THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITENESS IN COMMERCIAL WRITING

Abstract

Since written communication is part of the everyday business
world, this article aims to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon of
politeness and analyze its implementation in the business writing activity
performed by the Office Manager. We intend to identify the main features
pointed out by job description manuals for the effective business writing, to
compare the viewpoint of different authors about the importance of
politeness in business writing in Portuguese and Spanish and verify if the
concept of politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1987) can be applied
to commercial writing. The exploratory/descriptive research starts by
examining three letters, two of them complaining letters and the other a
request. From the analysis of these letters, we endeavored to show how the
use of polite language can contribute to greater efficiency in the
negotiations, especially when they involve conflicts of interest. Taking as
reference the Theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) about the linguistic
politeness, which takes into account the needs of certain social images of
the speaker-addressee or reader-writer, we also sought to relate some
linguistic procedures that can be used in commercial writings to how the
involved parts want to be seen. Finally, we emphasized that this approach
brings an important contribution to the activity of business writing,
highlighting that expressing politeness goes beyond mere verbal formulas
of politeness or forms of treatment that indicate deference.