show the gratefulness to all people who have encouraged
and assisted me during the time this study was conducted.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thom, my supervisor, for his great support. His valuable
suggestions, insightful discussions and encouragements help me overcome
difficulties and confusion in the development and completion of this study.
Second, I am thankful to my beloved family for being by my sides and
encourage me. Owing to their support and sympathy, I became more confident of
myself and had the motivation to complete this research successfully.
Last but not least, I wish to show my special thanks to my friends who have
helped me to collect data and to access literature documents. Especially, I also
would like to thank my close friend, Nguyen Tien Duc for his priceless support in
the process of gathering the data. Without all their cooperation, this research can
never be completed.
ii
ABSTRACT
The principle objectives of this research are to figure out the types of speech
acts and politeness strategies used as well as their frequency in business response
letters. From that, the effects of the speech acts and politeness strategies in
conveying the Writers’ messages are analyzed.
The research method involved observation of document. 50 business response
letters were collected base on three criteria which are form, language and length.
The data analysis showed that there are four types of speech acts used in those
letters which were representatives, directives, expressives and commissives.
Among these types, representative speech act is used the most frequently. In

additions, positive and negative politeness strategies are applied in all collected
data. Between two types of strategies, the frequency of negative ones overwhemed.
Although the research was conducted seriously and carefully, limitations were
inevitable. Since the limitation of data sources, the researcher could not enlarge the
scale. Due to the small number of samples, generalization was far from being
achieved. Besides, the number of native and non-native English writers was not big
enough to make any comparision between speech acts or politeness strategies used
by two groups. Therefore, the researcher would like to call for further research on a
larger scale and to consider the differences in two groups of writer.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 2
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 2
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15
REFERENCES 41
iv
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
FTAs : Face Threatening Acts
vi
vii
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Statement of research problem and rationale for the study
It is clear that letters have been a crucial communication channel for human
being to exchange information since writing letter was invented. Nowadays, with
the rapid development of technology, fax and email have gradually replaced
handwritten letters. However, in whatever forms, language is the key to make a

successful letter. It reflects the language competence and the attitude of both the
writer and his company (Ashley, 2003).
Besides, business correspondence is considered the medium to connect sellers
and buyers, business partners, creditors and debtors in case it is unable or
inconvenient for them to have direct meetings. In these kinds of correspondence,
whether they are letters, faxes or emails, appropriate language used helps to express
the aims of the writers in the most professional way. This means, besides the
information of introducing, promoting or concluding transactions, language in
business letters conveys the good will of the writer as well as his respect to the
readers. It decides the success or failure of transaction in business community.
Furthermore, English is widely used as an international language. Thus, a large
number of business correspondences have been written in English. Among those
letters, response letters account for a big proportion. This type of letters plays an
important role in connecting the providers and the consumers. If enquiries letters
serve the purpose of exploring the information related to goods or services, letters
for responding do not only reply to the enquiries but also provide a wide range of
information about goods and services, prices, transport, etc in order to sell the
products. In many cases, the providers may suggest alternatives or refer the
customers to another place if they no longer produce the products. In all cases, the
writers are expected to be wise writers so that their words convey “crystal clear”
(Forbes, 1981) and impressive messages to persuade the readers and also to create
the formality. In other words, producing speech acts maintaining politeness and
protecting the face of both readers and writers are the crucial criteria of a response
letter. In order to achieve these goals, the writers can use various politeness
1
strategies such as positive or negative strategies suggested by Brown and Levinson
(1978), politeness rules by Lakoff (1973) or politeness principles by Leech (1983).
Therefore, the aforementioned reasons leave a place for the researcher to carry out
a research paper entitled “Language used in business response letters in terms of
speech acts and politeness strategies”

