Politeness
strategies are of perennial importance to keep the face of the receiver. In
this context, people may try to avoid using 'Face– Threatening act (FTA)
towards others, which in turn make them feel annoyed. FTAs are speech acts that
are infringed on the wants of the receiver. The main reason behind developing
politeness strategies is to minimize the impact of FTAs; hence called '
face-mitigating acts' (FMA's). The aim of this study is to test the use of
politeness strategies in English Business letters, ascertaining the existence
of these strategies in two English Business Letters excerpts used by American
Native and Iraqi Non- Native Speakers of English. Politeness Strategies have
been successfully used to test the existence of these devices in business
communities, at the same time, no further applications are known in this
regards to the date. This article examines the testing procedures for
politeness strategies experiment and presents the results. The results show
that politeness strategies are well- formed in English Business Letters.
Further, the use of more polite style in writing business letters by Iraqi
Non-Native Speakers of English results in more formal style of writing as
compared to those written by American Native Speakers who use less formal style
of writing. On
the basis of the conclusions identified, the current study proposes some pedagogical
recommendations and suggestions for further research.
