A Pragmatic Study On The Employment Of Vague Language In Business English

Since the concept and theory of fuzziness was proposed in 1965, people have done much systematic and descriptive study on vague language. However, little interpretive study on the same topic has been made. Business English, as a special part of language, has always been required to be clear and concrete, therefore the study of vague language in the field has long been neglected. Due to the above two aspects, the author tries to provide some deeper analysis of the application of vague language in the perspective of pragmatics in business context.Based on the definitions of vague language in the present study and the analysis of the data from the articles or books on business, it is found that the employment of vague language in business English has its own specific characteristics. Vague language, as a common phenomenon in international business communication also reflects some of the features of business English. In this paper, the author has also made a careful and systematic analysis of the application of vague language in terms of Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and the Relevance Theory in terms of the pragmatic theories.According to the studies that have already been done by former scholars, the author analyzes the practical examples of business affairs to study how vague language functions and finally sums up several pragmatic functions of the application of vagueness in business English.The study of vague language in business English is still a new topic that has not been comprehensively analyzed yet. Therefore, this paper would help us obtain a profound understanding of this language phenomenon and some effective language skills used for business communication as well.