2. Aims and objectives of the study
This study aims at figuring out the types of speech acts as well as the politeness
strategies used in letters for responding. Then, the effects of those strategies on
expressing the listed speech acts are also analysed. To be more particular, it
answers the two questions:
1. What are the types of speech acts used in studied response letters?
2. What are politeness strategies used in studied response letters?
3. Significance of the study
As this primary study is finished, it is believed to bring an overview of language
used in response letter in terms of speech acts and politeness strategies.
Accordingly, people who are interested in the field, especially ones who have to
write letters for responding everyday can take this study an effective reference
source. Furthermore, findings of the study are expected to contribute to related
literature as reliable content.
4. Scope of the study
Within the framework of this paper, the research focuses on speech acts and
politeness strategies used in 50 letters of replying to enquiries. It also investigates
how often these speech acts and politeness strategies used as well as the impact of
those on each other.
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides a review on related literature including the notion and
classification of speech acts and politeness strategies, tone in writing and business
response letter. Also, it explains how the researcher fulfills some related studies.
- Speech act
1. The concept of speech act
2
The term “speech act” is believed to be first mentioned by J.L Austin, a British
philosopher of languages in his series of lectures at Harvard University in 1955.
Those lectures were edited and published posthumously by Oxford University

Press as a book entitled How to Do Things with Words (1962). Later on, one of his
fellows, J.S Searle developed his own ideas on the field based on Austin’s though.
Searle’s arguments were discussed deeply in his work Speech Acts (1969).
Generally speaking, both philosophers agreed that there existed other meanings or
actions via utterances themselves.
- Speech act as perceived by Austin
Through his lectures, Austin presented a way of analyzing meaning by
describing the linguistic elements with the social situations to understand what
genuine intention of the speaker was. He argued that when people produced
utterances, they often performed actions via those utterances. For example, when
someone says “It is hot in here”, he does not only describe the fact but he may want
others to open the door or to turn on the fan.
Austin paid much attention in “speech situation as a whole” (Austin, 1962,
p.137) as it was believed an important factor correlated with the meaning of an
utterance. Also, by means of associated linguistic conventions, the speaker, with an
associated intention, actually performs an act to the hearer, which induces a certain
response from the hearer. Like in the above example, the hearer may open the door
to cool down the room.
Austin divided speech acts into three types which were locutionary acts,
illocutionary acts and perlocutionary acts. These types will be discussed further in
the next part.
- Speech act as perceived by Searle
Like Austin, Searle believed the meaning could not be accounted without the
existence of the context of a speech act. In Searle, sentences themselves do not
express a proposition. Instead, tokens or sentences in a context, express
propositions. However, Searle focused more on explaining the illocutionary force.
In his work (Searle, 1969), Searle responded to Austin’s call for a general theory of
speech acts by providing three dimensions of an utterance which were rules,
proposition and meaning. Searle goes further than Austin in providing not only the
3

needed general framework for a theory of speech acts but also a richer specification
of the detailed structures of speech acts themselves.
First, Searle argued that language was a rule-governed activity by
distinguishing between regulative and constitutive rules.
- Regulative Rules: these regulate pre-existing activity whose existence is
independent of the rules. For example, different cultures have theirs own rules of
polite table behavior regulate eating, but eating itself exists independently of these
rules.
- Constitutive Rules: these constitute an activity the existence of which is
logically dependent on the rules. Considering the signaling to turn left, this is a
product of those constitutive rules which bring it about that behaving inside moving
vehicles in certain pre-determined ways and in certain pre-determined contexts
counts as signaling to turn left. According to Searle (1969), speech acts are acts
characteristically performed by uttering expressions in accordance with certain
constitutive rules.
Second, concerning proposition, Searle believed that the semantics of natural
language should revolve around propositions and force. In a sentence, the
proposition and the force indicator were under the grammar of the sentence. Force
could be indicated by word order, stress, intonation, punctuation, etc. For example,
the following utterances "Will John leave the room?" "John will leave the room.",
"John, leave the room!" and "Would that John left the room." would have the same
propositional content which is “John leaves the room”. Yet, the order of words and
the tone of sayings may result in various meanings.
Third, in Speech Acts (1969), Searle discussed Grice’s account of meaning. He
accepted Grice’s idea on the intention of the speakers in an utterance but added the
matter of convention in that meaning. Accordingly, a speaker, in performing an
illocutionary act, intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer
to recognize his intention to produce that effect. Further, if the words are used
literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the conventional
connection between the sentence and that effect.

