A Study Of Pragmatic Vagueness In Peter Pan From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Vagueness is a pervasive language phenomenon in human conversations. Uses of vague language are universal and inevitable in communication. While such uses are realized to be not strictly and literally true, these departures from truthfulness can pass unattended and undetected in the normal flow of discourse.Vagueness has traditionally been the province of philosophers. Following in philosophers'footsteps, some linguists approach vagueness. However, up till now, most studies on vagueness in linguistics have been oriented to the semantic field. The topic of pragmatic vagueness has not been seriously addressed.Sperber and Wilson claim, "the principle of relevance is enough on its own to explain how linguistic structure and background knowledge interact to determine verbal comprehension" (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995). That is, the principle of relevance can well explain why people sometimes use and accept vague expressions rather than its corresponding precise expressions. A big part of the current thesis is the proposal of interpretative mechanism of pragmatic vagueness, with Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory as the basis. This mechanism will be applied to explaining the interpretation process of pragmatic vagueness cited from Peter Pan.The study is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to the study, which states the purpose, the significance, the objectives and research methodology, the research questions and the overall structure of the thesis.The second chapter is a literature review which discusses the research on pragmatic vagueness abroad and home, the definition of pragmatic vagueness, the nature and features of pragmatic vagueness, classification of pragmatic vagueness and terminology. It also presents the main assumptions of relevance theory:relevance and cognition; relevance and communication; relevance and comprehension.The third chapter develops an interpretative mechanism of pragmatic vagueness with relevance theory as the basis is developed. And explanations about it will include the basic conditions of successful interpretation of pragmatic vagueness, key factors involved in the interpretation of pragmatic vagueness and their relationships, the working procedure of inference under the interpretative mechanism of pragmatic vagueness and main features of the interpretative mechanism of pragmatic vagueness. The fourth chapter is an interpretation analysis. With the help of the developed interpretative mechanism, interpretation analysis of excerpts cited from Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie are made to show how the hearer interpret non-metaphorical pragmatic vagueness and metaphorical pragmatic vagueness in discourse and pins down the intended meaning. The interpretation analysis of non-metaphorical pragmatic vagueness and metaphorical pragmatic vagueness will prove whether it is feasible to incorporate the expectation of relevance into vagueness interpretation. A comparison will be made about the two interpretation processes of non-metaphorical and metaphorical pragmatic vagueness.The last chapter is a summary of the thesis. It points out theoretical and practical implications of the present study, raises limitations of the present study and also puts forward suggestions for further research.