An Analysis Of Pragamtic Vagueness As A Strategy In Diplomatic Language

Diplomacy is the communicative activities between countries. As the carrier of these activities, diplomatic language is used in almost every aspect such as negotiations, talks, treaties and press releases. Concerned with the diplomatic language, vagueness is an effective strategy that the diplomats often employ to achieve certain purposes. Owing to its characteristics such as tactfulness, indeterminacy, vagueness can well satisfy the needs of the diplomats and enable them to achieve the best communicative effects.For a long time, much progress has been made in the areas of vagueness study and its implication. However, relatively limited work has been carried out in the interrelationship between vagueness and diplomatic language. Therefore, this paper is devoted to studying the linguistic phenomenon of pragmatic vagueness in the diplomatic language especially in the press conferences of the Chinese and the U.S. government. Based on the materials collected, the analysis of vagueness is carried out to find out its pragmatic features and functions as well as the true intentions of the diplomats.This paper will begin with a brief introduction of the previous studies on pragmatic vagueness in natural language and in diplomatic language. Then it provides the Adaptation-relevance Theory, which provides the theoretical framework of research in this paper. After that, the features of vagueness in diplomatic language will be expounded and detailed examples will follow to show analysis of the vagueness language in diplomatic language, from which the functions and effects of vagueness in the diplomatic language can be summarized. The paper concludes with a summary of major findings, together with the limitations of this study. In the end, implication of this study for further study will be provided.To sum up, diplomatic language is the most carefully-designed language due to its special features. Therefore, it is hoped that the study of vagueness in diplomatic language can facilitate the training of future diplomats and also help with the interpretation teaching.