In short, in Searle’s ideas, he discussed speech acts in three main aspects
including the rules governing speech acts the various meanings of a proposition
4
regarding different elements such as words order and tones; and the relationship
between convention meaning and its effects. Searle tended to analyze more detailed
than presenting general theory like Austin did.
2. Classification of speech act
2.1. Austin’s classification
In the latter part of the William James Lectures, Austin introduced the concept
of illocutionary acts, and carefully distinguishes them from locutionary acts and
perlocutionary acts. According to his classification (Austin, 1962, pp.94-95),
locutionary acts are the sayings of something which are meaningful and
understandable by producing utterances with particular forms and determinate
meaning base on the rules of the given languages. Locutionary acts include
phonetic acts, phatic acts, and rhetic acts. Phonetic acts are acts of pronouncing
sounds, phatic acts are acts of uttering words or sentences in accordance with the
phonological and syntactic rules of the language to which they belong, and rhetic
acts are acts of uttering a sentence with sense and more or less definite reference.
Perlocutionary acts are, on the other hand, acts attributed to the effect of uttering a
sentence. Austin said that in uttering a sentence the speaker performed an
illocutionary act of having a certain force, which is different from the locutionary
act of uttering the sentence, which is to have a meaning, and also from the
perlocutionary act performed by uttering the sentence, which is to achieve certain
effects. By these distinctions, Austin has shown that, unlike locutionary acts,
illocutionary acts have a force. Unlike perlocutionary acts, illocutionary acts are
valid and complete without being reduced to the effect of it. In other words, an
illocutionary act is using a sentence to perform a function. Austin classifies
illocutionary acts into five types.
- Verdictives: “are typified by the giving of a verdict, as the name implies, by
a jury, arbitrator, or umpire” (Austin, 1962, p. 150) such as acquit, grade, estimate

or dignose.
- Exercitives : which “are exercising of powers, rights, or influence” (Austin,
1962, p. 150) such as appoint, order, advise, and warn.
- Commissives: which commit the speaker to do something, but also include
declarations or announcements of intention such as promise, guarantee, bet and
oppose. (Austin, 1962, pp. 150-151)
5
- Behabitives: “a miscellaneous group” concerned with attitudes and social
behavior such as apologies, criticizes, bless and challenge (Austin, 1962, p. 151).
- Expositives: which clarify how utterances fit into ongoing discourse, or how
they are being used such as to argue, postulate, affirm or concede.
Although it is often argued that Austin’s classification is not complete and
those coined categories are not mutually exclusive, Austin’s classification is best
seen as an attempt to give a general picture of illocutionary acts: what types of
illocutionary act one can generally perform in uttering a sentence. One can exercise
judgment (Verdictive), exert influence or exercise power (Exercitive), assume
obligation or declare intention (Commissive), adopt attitude, or express feeling
(Behabitive), and clarify reasons, argument, or communication (Expositive).
2.2. Searle’s ideas
The speech act theorists after Austin have focused more on explaining
illocutionary acts in a narrow sense. For instance, John Searle inherited Austin’s
ideas and elaborated on some of them in his paper (1969). Besides, he also
developed the theory in his own style such as performing an illocutionary act is
expressing an illocutionary intention (Searle, 1979). Searle’s notion of the speech
act theory was developed along this line. Then, in their works, Searle (1983) and
Searle and Vanderveken (1985) attempted to explain illocutionary force in a formal
model which was compatible with the formal analysis of propositional contents.
In A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts (1975), Searle analysed weaknesses of
Austin’s classification which were confusion between verbs and acts; not all the
verbs are illocutionary verbs; overlapping among the categories and within one

