Pragmatic Vagueness And Its Understanding-A Relevance Approach

This thesis investigates how vague utterances can be explained by Relevance Theory and its uses and functions of pragmatic vagueness. There are many approaches to the widespread phenomenon. The semantic approach focuses on the truth-conditional meaning of vague utterances; the traditional pragmatic research holds that pragmatic vagueness violates the Cooperative Principle and Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relevance and Manner. They can explain some types and some aspects of pragmatic vagueness, but neither of them can provide a universal explanation of the phenomenon. It is concluded that vague language uses conform to optimal relevance in that it can achieve the greatest contextual effects with the least processing effort. The thesis advocates that pragmatic vagueness is characterized by uncertainty. The technical notion of relevance is the key to understanding the five types of non-metaphorical pragmatic vagueness from the relevance perspective. Relevance Theory distinguishes between literal talk and loose talk. Contextual contexts and attitudes are the main factors affecting the understanding of pragmatic vagueness. The relevance study sheds new light on the issue and suggests another way to explain this pervasive linguistic phenomenon.