An Analysis Of Pragmatic Vagueness Strategy In Diplomatic Language-From The Viewpoint Of Adaptation-Relevance Theory

The diplomacy is the activities between countries. The diplomatic language is the carrier of diplomacy, and its remarkable characteristics are for the use of pragmatic vagueness strategy. Diplomats frequently take the advantage of diplomatic language to announce the outcome of a talk, to answer sensitive questions, and to harmonize the atmosphere. With the features of terseness, flexibility and generality, pragmatic vagueness strategy successfully meets the demand of diplomatic language and achieves the best communicative effects.On the basis of the analysis of Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory and Verschurence's Adaptation Theory, cognitive pragmatic linguistics, avoiding the two theories' demerits and absorbing their merits, set up the Adaptation-Relevance Theory. The collected data displays that the applied research of pragmatic vagueness strategy in different styles have attracted great attention from scholars from both home and abroad. But there is no research on pragmatic vagueness strategy in diplomatic language by using Adaptation -relevance Theory, the cognitive pragmatic view point, which is just the novelty of this thesis.From the cognitive pragmatic point of view, the present research makes a qualitative analysis of how the pragmatic vagueness is produced and interpreted by using the newly-established Adaptation-relevance Theory. The pragmatic vagueness strategy is not a static concept but rather a dynamic interpersonal activity. For the participants, it is also a process of dynamic understanding of context and dynamic adaptation to the speaker's meaning. The purpose of this research is to increase the awareness of vagueness in human language, find out a comprehensive theory to explain the generation and the interpretation of vagueness in diplomatic language and dig out the functions vagueness can perform in communication.This thesis consists of six chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces pragmatic vagueness, a very common language phenomenon, which is widely used in different language styles, including diplomatic language. Then the introduction of the research questions, objectives and method are followed.Chapter two is the literature review. On the basis of respective analysis of vagueness, diplomatic language and the vagueness in diplomatic language, the author specifies the notions of two terms: diplomatic language and pragmatic vagueness strategy.Chapter three expounds the theoretical framework of the thesis: the Adaptation-relevance Theory. This theory is developed on the basis of Relevance Theory and Adaptation Theory and regarded as the best theory that has been found so far to analyze the pragmatic vagueness strategy.Chapter four emphasizes three important aspects from cognitive perspective. Firstly, cognitive context plays an essential role in the generation and interpretation of diplomat's vagueness. The diplomats can make use of their existed cognitive context to extend, reduce, and change the cognition presumption in order to reconstruct the cognition presumption, and flexibly answer the questions proposed by the communication participants. Then, the author explains the inter-adaptation between linguistic behavior and Contextual Correlates. Finally, the interpretation of speaker's meaning is also a dynamic process.Chapter five takes President Bush's press conferences in 2007 for case study. Firstly, the pragmatic vagueness in his pragmatic language can be manifested at lexical, syntactical and discourse levels, which shows the variability of the pragmatic vagueness. Then the linguistic choice of vagueness is just a superficial phenomenon and the result of President Bush's adaptation to his physical, social and psychological world. In the end, the author points out that the use of pragmatic vagueness is to achieve certain communicative and diplomatic functions, and fulfill political purposes.Chapter six concludes the significance of this study, and points out the thesis' limitations and lists suggestions for further research.In a word, this research analyzes the pragmatic vagueness strategy in diplomatic language from Adaptation-relevance Theory, which is regarded as a new trial and both theoretically and practically significant. The research indicates that Adaptation-relevance Theory is the most suitable one to elaborate the generation and interpretation of vagueness in diplomatic language and the research is playing an essential role in facilitating foreign language learning, cultivating cross-cultural competence and enhancing language cognition and interference for press conference interpreters.