category; and unclear principles to classify speech acts.
Accordingly, Searle suggested an “alternative taxonomy” (p. 354) including five
types of speech acts which are:
- Representatives: a speech act which describes states or events in the world,
such as an assertion, a claim, a report.
Example 1: This is a German car.
- Directives: a speech act that has the function of getting the listener to do
something, such as a suggestion, a request, or a command.
Example 2: Please, sit down.
- Commissives: a speech act that commits the speaker to doing something in
the future, such as a promise, or a threat.
Example 3: If you don’t stop fighting, I’ll call the police.
6
- Expressives: a speech act in which the speaker expresses feeling and
attitudes about something, such as an apology, a complaint, to thank someone, to
congratulate someone.
Example 4: The meal was delicious.
- Declarartives: a speech act which changes the state of affair in the world.
Example 5: I now pronounce you are man and wife.
Searle’s way of classification is clear and logic. Each category has its own
principle and does not overlap each other.
3. Direct and Indirect speech acts
In his book, Yule (1996) introduced a different approach to speech acts types
made on the basis of structure. He argued that in English there were three basic
structural forms going with three communicative functions (as shown in Table 1)
Table 2.1: Types of speech acts base on structure (Yule, 1996, p.54)
Structural forms Communicative functions Example
Declarative Statement You wear a seat belt.
Interrogative Question Do you wear a seat belt?
Imperative Command/Request Wear a seat belt!

He pointed out that “whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure
and a function, we have a direct speech act” and we would have indirect speech
act when “there is an indirect relationship between a structure and a function”. For
example, if a person says a statement “It is hot outside” in order to inform the
listener about the weather, this is a direct speech act. However, if he says so to
request the listener to turn on the air conditional instead, it is an indirect speech. As
people can use various ways to express their wants, indirect speech acts are
generally associated with greater politeness in English than direct speech acts
(Yule, 1996, p.56).
- Politeness
1. The concept of politeness
People may have different ways of defining the term “politeness”. Some people
feel appropriate behaviors in certain circumstances mean politeness. Some other
value more on cultivated men or women (Richard, 2003). According to some
traditional researchers such as Lakoff (1973&1977), Brown and Levinson
(1978&1987) and Leech (1983), politeness belongs to the linguistic pragmatics
7
area and bases on some particular rules. In some later research, researchers like
Eelen (2001), Mills (2003) have analyzed more on the nature of politeness
concerning some affected factors besides linguistic devices or strategies. Those
factors can be situations, genders, etc.
1.1. Lakoff’s theory
Lakoff is widely considered the first to discuss politeness matter. She regarded
politeness as “a system of interpersonal relations” aiming at minimizing possible
misunderstanding leading to conflict or confrontation in communication (Lakoff,
1973).
In her work (1977), she developed three rules of politeness. The first is
formality which means “do not impose” and keeps appropriate distance from the
listeners. The second is “hesitancy” or giving the audience his options and giving

him chance to response. “Equality” is the third rule in which the speaker considers
the listener equal to him and tries to make the listener feel good. In Lakoff’s idea,
to avoid conflict, interactants need to be clear and polite while communicating.
1.2. Leech’s theory
If Lakoff focused on pragmatic competence, Leech approached politeness in a
linguistic way. He introduced semantic and general pragmatic in his own
explanation. Accordingly, semantic is rule-governed or grammatical and general
pragmatic is principle control or rhetorical which was conceptualized as “the
general condition of the communicative use of language” (Leech, 1983, pp.5-10).
In addition to general pragmatics, Leech established two pragmatic systems which
were pragmalinguistics and sociopragmatics. Pragmalinguistics includes the
speakers’ intentions and illocutionary acts. This system accounts for the more
linguistics application of politeness. Alternatively, sociopragmatics refers to how
the speaker wants to be perceived socially. It studied “the more specific local
condition in language use”. Leech also introduced two rhetorics for conversation
including textual and interpersonal rhetoric. Interpersonal rhetoric addresses
politeness and has three principles:
a. The Politeness Principle: regards to the relationship between the speaker and
the audience. While communicating, they need to build and remain the relation
8
within a group. This principle help to make sure that the participants contribute to
the conversation constructively and acceptably.
b. The Irony Principle: shows how the speaker can be perceived as being polite
whatever his original intention is.
c. The cooperative Principle ( i.e Grice’s Conversational Principle): This
principle concerns the attempt to maximize or minimize the cost and benefit
elements of the interaction and is divided into seven maxims (Rosidi, 2011)
The
cooperative
Principle

