ABSTRACT:With the development of economic globalization, international trade is booming. Due to the diversity of region and time, both sides in business trade could not contact or negotiate frequently. Business correspondence as a carrier of promoting trade and exchanging information between the two sides plays an increasingly important role in international trade. Therefore, high quality business letters become one of the key factors affecting business development and its success. For English business correspondence composition, many researchers and scholars have put forward many effective methods and strategies. Most of them are from Grice's cooperative principle and conversational implicature or Leech’s euphemism principle to analyze business correspondence writing. So the passive voice is widely and rationally encouraged to use. They think that the passive voice can achieve the objective effect in writing business letters and can avoid some information which do not need to be informed or can not be informed. However, not all kinds of business correspondences need such effect, for example, in the establishment of the customer relationship and delivering negative information, we also need to pay attention to emotional expression, so it is propitious to reach an agreement and solve problems. And the active voice is more prominent than the passive voice in emotional expression. Therefore, this paper from the perspective of cognition, applying the figure-ground theory and relevance theory to explore the pragmatic functions of the active voice in business correspondences, so as to attract people’s attention to view active voice reasonably in business correspondences writing and to promote international business trade smoothly and successfully.
Key words: cognition；business correspondence；active voice；pragmatic function； the figure-ground theory；the relevance theory
摘要:随着经济的全球化，国际贸易蓬勃发展。由于地区和时间上的差异，贸易双方不可能频繁的接触、谈判。此时商务信函作为促进贸易双方信息交流的载体，在国际贸易中起着越来越重要的作用。因此高质量的商务信函已成为影响业务发展和成功的关键因素之一。对于商务信函的写作，许多专家学者都提出了很多有效的方法、策略。他们大都从Grice的合作原则和会话含义或者Leech的委婉原则等来分析商务信函的写作。其中被动语态被大量合理的推崇。他们认为被动语态在商务信函写作中可以达到客观公正的效果，并且可以隐藏不需要告知或不能告知的信息等。但并非任何信函都需要这样的效果，在客户关系的建立，消极信息的传递等时我们还需要注重情感上的表达，这样有利与双方达成一致或解决问题。而主动语态要比被动语态更能凸显情感的变化。因此本文从认知的角度，运用图形-背景理论和关联理论来探讨主动语态在商务信函中的语用功能，以此引起人们在商务信函写作中对主动语态的正确认识，促进贸易的顺利进行。
关键字：认知、商务信函、主动语态、语用功能、图形背景理论、关联理论
