Relevance-Theoretic Analysis On Vagueness Of Language

Vagueness is an inherent property of natural language. It is universal and inevitable in communication. Since Eubulides in ancient Greek proposed the sorities paradox, which contained the idea of vagueness, vagueness of language has attracted more and more attention. After the publication of Fuzzy Sets by L.A. Zadeh in 1965, the ideas in fuzzy mathematics are applied to the study of vague language. This deepened people's knowledge of vague language enormously and inspired multi-dimensional researches on vague language. However, up till now, most studies on vague language have been oriented to the semantic field. And the psychological and cognitive aspects of people's application and interpretation to vague language were not paid much attention. This thesis aims to explain how people tend to adopt vague language rather than a more precise form in a relevance-theoretic approach, trying to make a complimentary explanation of language vagueness to the previous studies. In the first chapter, the thesis introduces the universal existence of language vagueness, from four different angels: vagueness of objective things, vagueness of human mind, vagueness of language system and vagueness caused by social factors. In the second chapter, the thesis introduces the abroad and domestic development of the study on vague language, and then explains the definition of vagueness. The thesis here adopts Channell's definition as a reference. In the third chapter, the thesis indicates an outline of relevance theory, especially the principle of relevance which is the theoretic base, and some rules in explanation of loose talk raised by Sperber and Wilson. In the fourth paragraph, the thesis gives a detailed explanation to the use of vague language from the three types proposed by Channell—vagueness by implicature, vagueness by choice of vague words and vague additives. In the fifth chapter, the thesis makes a brief comparison between the fuzzy-set-theoretic approach and relevance-theoretic approach, cooperative-principle approach and relevance-theoretic approach, in explaining vagueness of language. And it points out, relevance theory can be a complimentary approach in the study of vague language and it is necessary to do this job from different angels.