Tact Maxim
Approbation/
Praise Maxim
Generosity
Maxim
Consideration
Maxim
Sympathy
Maxim
The
Agreement
Maxim
Modesty
Maxim
Minimize costs to speaker.
Maximize benefits to audience.
Maximize benefits for others.
Minimize benefits for self.
Minimize dispraise of audience.
Maximize praise/approval of audience
Minimize antipathy.
Maximize sympathy.
Minimize disagreement.
Maximize agreement.
Minimize praise of self.
Maximize dispraise of self.
Minimize the hearer’s discomfort.
Maximize the hearer’s comfort.
Figure 2.1: The cooperative Principle
9

In order to determine how the maxims should be applied, Leech’s theory of
politeness developed five scales:
Table 2.2: Leech’s Politeness scales
The Cost Benefit Scale Weighs the costs and benefits that an act will have on
the speaker and the audience.
Optionality Scale Weighs how much choice the goals of the speaker
allow the audience.
Indirectness Scale Weighs how hard the audience must work to
understand the speaker.
Authority Scale Weighs the right for the speaker to impose their ideas
onto the audience.
Social Distance Scale weighs the degree of familiarity between the speaker
and audience
According to Leech (1983), different degrees of politeness will be created
depending on different situations. The following are the four major ones.
1.3. Brown and Levinson’s theory
Expanding upon Lakoff’s rules and adapting Goffman’s analyses (1967),
Brown and Levinson (1978) developed a theory of politeness based on the notion
Politeness
Situations
Convivial
Competitive
Conflictive
Collaborative
Speech goal does not
equal social goal.
Speech goal equals
social goal.
Maximize
praise/approval of

audience
Speech goal is
indifferent to social
goal.
Negative Politeness:
Minimize impoliteness
of impolite situation.
Positive Politeness:
Maximize politeness
of polite situation.
goal.
Speech goal conflicts
social goal.
Figure 2.2: Leech’s Politeness Situations
10
of “face”. Accordingly, Negative Face (desire to express one’s ideas without
resistance) and Positive Face (desire to have one’s contributions approved of) are
two basic desires in the process of exchanging information. In their work, Brown
and Levinson (1987) emphasized politeness as strategies employed by a speaker to
obtain a variety of objectives such as promoting or maintaining harmonious
relations. According to their formulation, polite speech is the use of verbal
strategies that take the addressee’s feelings into account by showing respect for his
or her ‘face’ (Brown&Levinson, 1987, p.61). Compared to the presentation of
Lakoff’s politeness rules, the approach of Brown and Levinson is close to a
fundamental notion of human being which is “face saving”. This helps to explain
the desires of people in communication even across cultures.
Brown and Levinson (1987) theorized that because of vulnerability, it is very
important to maintain face of both the speaker and the hearer during a conversation.
Interlocutors must be able to “save face” when they are confronted with a “face-
threatening act” (FTA), which threatens the faces of the addressees. (Fraser, 1990)

