Negative Politeness Strategies: Analyzing Negative Letters Used In An EPC Company

This article proposes that negative politeness strategies which have been widely used in business letters written by native English speakers can be effectively adopted for writing negative letters of engineering,procurement and construction(EPC)project.In this study,the author makes a comparative analysis on the difference of applications of negative politeness strategies in the letters written by native speakers and non-native speakers within an EPC company – Shanghai Electric Power Construction Co.,Ltd.(SEPC).The author collected 50 negative letters written by Owners(native English speakers)who had business contacts as first Party with Engineering Department of SEPC and 50 negative letters written by Procurement Department staff(non-native English speakers)in SEPC and examined comparatively the negative politeness strategies with the methods of text and statistical analysis.The results reveal that there are significant statistical differences in the use of 5 negative politeness strategies between the two parties,such as questioning/hedging,giving deference,apologizing,impersonalizing and nominalizing.However,it is also found that both native and non-native English writers would like to adopt 2 negative politeness strategies,including being pessimistic and stating face-threatening act(FTA)as a general rule.This study enlarged the corpora of negative business letters,especially in the niche EPC field.Besides,this study has practical significance for domestic EPC enterprises to expand overseas markets,improve written communications with other foreign companies and establish excellent international image by appropriate application of negative politeness strategies in the negative letters.Moreover,template of negative letter based on these strategies can also be introduced to other Chinese enterprises,making contributions to the development of China’s engineering construction sector under the guidance of the Belt and Road Initiative..