A Comparative Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Chinese And American Spokesmen’s Remarks In Press Conferences

Pragmatic vagueness is a particularly important communication strategy, widelyused in ordinary conversation, especially in Press Conferences and other diplomaticoccasions. The Foreign Ministry spokesmen often achieve different purposes indifferent circumstances with the help of pragmatic vagueness strategy.Based on the Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face Theory, thisthesis makes a comparative analysis of pragmatic vagueness in Chinese and Americanspokesmen‘s remarks in Press Conferences. The main research question of this study isto find out whether the similarities and differences exist in the use of vagueness betweenChinese spokesmen‘s remarks and American spokesmen‘s remarks and to figure out thereasons which can be used to account for those similarities and differences.In this thesis, the remarks of American and Chinese spokesmen are randomlyselected as research data from their government websites, both of which respectivelycover40press briefings from April,2012to April,2013. From the theoreticalperspectives of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Face Theory, aqualitative and quantitative research method is employed to analyze the data. Theconclusions are summarized as follows:First, through the quantitative analysis of pragmatic vagueness in Chinese andAmerican spokesmen‘s remarks, the major similarities are concluded as the followingtwo points:(1) The occurring times of vagueness on the lexical level are the highest amonglexical, syntactical and discourse levels in both Chinese and American spokesmen‘sremarks.(2) The occurring times of the violation of quality and relation maxims and theobservance of tact and generosity maxims in Chinese and English data are quite similar.The possible reason for the similarities is that the special profession of spokesmanand the typical features of diplomatic language are common to both countries.Second, through the quantitative analysis of pragmatic vagueness in Chinese and American spokesmen‘s remarks, four major differences are summarized as follows:(1) The frequency of vagueness on lexical level in American spokesmen‘s remarksis twice as much as that in Chinese spokesmen‘s remarks. Nevertheless, the permillageof vagueness on discourse level in Chinese spokesmen‘s remarks is larger than that inAmerican spokesmen‘s remarks.(2) In terms of the frequency of vagueness through the violation of the maxims ofCooperative Principles, the English data have the comparatively higher occurring timesthan Chinese data, especially in the violation of quantity and manner maxims.(3) As for the occurring times of Politeness Theory for vagueness, the frequency ofvagueness employed to comply with the approbation and modesty maxims in Chinesematerials is much higher than those in English materials and, by contrast, the frequencyof vagueness in observing the agreement maxim in English materials is higher than thatin Chinese materials.(4) In regard to Face Theory, the frequencies of vagueness for both savingjournalist‘s face and foreign country‘s face in Chinese materials are higher than those inEnglish materials.The possible reasons for the differences involve three aspects: the different modesof thinking, the different value orientations and the different diplomatic policies.Third, through the qualitative analysis of pragmatic vagueness in Chinese andAmerican spokesmen‘s remarks, the functions of vagueness adopted by the spokesmenare found, which comprises four points: intentionally withholding information,self-protecting, achieving politeness and creating harmonious international atmosphere.This comparative study can provide a better way to interpret the implicature behindthe spokesmen‘s remarks. Meanwhile, the results of the study may enlighten theinterpreters to accurately understand the usages of vagueness and finish their workperfectly in Press Conferences. In addition, in the English language learning andteaching, the fruits of this study could be employed to instruct the English learners touse the vagueness properly and correctly.