The Communicative Functions Of Vague Language In Daily Conversation

Researchers at home and abroad have made widespread studies on vagueness, but no deeper and more comprehensive studies have been made on the communicative functions of the appropriate use of vague language in daily conversation. This paper, therefore, based on the previous studies, attempts to investigate functions of vague language in daily conversation from the angle of pragmatics, and by introducing the concept of pragmatic context, tries to testify that vague language which is fit for the concrete context and be consistent with the communicative purposes of the speaker is an appropriate one. The appropriate use of vague language is not the obstacle but an indispensable part of speech communication.The thesis is divided into six chapters.The first chapter serves as an introduction.The second chapter is the cognition and the approach to vague language. It points out that studies on vagueness have changed from pure semantic angle to both semantic and pragmatic perspective. Though researchers have begun the pragmatic studies on vagueness, they haven't begun to study the appropriate use of vague language systematically by employing pragmatic theories. Thus, this thesis mainly intends to analyze and study the communicative functions of vague language in daily conversation. The Chinese scholars Wang Xi-jie and Jiang You-jing(Chen Zhi-an and Wen Xu, 1996) divide vague language into two categories: the broad-sense vague language, which refers to vagueness in language; and the narrow-sense vague language, which refers to vague expressions and vague structures. This paper will focus on the narrow-sense vague language, esp., vague expressions, which include, hedges, vague category identifiers, intrinsically vague words andapparently precise words with vague meanings.The communicative functions of vague language in daily conversation is analyzed and summarized in Chapter Three. This paper mainly analyzes the relationship between the appropriate use of vague language and the maxims of Quantity and Quality of the CP. Vague language can be used to give the right amount of information, to deliberately withhold information, to fill information gaps, to emphasize the tone of the speaker and so on. In performing those functions, vague language enables the speaker either to observe or to violate the maxims of the CP, thus achieving different communicative goals, for example, focusing the hearer's attention, being defensive, relaxing conversational atmosphere, creating humorous effects, calling the hearer's more attention or creating/keeping informal communicative atmosphere.Chapter Four of this paper is devoted to the issue of vagueness in related to politeness. Brown and Levinson (1987) point out that one way for speakers to be polite when expressing a point which might be construed as threatening or rude to the hearer is to be vague. Channell (1994) also studies this issue. She says, "an understanding of vague strategies would seem to be essential to the analysis of some types of politeness". These studies offer a better basis for the exploration of the relationship between vague language and politeness. Applying Politeness Principle of Leech (1983), this part gives a detailed analysis of vague language as a politeness strategy. It provides its speakers with devices of observing the maxims of the Politeness Principle, which include Tact Maxim, Generosity Maxim, Approbation Maxim, Modest Maxim, Agreement Maxim and Sympathy Maxim. However, vague language may carry a message of impoliteness if not used appropriately. By analyzing some instances, Chapter Four draws attention to the inappropriate use of vaguelanguage, which results in impolite implicatures and makes the utterances a face-threatening act.In Chapter Five, the paper points out that one important norm to judge whether or not the use of vague language is appropriate for speech communication is pragmatic context which has two roles: filter and explanation. The elimination of vagueness in language has to turn to pragmatic context. Only when the...