委婉语在商务谈判中运用的研究

xxx师范学院本科生毕业论文A Study on the Applications of Euphemisms in Business Negotiations委婉语在商务谈判中运用的研究院 系外国语学院专 业英语（应用英语方向）学 生 班 级xx级xxx班姓 名xx学 号xxxxx指导教师单位外国语学院指导教师姓名xxx指导教师职称xxxxA Study on the Applications of Euphemisms in Business NegotiationsAuthor: xxx Class:xxx-xxx, Major: English (Applied English)Supervisor: xxxxAbstractThis thesis mainly analyzes the applications of euphemisms in business negotiations and their effects on the bases of Brown and Levinsons Face Theory and Leechs Politeness Principle. The author puts forward Remedial Strategy (Using euphemisms properly) to help the negotiators improve the probability of successful business negotiations. The main aim of this thesis is to show the importance of how to use euphemisms properly in business negotiations through researching the factors influencing the business negotiations. The author analyzes the application forms of euphemisms in business negotiations and illustrates the effects they bring. It uses the methods of data analysis, comparison, literature research and descriptive research and so on. Besides, the thesis points out the problems, which should be concerned in using the euphemisms according to the effects that the euphemisms bring to the business negotiations.Key words: euphemisms, business negotiations, applications, effects委婉语在商务谈判中运用的研究作者：xxx 班级：xxx级xxx班 专业：英语（应用英语方向）指导老师：xxx摘要本论文主要是在Brown和Levinson的“面子论”和Leech的礼貌原则的基础上分析委婉语在商务谈判中的运用以及其影响。作者提出补救策略（正确使用委婉语）来帮助谈判人员提高商务谈判的成功率。本论文的主要目的是通过研究如何正确使用委婉这个影响商务谈判的因素来说明在商务谈判中使用委婉语的重要性。作者分析了委婉语在商务谈判中的运用方式，且说明了运用它们带来的影响。本论文运用了资料分析法、对比法、文献研究法、描述性研究法等方法。此外，本论文根据在商务谈判中委婉语带来的影响指出了在使用委婉语时应该注意的问题。关键词：委婉语，商务谈判，运用，影响Contents1. Introduction 12. Literature Review22.1 Foreign Researches 22.2 Domestic Researches 33. Theoretical Bases53.1 Face-saving Theory53.2 Cooperative Principle 63.3 Politeness Principle74. Understanding of the Euphemisms8 4.1 Definitions of Euphemism8 4.2 The Characteristics of Euphemisms10 4.3 The Communicative Functions of Euphemisms in Business Negotiations10 4.3.1 To Resolve Conflicts10 4.3.2 To Solve the Face-To-Face Embarrassments115. The Applications of Euphemisms in Business Negotiations 125.1 The Application Modes of Euphemisms 125.1.1 Fuzzy Terminologies and Polite Words 125.1.2 Conditional Sentences135.1.3 Passive Voice 155.1.4 Weaken the Negative Expressions 155.1.5 Subjunctive Mood 175.1.6 Vocabulary Replacement185.2 Problems should be concerned196. Conclusion 20References21Acknowledgements23BA Thesis of xxx Normal University1. IntroductionAlong with China has joined WTO, the China trade has developed a lot, especially the international trade. For example: On the basis of customs statistics, in 2011, the total import and export value of Chinas foreign trade was 3642.06 billion U.S. dollars, 22.5% higher than the same period in 2010, the value of 2011 had refreshed the annual history records. (Zhong, 2012-01-10) According to current general forecast, in 2012, the total trade of goods in the United States may be about 4.11 trillion U.S. dollars, while Chinas total trade of goods is about 4.15 trillion U.S. dollars, and China will exceed the United States to become the worlds largest cargo trade country!(Ma,2012-04-17)Business negotiations are one of the factors that cannot be ignored in international trades. There is a very complex process for every business negotiations to go through from initial consultation to reach an agreement. This process involves the interests, politics, geographical locations, cultural implications and psychological feelings at that time of the negotiating representatives and so on. In the negotiation processes, using the appropriate euphemisms has become an important factor for the success of negotiations. The aim of this thesis is to help people use euphemisms properly to increase the chances of successful business negotiations. In order to let the readers have a scientific understanding of euphemisms, this thesis starts with the definitions of euphemisms. Then discusses the applications of euphemisms in business negotiations and the effects they bring through analyzing the cases by means of comparison. That helps us use the appropriate euphemisms to improve the efficiency of negotiations and success of negotiations. The expected results of this thesis are letting the readers have a scientific understanding of euphemisms and use the appropriate euphemisms to maintain the self-esteem of both cooperation parties, to alleviate contradictions and conflicts, to eliminate misunderstanding and friction through this research, thereby reducing the stiffness of the scenes, so that both partners can complete the negotiations in a relaxed and harmonious atmosphere. And this is what the author plans to do.The first part mainly introduces the research background, significance, methods and the expected results. And it points out the effects that the applications of euphemisms in business negotiations bring to the business negotiations. The second is literature review, recalling the successes of the domestic and the foreign scholars in the studies of euphemisms, and problems to be further explored. Then explains what effects those problems bring to the authors research, and how he solves these problems. The third is the theoretical bases relate to euphemisms. The author lists the theories relate to the euphemisms. The fourth is the understanding of the euphemisms, the author lists the definitions, the characteristics and communicative functions of euphemisms. The fifth is the main body of thesis. First it introduces the application forms of euphemisms, then puts forward the problems should be concerned, and gives examples to illustrate the problems. The sixth is conclusion. The