| Legal English takes shape in the process of legislation, judicature and legal enforcement in common-law countries. As a kind of regulative language, legal English has unique style with its characteristic terms, phrases and mode of expression. One of the most important characteristics of legal English is precision of language use. But vague words and vague expressions are commonly found in legal texts and judicial practices.Actually, many linguists have paid attention to the phenomenon of vagueness in legal English. Studies on vagueness of legal English abroad mainly involve the relationship between vagueness and precision, causes of vagueness, the influence of vagueness on the legal system, etc. Endicott holds that vagueness in law can lead to indeterminacy in legal rights and obligations; and vagueness is not merely an intrinsic feature of legal English and it is also necessary for law. In China, Du Jinbang studies vagueness in legal English by analyzing the relationship between vagueness and precision, the causes of vagueness, removal of vagueness, determinacy of judicial English and its lingual application in tribunal activities etc. Liu Weiming makes a deep exploration of the nature and causes of vagueness in legal English. On the basis of contemporary studies, this thesis mainly analyzes the phenomena of vagueness in legal English in the aspects of legislative English and judicial English from pragmatic perspective. Legislative English is of high-precision. The motivation of legislators' choice of vague expressions in this highly precise language is worth deeply exploring. And the Adaptation Theory provides a sound theoretical explanation for legislators' choice of vague expressions. According to Verschueren's Adaptation Theory, employment of vague language in legislation is the result of legislators' linguistic choice and linguistic adaptation. In this thesis, the motivation of legislators' choice of vague expressions in legislation is investigated from two aspects of adaptation—structural objects of adaptation and contextual correlates of adaptation. As for structural objects of adaptation, Legislators' choice of vague language from every dimension of structure in legislative language achieves the adaptation to structural objects of legislative language. As for the contextual correlates of adaptation, contextual correlates—social world, mental world and physical world have impacted on legislators when they are using language. Legislators' choice of vague language reveals the adaptation to the three non-linguistic contexts. The use of vague expressions in judicial English is relatively flexible and tactical. A manifestation of this flexibility is that vague language is used by participants of legal speech communication to convey their intended messages and help achieve certain communicative goals. The intended message of utterance and its realization are what Implicature Theory and Cooperative Principle concern. Thus, in order to explore how participants of legal speech communication achieve their communicative goals by using vague expressions, Conversational lmplicature Theory and Cooperative Principle are introduced to analyse vagueness in judicial English. Taking "perjury", a legal phenomenon as a typical case for study, the author explains how to generate conversational implicature by the use of vague language in its violation of CP maxims. It is proved that in legal speech communication, vague language is an efficient communicative strategy to convey the speaker's intended meaning and achieve certain communicative effects such as deliberately withholding information, politeness, using language persuasively, self-protection and lacking specific information.The pragmatic analysis of vagueness in legal English in this thesis could not only enrich and develop the current studies on vagueness in legal English but also be helpful for the interpretation and application of legal English.
|
PDF Full Text Request