Vague Language In Business Correspondence And The Intentions Of Its User

Since 1965 when L.A.Zadeh published his"Fuzzy Set Theory", there have been widespread researches, more descriptive than interpretive, on fuzziness in various fields, including business communication. The traditional idea, especially the"Seven Cs"principle, holds that business correspondence should be concrete and clear enough with the exclusion of vague language if possible. Therefore, the study of vague language in this field has been neglected to some degree. But in reality vague language is observed to be widely adopted in many types of business correspondence for certain purpose. It is out of the above two motivations that the present research is conducted, within the theoretical framework of Verschueren's (2000) Adaptation Theory, focusing its attention on the deliberate use of vague language in business correspondence and the writer's intentions. The analysis shows that there is a frequency difference in the employment of vague language in business correspondence of different types, and that vague language is used to meet the writer's variability intention, negotiability intention, and adaptability intention. It is hoped that this research can lead people to pay attention to the usage of vague language in business correspondence along with the traditional 7C principle, and that people may have a better understanding of how to adopt vague language as a strategy to meet certain communicative intentions and achieve success in interaction. It is expected that this research could add something fresh to the traditional idea of business correspondence writing, and could be beneficial for those who involve in business communication to plan written commercial discourses tactfully and strategically.