A Pragmatic Study Of The Communicative Effects Of Vague Language

Vague language has been one of the major subjects in linguistics and other related fields. Since the mid-1960s, many foreign scholars have conducted researches on vague language from various aspects and have accomplished a great number of illuminating works. Since 1970s, Chinese scholars have undertaken a lot of researches on this subject from various approaches, such as semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, etc. On the basis of existing researches, this thesis studies vague language and its communicative effects from the pragmatic perspective.Vague language is a comparatively new subject in linguistic research. The study of vague language depends to a great extent on the understanding of the nature of vagueness. In this thesis, vagueness is understood as a kind of indeterminateness in our categorization of entities, which are indeterminate in its attributes. Language is the vehicle of thoughts, and thoughts are the general reflection of the objective world. In addition to the cognitive indeterminateness, vagueness also arises in the use of language as a deliberate choice of the language user. In this sense, a pragmatic study of vague language provides people a better understanding of the world and the communicative effects of vague language.As a pragmatic study of vague language, this thesis defines vague language on the basis of Grice's Co-operative Principle in general and the maxim of Quantity in particular. Relevance Theory and Politeness Theory are also used as theoretical approaches. In a pragmatic sense, language is not vague in itself. It is vague in its actual use. Language is vague when it provides less than enough information and thus leads to indeterminate interpretations. Chapter three examines the objective as well as subjective factors for the presence of vagueness in language and the use of vague language. Subjective factors are explained by applying Grice's CP and Brown and Levinson's face theory. The maxim of Quantity in CP is violated probably for the observance of other maxims such as the maxim of Quality. People have face wants, so definite expressions would turn out to be face-threatening. In these circumstances, vague language is an appropriate choice. In chapter four, the author addresses the discourse fields where vague language is used and analyzes the intentional use of vague language on these occasions to bring about certain pragmatic effects. The use of vague language creates good communicative effects. It provides the language user more flexibility in that it protects him or her from being criticized once his or her statement is proved wrong. It provides aesthetic potentials for literary works and thus creates aesthetic feelings in the language addressee-the reader. It achieves efficiency in communication in the way that it costs the least effort for the language addressee in the process of interpretation. It makes language expressions appropriate so that language users can maintain a harmonious social relationship.