A Study On Vague Expressions In Friends From A Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Vague language, the production of natural language and widely used in different discourses is the indispensable part of human languages. Since vague language was introduced into China, Chinese scholars have made many applied researches in many areas such as commercial advertising, translation, literature, news, law, political discourse, etc. But the study of the vague language in daily verbal communication is rare. So this thesis will study the classified vague expressions in Friends and use the software AntCorn 3.4.3 to detect the times of appearance of classified vague expressions.Adaptation theory is the core of Verschueren’s pragmatic perspective and he believed that using language must consist of the continuous making linguistic choices consciously or unconsciously. Verschueren(1999: 66) studied adaptation theory from these four angles: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes. At the same time the four angles will be seen as the theoretical framework in the study of adaptation of vague expressions in Friends.The author divides vague expressions as frequency vague expressions, personal vague expressions, quantifying vague expressions, likelihood vague expressions, indefinite vague expressions, modal vague expressions and hedges. The author will categorize and detect the vague expressions in Friends by using the software AntCorn 3.4.3 and analyse the vague expressions through examples. Then the author will research the contextual adaptation, structural adaptation, dynamic adaptation, salience adaptation of vague expressions in Friends through examples.The author finds that the language users in Friends choose vague expressions consciously or unconsciously to adapt to their needs. This indicates that vague expressions play an import role in daily verbal communications.This thesis aims at guiding the using of vague expressions in our daily life and the people who learn English as a second language to choose appropriate vague expressions when talking to native speakers of English through the analysis of vague expressions.