A Study Of Vague Language In English Business Correspondence From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

In recent years, the global economy is booming and more and more enterprises participate in the international economy. In order to conduct successful business, the parties involved in the business need to communicate with each other. Communication acts a crucial part in business. Through communication, businessmen can recruit employees, manufacture products, arrange transportation, sell products and act after-sale services and so on. Communication can help people understand each other and get work done. Communication can be executed by various means such as correspondences, telexes, emails, just mention a few.Business correspondence, as a formal means, plays an important part in international business communication. It is closely connected with business interests. Therefore, the expression of business correspondence should be clear and precise in order to avoid the unnecessary misunderstanding and troubles. Most people generally agree to the "Seven Cs" Principle of business correspondence:completeness, concreteness, clearness, conciseness, courtesy, consideration, correctness. However, after analyzing some English business correspondences, we find vague language does exist in English business correspondence.Therefore, this paper focuses on vague language in English business correspondence. This paper tries to make quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis on vague language in English business correspondence. Using the quantitative analysis, the author chiefly counts the frequency of the vague language in different types of English business correspondence. With the qualitative analysis, this paper primarily deals with the vague language in English business correspondence on the basis of the Adaptation Theory.In order to make a systematic analysis on English business correspondence, the author categorizes business correspondence into the following three classifications: good-news and neutral-news correspondence, bad-news correspondence and persuasive correspondence. Generally speaking, correspondences of establishing business relations, orders, confirmation to orders, inquiries, reply to inquiries, favorable response to claims and adjustment requests, favorable replies to credit inquiries, shipping advice and so forth belong to good-news correspondence and neutral-news correspondence, while correspondences about orders such as substitutions, negative answers such as denying cooperation with routine requests, declining invitations and request for favors, and refusing adjustment of claims and complaints fall into bad-news correspondence. Persuasive correspondence is used to convince the addressees to do something not previously considered or something that might be inconvenient. Sales correspondence claims correspondence, correspondence that request special favor or information and collection correspondence belong to persuasive correspondence.Before analyzing vague language, we need to know the linguistic realization of vagueness in English business correspondence. The present study concentrates on analyzing vagueness from three perspectives:lexical vagueness, syntactical vagueness and hedges. Vague language at lexical level consists of vague nouns, vague quantifiers, vague adjectives, vague verbs, vague modal auxiliaries, vague phrases, vague adverbs and vague prepositions. Vagueness at syntactical level includes three forms, namely plural forms, passive voice and some specific sentence patterns. Moreover, hedges that are frequently employed to realize vagueness include:frankly speaking, to some extent, in a sense, more or less, generally speaking, frankly speaking, according to, as far as, as is known, kind of, sort of, a little bit, etc.To make more comprehensive and objective analysis on vague language in English business correspondence, the author collects more than two hundred English business correspondences and selects ninety correspondences for detailed research. Each type of English business correspondence has thirty sample correspondences. Regarding the quantitative analysis, this paper counts the number of vague language in three different types of English business correspondences and calculates the frequency of their occurrence in each type of correspondence. Through analyzing the data, we find that the bad-news correspondence and persuasive correspondence employ more vague language than good-news and neutral-news correspondence do. The good-news and neutral-news correspondence usually conducts favorable information to the addressee which is good to both the addresser and addressee. On the other hand, the bad-news correspondence often conveys unpleasant message which may damage the business relationship between the addresser and addressee. Therefore, vague language is frequently adopted in bad-news business correspondence. Persuasive correspondence usually employs vague language to persuade the addressee to take certain action. Vague language could help the addresser to fulfill this goal, and thus a lot of vague languages are adopted in this type of business correspondence.In 1987, Verschueren forwarded the adaptation theory as a Theory of Linguistic Adaptation. From then on, this theory has been further explored and enriched. In the opinion of Verschueren, the range of contexts goes from aspects of the physical surroundings to social relationships between language producers and language interpreters and aspects of the language users'state of mind. To be specific, all the ingredients which are inter-adaptable include:Language users (utterer and interpreter), mental world (such as personality, emotions, beliefs, desires or wishes, motivations or intentions, etc. of language users), social world (such as social settings, institutions, culture, etc.) and physical world (such as time, space, bodily postures, physical appearance, physical conditions, biological property, etc.). Since the present research concentrates on vague language in English business correspondence, the author chiefly analyzes the strategic employment of vague language in adaptation to the psychological world, to the social world and to the physical world.In accordance with Verschueren's theory, we can formulate a tentative adaptation model which aims to describe and explain vague language employment as a dynamic choice-making process. This model could provide us a better understanding of the use of vague language in English business correspondence.Moreover, with a qualitative analysis, this paper interprets vague language on the basis of Adaptation Theory. The addresser adopts vague language to adapt to the psychological world, to the social world and to the physical world. In terms with psychology, the linguistic choices are results of adapting to various motivations of satisfying the fundamental psychological needs. As both parties desire to conclude a successful transaction, the addresser is motivated to adapt to some of essential needs of the addressee and achieve the self-protection purpose in business correspondence. About the social world, with the development of global economy, more and more companies participate in international business. To build good relationship with foreign companies and to conduct successful business, the businessmen have to be familiar with various norms and make proper linguistic choices. For example, the both parties have the responsibility to maintain the business secret. So sometimes they need to express vagueness to keep the secret. The so-called physical world is an objective context, including time and space. Generally speaking, when the business correspondences regarding time or space, it should be exact and precise. In fact, the real situation is not so. Because there is force majeure that human beings can not reject or avoid such as natural disaster, striking. In order to avoid putting themselves in embarrassing situation, the addresser often resorts to vague language to express the time and space. By doing this, the addresser leaves enough room to perform.Through analyzing the data, it is proved that vague language is employed to achieve four pragmatic functions:assisting proper employment of business expressions, reinforcing the persuasiveness, making the expression more polite, improving the flexibility and serving as self-protection. Firstly, vague language helps proper employment of business expressions. In order to conduct successful business, the addresser has to convey information appropriately. Under certain environment, vague language can be more appropriate especially when the information is negative. Secondly, vague language can strengthen the persuasiveness,In persuasive-news correspondence, the addresser needs to attract the addressee. Therefore, it is vague language that meets the addresser's requirement. In the bad-news correspondence, the addresser needs to make the addressee accept and act easily, In order to achieve this aim, the addresser appeals to the vague language. Thirdly, vague language can make the expression more polite. The main intention for addresser is to keep the good relationship with the addressee. So it is pivotal for both parties to be cautious when they express their opinions. Fourthly, vague language can improve the flexibility. Sometimes, when the addresser can not release business information or can not make an absolute expression, the addresser needs to resort to the vague language to achieve this aim. Last but not the least, the vague language can serve as the self-protection. When the situation is not favorable to the addresser, the addresser appeals to vague language to avoid the possible embarrassment. So the responsibility is transferred to the addressee or other forces rather than the addresser. And the addresser can protect him from losing benefit.