No abstract

This presentation is based on and continues a previous study dealing with linguistic politeness in business correspondence (Danish/French). On the basis of J.R. Searle's theory of speech acts, H.P. Grice's Cooperative Principle and Brown and Levinson's politeness theory, French complimentary closes are analyzed. The paper presents a pilot study which looks at recommendations given by textbooks as well as closes in authentic business correspondence. The study has three aims. One aim is to establish the degree to which textbook recommendations differ, the second is to present an outline of any divergences between recommendations and linguistic behaviour as evidenced in a corpus of authentic French business correspondence. The third aim of the study is to provide the Danish correspondent with some guidelines, based on the theory of face and politeness strategies, which will hopefully permit him or her to choose complimentary closes in agreement with the conventions which seem to apply to French business correspondence.

This article presents the results of an empirical pilot-study of Danish and French company presentations. The aim of the study is to establish how human relations manifest themselves in the linguistic surface The results are divided into horizontal (Distance) and vertical (Authority) relations. The study is based on the concepts of Face and Facework and through a systematization of the chosen Facework strategies differences between Danish and French communicative behavior are shown. The Danish companies appear to have a communicative profile indicating a wish to establish close relations with the reader and a greater need of selfpraise than the French companies.