author first summarizes this research, and then points out the inadequacies of this thesis.2. Literature Review2.1 Foreign ResearchesEuphemism is a common phenomenon of the human languages. Different social backgrounds and different historical cultures produce different euphemisms. Euphemisms exist from the moment of the birth of language, but were concerned slowly as their importance highlights. People have studied euphemisms from the moment they born, but the time they did the research systematically is not too long.Druckman, Danial (1977) in his book Negotiations: social-psychological perspectives introduced and presented the important role euphemisms play in business negotiations for the first time.In 1981, British linguist Hugh Rawson (1981) had compiled the Dictionary A Dictionary of Euphemism and Other Double - talk, this dictionary sums up the achievements in the research of euphemism of the British and American linguists. Rawson (1981) pointed out that euphemism is largely dominated by two laws, one is the Greshams Law and the other is the Law of Succession. The Greshams Law is a concept originally from economics, that is, in the process of currency circulation, bad money drives out good. And he thought, there also have similar situations of language meaning changes. Where a word has “good meaning” or “neutral meaning”, there is “bad one”, then the “bad one” will crowd the “good one” out. The Law of Succession, is a word used as a euphemism over a period of time, it lost the color of euphemism, then people began to avoid using it and create a new euphemism. The Greshams Law does the semantic shift, and enables the euphemism changes and updates constantly, then forms the Law of Succession. Rawson (1981) proposed these two laws, letting us deeply understanding euphemism phenomenon. It is so good to the exploration of the use euphemism in business negotiations and its effect.Sorrels, B. D. (1984) published Business Communication Fundamentals, which provided a general introduction of business communications, such as the characteristics of business communications, basic principles for writing, and at the same time he introduced euphemisms in his book, including the history, characteristics of euphemisms as well as its effects on business communications.Taylor, S. (1993) in her book Communication for Business introduced the business letter unit and rules of good writing. She also studied the main types of euphemisms employed in business communications from the lexical level and grammatical level.2.2 Domestic ResearchesShu Dingfang(束定芳) used pragmatic theory to research in 委婉语新探 of the same issue of 外国语. Shu thinks (1989), all euphemism structures have to follow three rules: Distance Principle; Related Principle; Pleasant Principle. Distance Principle: People think that language symbol signifiers and the things is a kind of equal relationship, in order to eliminate this kind of direct equivalence relation, one of fundamental ways is to pull the twos distances, and achieve this goal in a new view. There is a kind of distance between new language symbols and things refer to. The bigger distances, the more euphemistic it appears. Related Principle: People cannot freely choose any kinds of expressions of euphemism to represent. The new created euphemism must have a certain link with the source language symbol to some extent, it can provide the clues that people understand. Distance Principle requires that the bigger distances between things and euphemism is better, but the Related Principle tightly restricts it, so that the distance s between the two is not more than the limits of the normal context that listeners can understand. Pleasant Principle: The so-called beautiful, is not the beauties of voice itself, but is that it can have a better connotation, can give a person a kind of better association.The author thinks that the three principles constitute the three basic principles which people create the euphemism. They interact and restrict each other, and form a kind of mutual dependent tripod. It has a positive significance to understand its structure principles in the study of the use of euphemism in business negotiations.Besides, in the book 委婉语研究：回顾与前瞻, Shu Dingfang & Xu Jinyuan (徐金元）(1995) expounded the relationship between the use of euphemism and the three principles of language communication process (cooperative principle, politeness principle and self-protection principle), and raised the euphemism problems yet to be solved, which has a far-reaching impact on the study of the euphemisms.Foreign and domestic euphemism monographs are relatively less. Besides, only single references. The main direct or indirect references are the dictionary Kind Words which Judith S. Neaman and Carole G. Silver coauthored (1983), the symposium Fair of Speech: the Uses of Euphemism of D. J. Enright(1985), the monograph Euphemism and Dysphemism：Language Used As Shield and Weapon that Keith Allen and Kate Burridge coauthored (1991),英语委婉语词典 that Liu Chunbao edited in (1993), etc.; There is few studies had been done on comparisons and translations between English and Chinese euphemisms; and neither are the euphemism mechanism studies. And only little studies had been done on researching euphemisms from the angle of cognitive linguistics. Liang Yanchun(梁艳春) (2003), Shao Junhang（邵军航） and Fan Weiweis（樊葳葳） 委婉机制的认知语言学诠释(2004) had tentative discussed the euphemism mechanism.Because of the tiny quantities of domestic scholars and international scholars who researching euphemisms, the treatises on euphemism, and the references, those reasons make it hard for a lot of people to study euphemism. Especially the direction the author researches: A Study