An Analysis Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Stock Comments

Vagueness, as a common phenomenon in our daily life, has drawn wide attention from scholars in various fields ranging from philosophy, to pragmatics. Stock comment, an important economic text, plays a vital role in our daily life and business life. However, vagueness in stock comments seldom arouses researchers' attention.This research, mainly a qualitative one, proposes a novel model to analyze pragmatic vagueness in stock comments. This model, backed up by the theory of Linguistic Adaptation, employs both contextual correlates and structural objects as tools to analyze vagueness in stock comments.It is based on these analysis that this research argues that (1) the language users, the physical world, and the social world of contextual correlates are the crucial components in the analysis of the motivations and intentions of the stock analysts' using of vagueness in stock comments; (2) the mental world of contextual correlates explains the pragmatic functions of vagueness in stock comments, persuading the investors, withholding information deliberately and protecting the stock analysts' authority; (3) the pragmatic vagueness in stock comments are achieved by different structural objects, lexical devices and pragmatic devices are being explored in the present study.It is therefore concluded that vague language is used as a communicative strategy to meet some needs by language users in stock comments. Vague language in stock comments is a result of linguist choice made by stock analysts.Although some limitations exist in the present study, it necessarily has its implications, such as helping investors understand the motivations of the use of vague language and achievement of vague language in stock comments to help them read stock comments more critically and rationally.