A Study Of Vague Terms

Vagueness of language is a universal phenomenon. As an attribute of natural language, vagueness is embodied in various aspects of language such as speech sounds, words meaning, syntactic rules, etc. More and more scholars have probed this field, but they still have different opinions on what vagueness refers to. In this thesis vagueness refers to the kind of attribute that the boundary of the meaning that a word denotes is not fixed. By introducing different aspects of vague terms, the most obvious embodiment of vagueness of language, this thesis expounds the attribute and tries to enhance readers' understanding of vague terms from the angles of cognition, semantics, and pragmatics to reveal the feasibility of the existence of vague terms. In addition, it exposes the important roles that vague terms might play in communication and the necessity of understanding and using them in different fields.In brief, the whole thesis is to expound vagueness of language by understanding vague terms, which will benefit one to understand a language more completely and handle them more flexibly. This is given detail explanation and illustration that form the following five chapters:Chapter one is a brief introduction to the university of vagueness of language and proves it by describing the reflection of vagueness in different aspects of language such as speech sounds, words meaning, syntactic rules, etc.Chapter two lists kinds of historic arguments on the definition and the source of vagueness, which show readers a somewhat clearer picture of this attribute: vagueness of language.Chapter three is the theoretical base of this thesis which gives certain explanation of the feasibility of vague terms from different angles such as cognitive, semantic and pragmatic angles, i.e. it puts introductions to the different types of vague terms, fuzzy thinking of humans, which enable people to understand vague terms, and analyzes the uses of vague terms by two communicative principles: Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle.Chapter four is about the necessity of understanding vagueness in words meaning by expounding the practical values of understanding and using vague terms in different fields such as daily communication, lexicography, literary works, and language learning.Chapter five is the conclusion of this thesis, and by introducing some negative aspects of exaggerating vagueness of language, it cautions people to treat vagueness of language scientifically: not to ignore and not to exaggerate.