outlined the four potential face-threatening acts, proposed by Brown and Levinson,
as follows.
2. Politeness strategies
Brown & Levinson (1987) held the view that nearly all speech acts were FTAs.
Some threaten the hearer’s negative face by imposing on him. Other FTAs threaten
the hearer’s positive face by indicating the speaker’s lack of concern for the
hearer’s self-image. Thus, in order to avoid FTAs or minimize the threat of these
acts, people use various ways which are called politeness strategies. According to
the face-threatening degree of speech acts, speakers can choose to do or do not do
Face Threatening
Acts (FTAs)
Threat to speaker’s
POSITIVE face
(apologizing,
accepting
compliments and
confessing)
)
Threat to speaker’s
NEGATIVE face
(accepting offer,
accepting thanks,
promising
unwillingly)
)
Threat to audience’s
POSITIVE face
(complaining,
criticizing,
disagreeing, raising

taboo topics)
)
Threat to audience’s
NEGATIVE face
(ordering, advising,
threatening, warning)
Figure 2.3: Face Threatening Acts
11
the FTAs in which the risk of face lost will be increased or decreased as the
following figure (Brown&Levinson, 1987, p.60).
Figure2.4: Circumstances determining choice of strategies
From the figure, Brown and Levinson suggested that the more an act
threatened speaker’s or hearer’s face, the more the speaker would want to choose a
high-numbered strategy. Considering how a student acts if he wants to use a pen
and he sees a cup on pens on his teacher’s desk.
There are five options for him to say:
Option 1: Applying Bald On-Record strategy with no effort to minimize threats
to the teachers' "face".
Say: "Ooh, I want to use one of those!"
Option 2: Applying Positive Politeness strategy. In this situation he recognizes
that the teacher has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is
friendly and expresses group reciprocity.
Say: "Is it O.K. if I use one of those pens?"
Option 3: Applying Negative Politeness strategy, which is similar to the
Positive Politeness in that he notices that his teacher wants to be respected
however, he also assumes to be in a way imposing the teacher.
Say: "I'm sorry to bother you but, I just wanted to ask you if I could use one
of those pens?"
Besides, some other examples would be to say, "I don't want to bother you but"
or "I was wondering if."

Estimation of risk of face lost
Do the FTA
5. Don’t do the FTA
On record
4. Off record
1. without redressive action, baldly
with redressive action
2. positive politeness
3. negative politeness
Lesser
Greater
12
Option 4: He can apply Off-Record indirect strategies. The student tries to
avoid directly imposing by asking for a pen. Instead, he hopes that the teacher
would realize and offer him one.
Indirectly say” "Hmm, I sure could use a blue pen right now."
Option 5: Don’t do the FTA.
If the risk of face lost is too high, the student may choose not to say anything.
3. Tone
According to Ober (2009, p.54), tone in business writing refers to the writer’s
attitude toward the reader and the subject of the message.
Business writers should consider the tone of their messages, whether they are
writing a memo, letter, report, or any type of business documents. Tone is present
in all communication activities. Ultimately, the tone of a message is a reflection of
the writer and it does affect how the reader will perceive the message (Driscoll,
2010). Thus, setting an appropriate overall tone is necessary to convey the true
meaning of the message. It can bring three benefits. First, appropriate tone sets
suitable distance between the writer and the reader. It is suggested that too casual
tone may causes offense, especially in business transaction. Yet, too formal tone
with teammates could appear unfriendly. Second, the right tone can help create

positive influence to the reader’s attitude. By this, the reader will have desired
response to the message. Third, by using the right tone with carefully choosing
words, the message is conveyed more accurately which connects the interactants
In most business messages, the writers try to be confident, courteous, and
sincere; that uses emphasis and subordination appropriately; that contains
nondiscriminatory language; that stresses the "you" attitude; and that is written at
an appropriate level of difficulty" (Ober, 2009, p.88).
- Business response letter
The term “business letter” refers to all types of formal written communication
starting with a salutation, ending with a signature and whose contents are
professional in nature (Wickford, 2011). A business letter is usually used when
writing from one company to another, or for correspondence between such
organizations and their customers, clients and other external parties. It is considered
13
“the principal means” (Nguyen, 2008) to help companies keep in touch with their
customers.
There are various types of business letters such as sales, orders, complaint,
enquiries and replies. Each of them has its own functions, among those, replies or
response letters play an important role in maintaining and developing the business
of a firm. If an inquiry indicates interest of potential customers in the company, the
inquiry reply should be designed not only to increase that interest, but also to
inspire the inquirer to action (Nguyen, 2008).
Therefore, the language used in response letters is essential to create the success
of them. The writers need to take the correspondents’ feeling into account by
expressing politeness.
- Related studies
There has been a number of research in the world conducted on speech acts and
politeness, especially politeness strategies in business letters. Among those, there
are some notable ones such as the followings.
In 2000, Nickerson, in the work named “The use of politeness strategies in

