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6 Indirect Requests in Korean Business Correspondence Yeonkwon Jung Politeness is of crucial importance in performing a goal-oriented activity, such as business (e.g. in looking for a buyer, making the buyer respond favourably to sales letters, or having the buyer purchase the product for sale). If a seller is not polite to a buyer, the buyer is unlikely to react in a favourable way to what the seller requests. Furthermore, politeness may help both parties build trust and respect in order to maintain long-term business relationships. In this respect, politeness is seen as a necessary avenue for establishing a productive business atmosphere. The present study investigates how Korean business professionals use politeness strategies in Korean business correspondence to achieve a goal successfully. In particular, the study concentrates on politeness strategies for requests, in that requesting is the most common and essential speech act performed in a business context. Probably that is why much attention has been given to the speech act of request in written business communications across cultures (Akar 1998; Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris 1996; Pilegaard 1997; Yli-Jokipii 1994, among many others). A request is made in business contexts when the requested act is desirable to continue business. The content of requests may support this claim. The contents of some requests in my corpus are a request for shipping, a request for replacing damaged stock, a request for paying the amount receivable, etc. In these cases of making requests, unless the requested acts are performed, business cannot be continued. Therefore, these requested acts are necessary conditions to be able to continue business and so they are for the benefit of the company, not only the person who writes the request letter. For example, in the sentence, kwisauy napkiil cwunswulul tasi hanpen yochenghapnita ‘We once again ask you to meet the payment deadline’, without performing the requested act (meeting the payment deadline), business cannot be continued. Likewise, the requested act (miswukum 94 Yeonkwon Jung cenaykul ipkum wanlyo ‘paying the full amount receivable for the transaction’) in Onyen Owel Oilkkaci miswukum cenaykul ipkum wanlyohaye cwusimyen kamsahakeysssupnita ‘I would appreciate it if you pay the full amount receivable for the transaction by O’, is a necessary condition to continue business. Therefore, pursuing a successful business goal can depend to some extent on how the requester makes a request. That is the main reason why this study investigates how Korean business professionals use politeness strategies in making a request in Korean business correspondence to achieve a goal successfully. Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of politeness is adopted for data analysis because it explicitly provides how facework is reflected in politeness strategies used particularly in the performance of requests. Four strategies in their model are considered in ascending order based on their indirectness, from the least indirect (bald-on-record) to the most indirect (off-record). The following sections provide a review of the literature on Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness and an overview of the corpus of Korean business correspondence. Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness (1987) Brown and Levinson (1987) investigate politeness phenomena and establish the relationship between the principles governing language usage and the principles governing social relationships. By taking up Goffman’s (1967) ‘face-want’, Brown and Levinson (1987, 61) propose that every competent adult speaker in a society (i.e. a Model Person, MP) has face, which is the ‘public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself’. The concept of face is central to Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness. Face is composed of two aspects: positive and negative. Positive face is defined as ‘the want of every MP that his wants be desirable to others’. Negative face is defined as ‘the want of every MP that his actions be unimpeded by others’. They name certain kinds of acts that challenge face-wants ‘the face-threatening acts (FTAs)’. Some acts (e.g. requests, orders) impose on the hearer’s negative face by showing that the speaker gets the hearer to do something. Other acts (e.g. disagreements, complaints) threaten the hearer’s positive face by indicating that the speaker does not share the hearer’s wants. Brown and Levinson establish five strategies for linguistic politeness, which are ranked from the least indirect (bald-on-record) to the most indirect (don’t do the FTA): 1. Bald-on-record, 2. Positive politeness, 3. Negative politeness, 4. Off-record, and 5. Don’t do the FTA. The bald-on...

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