A Study Of Vague Language In Business Negotiation

Business negotiation is a complicated communicative process. The linguistic phenomenon existing in it has been the focus of linguistic research in recent years. It is universally held that, in business negotiation, more exact expressions should be used to avoid misunderstandings and inconvenience. However, this view of point indicates an ignorance of a natural property of human language---vagueness. Since the concepts and theories about fuzzy linguistics were put forward in the 1960s, there have been many related studies on vague language from various perspectives. But the scholars have attached more importance to the pragmatic study on it, which can ensure the study deep and compound. Gradually, its pragmatic significance has been detected. In fact, in the process of business negotiation, vague language, as a kind of efficient strategy, has been widely adopted to fulfill certain communicative purposes.This thesis aims to discuss the phenomenon of vague language in business negotiation from the cognitive context perspective. We can say that, the proposal of cognitive context theory has overset the traditional context theory which sees context as one-sided and static. Cognitive context theory is proposed under the relevance theory, so the cognitive contextual studies on language can not live without the support of the relevance theory. Here, we should mention that, according to the relevance theory, cognitive context is a set of psychological assumptions, which can be selected in accordance with the relevance. Concretely, in business negotiation, negotiators make their analysis and interpretation of vague language just depending on their cognitive contexts and cognitive perceptions under the relevance theory.Successful communication can not live without the addresser's ostension and the addressee's correct interpretation, the same as in business negotiation. Adopting and inferring vague language in business negotiation is an ostensive-inferential process, in which the significance of context should not be neglected. On the basis of distinguishing the ostensive-inferential communicative model of vague language in business negotiation, the thesis is conducted in the aspects of both the addresser's and the addressee's cognitive context. Based on the analysis of authentic data, the feasibility and effectiveness of applying cognitive context into the study is elaborated. In the end, the thesis also places an emphasis on the implications of this study in the field of business negotiation and the functions for teaching of business English.