business letter written by native speakers of English” investigated 82 business
letters written by British people to figure out the most common politeness
strategies. However, she did not distinguish different types of business letters, so
the readers could not see the differences of strategies used.
In 2010, Jansen took a closer look at positive politeness strategies in business
letters. He figured out to what extent politeness strategies were perceived and
evaluated as contributions to the quality of communication. In this paper, the author
has discussed the effects of adding and combining positive politeness strategies to
letters denying claims to policy holders. Yet, the research was carried out in a broad
sense of business letters.
Analyzing politeness strategies in competitive business letters, Fang (2012)
helped the readers understand various strategies used in collected letters.
Nevertheless, he did not calculate the frequency use of those strategies to evaluate
their effectiveness.
In Vietnam, there is a limited number of research concerning this problem. An
outstanding study can be “Analysis language often used in Banking Business letters
in terms of structure and speech acts ” written by Master Ngo (1997). In this paper,
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he looked at language used in banking business letters in general and focused on
structure and speech acts but not yet politeness strategies in particular. Besides,
there are also some theses concerning the way to convey messages in business
correspondence like Nguyen (2007). Yet, there has been no study on response
letters.
The limitations of the above research leave a chance to the researcher to
conduct this study to bring deeper and more detailed analyses on response letters in
terms of speech acts and politeness strategies.
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the process of conducting the thesis in terms of data
collection instruments and procedure as well as the data analysis method.
1. Selection of subject

50 letters of responding are selected from Oxford handbook of commercial
correspondence (Ashley, 2003), The language of business correspoindence in
English (Nguyen, 2008) and some reliable websites. The chosen letters have the
correct form of a letter, formal language and appropriate length (at least 90 words).
The letters were numbered from 1 to 50.
2. Data collection instruments
Document observation is chosen to be the instrument to collect data for this
paper. As the data for this paper is from 50 letters, this instrument is the most
suitable. It is not only time-saving but also highly effective. Documents are not too
difficult to collect from books and the Internet. Besides, document observation
requires no “compromising anonymity” so the participants can be described in
detailed (Joseph, 2006). As a result, it is easily to the researcher if she wants to
enlarge the number of participants.
3. Data collection procedure
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The researcher followed three steps in collecting data as below:
Figure 2.5: Data collecting procedure
4. Data analysis method
The author uses two analysis methods which are content analysis and statistical
analysis. First, content analysis method is used in the process of reading the
collected letters and categorizing language used into different types of speech acts
and politeness strategies. Then, the author figures out the frequency distribution of
these types by statistical analysis method applying the following formula:
A = ×100%
A: Frequency distribution of a speech act/
politeness strategy
X: The number of sentences used the speech acts/
politeness strategies
Y: The total number of sentences used speech
acts/politeness strategies

Finally, the findings were summarized and conclusions are drawn by the
researcher.
Step 2:
Speech acts and
politeness strategies
used in those letters
are classified.
Step 3:
The effectiveness of
politeness strategies
and speech acts to
serve the purposes of
the letters is
analyzed.
Step 1:
50 letters for responding are
collected from the Internet and
the book “Oxford handbook of
commercial correspondence
(Ashley, 2003)”, The language
of business correspondence in
English ( Nguyen, 2008)
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