On Vague Language And Its Pragmatic Value

Vague linguistics is a marginal subject in linguistic research. Since the mid-1960s, researches on vague language have been undertaken by many foreign scholars who have conducted their studies from various aspects and layers and accomplished a great number of illuminating books and articles. In china, studies on vague language started in the late 1970s, Chinese scholars have also done a lot of researches on this subject from the angles of semantics, pragmatics, lexicology, syntax, psychology, cognitive psychology, etc. However, in the author's opinion, the researches are neither deep nor systematic enough. This thesis attempts to, from pragmatic aspect, provide a comparatively comprehensive discussion on vague language and its pragmatic function, and analyze the pragmatic value of vague language.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter gives the definition of vague language and explores its causes. Since vagueness and ambiguity are quite confusing, the author makes a comparatively thorough distinction between them.In Chapter Two, types of vague language are introduced. As hedge is the core of vague language, the definition of hedge, its types and semantic features are further discussed.In Chapter Three, the relationship between vague language and meaning and context is discussed. Firstly, by analyzing the static meaning and dynamic meaning expressed by vague language, the author explores the difference between semantic vagueness and pragmatic vagueness and their interdependence. Then, the interpretive and restricted functions of context to vague language are analyzed, which shows that studying vague language cannot be separated from context.Chapter Four is the main part of this thesis. The author introduces the theoretical grounds for pragmatic value of vague language, analyzes pragmatic functions of vague language and people's intentional use ofvague language on different occasions to bring about certain pragmatic purpose and achieve rhetorical effect. At the same time, the author points out that vague language is widely used and has great vitality.Chapter Five is the conclusive part, which gives a brief summary of the thesis and points out the limitations of the present study.