on the Application of Euphemisms in Business Negotiations and their Effects. But the author finds strong arguments from both the domestic scholars and foreign scholars to support his point of view. It is that using euphemisms to promote the success of business negotiations. The author studies the euphemisms from the angle of business negotiations.3. Theoretical Bases3.1 Face-saving TheoryThe British scholars Brown and Levinson (1987) proposed the Face-saving Theory (FST) on the basis of the Goffmans theory of face work in the book Universals in Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena (Brown & Levinson,1978). They believed “that all competent adult members of a society have (and know each other to have) face” (Brown & Levinson,1987). They thought that there are negative face and positive face as follows:(A) Negative face: the want to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed by others. (Brown & Levinson,1987)(B) Positive face: the want to be accepted, even liked, by others, to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that his or her wants are shared by others. (Brown & Levinson,1987)Actually, negative face is to protect others independence and freedom to make actions while positive face is to show the wants and needs of being accepted and connected by others. All competent adult members of a society have the demands of both negative face and positive face. Politeness can be divided into two: negative politeness and positive politeness. Negative politeness means not to interfere with the others freedom, not to infringe the rights of others and give them negative face. Positive politeness including agree or praise other people, or permit them to do things to maintain their positive face.They pointed out that there are many potential and unavoidable Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) (1987:24) in real life. Some of them threaten the speakers face, some threaten hearers and some threaten both of theirs. It is harmful to the success of the business negotiations. They thought that the speaker estimates the size of the threatening face behavior Wx by three mutually independent variables. The three variables are: social distance (D), namely social distance between the speaker (S) and hearer (H). Relative power (P) is the power which the H has that relative to the S. Absolute ranking of imposition (R) means the absolute level of the inherent impose degree that the speech has in the specific culture. Expressed in a formula is: Wx= D (S, H) + P (H, S) + Rx. They thought, longer D, more powerful P, higher R, Wx will become greater, at that moment, the S should choose the strongest compensatory politeness strategies. Their theory has received widespread controversy, and suffered a lot of blames and criticisms. Later they also realized the deficiencies of the theory, so they changed the title into Politeness: Some universals of Language Usage in the revised edition in 1987.3.2 Cooperative PrincipleCooperative Principle is proposed by the famous American linguistic philosopher H. P. Grice in a speech at Harvard University in 1967 (Herbert,1975). In the process of communication, in order to ensure the conversation proceed smoothly, a tacit understanding exists between the speaker and hearer, a kind of common principle that both conversation parties must comply with, namely the Cooperative Principle of the conversations. The Cooperative Principle includes four categories, and each category includes one maxim and some criterions.(A) The Maxim of Quantity (a) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange). (b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.(B) The Maxim of Quality Try to make your contribution one that is true. (a) Do not say what you believe to be false.(b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.(C) The Maxim of Relation Be relevant.(D) The Maxim of Manner Be perspicuous.(a) Avoid obscurity.(b) Avoid ambiguity.(c) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).(d) Be orderly. (Herbert,1975)With these four maxims, people can communicate in the most direct, the highest efficiency and the most reasonable way. International business negotiators are not strictly obeyed the Cooperative Principle, and they use the euphemisms to disobey one of the maxims when doing the negotiations. The Cooperative Principle does not explain why they disobey it intentionally to express their meanings implicitly since they should obey it. Therefore, the English scholar Geoffrey Leech proposed the Politeness Principle.3.3 Politeness PrincipleBased on the maxims of conversation proposed by Grice and the fact that there are occasions when people do not follow the Cooperative Principle, Leech (1983) proposed the Politeness Principle. People obey Politeness Principle for the purpose of maintaining each others faces. Politeness Principle consists of six maxims, i.e. (id est), Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modesty Maxim, Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim. (A) Tact Maxim: Try to minimize cost to others and maximize benefits to others.(B) Generosity Maxim: Try to minimize benefits to ourselves and maximize cost to ourselves.(C) Approbation Maxim: Try to minimize dispraise of others and maximize praise of others.(D) Modesty Maxim: Try to minimize praise of ourselves and maximize dispraise of ourselves.(E) Agreement Maxim: Try to achieve agreement with others and avoid showing disagreement with others.(F) Sympathy Maxim: Try to show sympathy to others and avoid antipathy to others.In the six Politeness Principles Leech proposed (1983), tact maxim and approbation maxim are the most related with the application of euphemisms. And this