An Analysis Of Vagueness In Legal Language From The Perspective Of Pragmatics

As an important instrument regulating the order of our society, law is regarded to be systematic and authoritative. For a long time, people believe that the language of law should be precise and accurate, which can guarantee its authority. And in the court debate and cross-examination, the language is considered to be clear without ambiguous words. However, either in legal texts or in legal discourses, language is vague sometimes in practice. As a natural characteristic of language, vagueness is a necessary and indispensable component in legal language. Although the vague words make the law and expressions obscure sometimes, it can be an advantage rather than a disadvantage most of the time when it is properly used. And the effects of vague expressions in legal context are immeasurable.In the past, many scholars study the legal language in terms of semantics, while this thesis mainly studies vagueness in legal language including legislative language and judicial language at home and abroad from the perspective of pragmatics. The pragmatic theories and principles include Grice's Cooperative principle, Leech's Politeness Principle, and Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory. Through these pragmatic theories, vague expressions collected in legislative texts and judicial discourses are analyzed. This thesis aims at giving people a right view on vagueness in legal language. Two points should be recognized. On the one hand, vagueness is universal in legal language. On the other hand, vague words and expressions are necessary and inevitable in legal language and vagueness is one of the crucial elements to make the legal language effective and flexible.The thesis can be divided into six parts. In the introduction, the author gives a general survey about the organization and methodology of the thesis as well as the review on the research of the vagueness in legal language in the past at home and abroad. Chapter two presents two basic points of this thesis:vague language and legal language. The author introduces some well-known definition of vague language and the relationship between law and language, and the development of vague language and legal language. It is particularly worth mentioning the features of legal language. As one of the characteristics of legal language, vagueness makes the law flexible, stable and authoritative.In Chapter three, the author states the reasons why vagueness exists in legal language. There are four reasons contributing to it. To begin with, legal documents require legal language to be vague. Secondly, the trivial and developing world decides that vagueness is an essential factor in legal language. Thirdly, vague utterances are used to adapt to the different cultures. Lastly, vagueness is one of the features of legal language.The nature of law requires the legal language to be vague. In other words, the limitation of law decides the existence of vague language. The generality of the vague expressions makes the law complete and flexible. The vague words can be used to summarize all the things and circumstances people cannot list or foresee. In addition, the law-enforcers can apply the law flexibly according to the concrete situations because of this kind of generality. It is the vague utterances that make law follow the changing world. Culture is another reason for the use of vague words. As everyone knows, language is the carrier of culture. The differences in cultures result in vagueness in language, including legal language.Chapter four introduces the theoretical background of this thesis:Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Relevance Theory.The Cooperative Principle proposed by philosopher H. Paul Grice helps people communicate with each other successfully either in the same culture or in the different cultures. The Cooperative Principle contains four maxims as follows:(1) maxim of quantity (2) maxim of relevance (3) maxim of manner (4) maxim of quality. In conversation, both parties observe one maxim or more maxims of the Cooperative Principle to make the communication go smoothly. It is due to this kind of cooperation that makes the communication efficient and successful.Geoffrey Leech proposes Politeness Principle to supplement Grice's Cooperative Principle in 1963. The Politeness Principle includes the following six maxims:(1) tact maxim (2) generosity maxim (3) approbation maxim (4) modesty maxim (5) agreement maxim (6) sympathy maxim. These maxims are applied to minimize the expression of impolite beliefs or to maximize the expression of polite beliefs. In conversation, sometimes people use the indirect speeches intentionally, which violates the Cooperative Principle, to follow the Politeness Principle.The third theory is Relevance Theory. Sperber and Wilson illustrate Relevance Theory systematically, which is based on communication and cognition, in their book Relevance:Communication and Cognition. In Relevance Theory, Sperber and Wilson assume that communication is an ostensive-inferential process rather than the process interpreted by code model, which is always seen as the basic way to the communication. The reason why the code model does not work is that the discourse depends greatly on the context, while according to Relevance theory, the audience can infer the speaker's intention in terms of the given evidences, which is closely related to the context.In chapter five, the author explores the application of vagueness in legal language from the three pragmatic principles, Cooperative Principle, Politeness Principle and Relevance Theory. Language is an instrument for communication, so it can be inferred that research on language use and understanding is necessary. Legal language, as other social languages, can show its true values in practice. This thesis mainly studies vagueness in legal language from a pragmatic phenomenon because only in reality can people know the significance of the vagueness. Many concrete examples extracted from legal texts and legal discourses are analyzed in details through the three principles. At the end of this part come the functions of the vagueness in legal language. First of all, the vague expressions can be regarded as a way to protect ourselves. Secondly, vague expressions are usually used to keep others' faces, namely, they indicate the politeness to the audience or the hearer in legal language. Thirdly, vague expressions in law make the law more flexible and complete. Lastly, the lack of specific words leads to the application of vague expressions.Chapter six summarizes the whole thesis, points out limitations and gives suggestions for further study.This thesis aims at helping people have a right view on vagueness in legal language, and apply vague language to protect themselves and show politeness to the others in practice.